Eye tracking to identify strategies used by readers seeking information from on-line texts

Abstract

he aim was to investigate how readers effectively allocate their time across multiple texts under time pressure. Two experiments using an eye tracker to follow readers' eye movements when studying for a specific test from written texts showed that all or most pages of a text were consulted by the reader, with the later paragraphs within a page of a bad text being viewed for less time than the early paragraphs. Readers employed a 'skimming by satisficing' strategy to adaptively allocate their time to the most beneficial information sources. Evidence of how readers reject a page of text if it is not meeting their threshold level of satisfaction in terms of information gain is presented.