Tests and Applications of a Peripheral Interference Theory of Reading

Introduction

Reading ability is essential in modern society. Yet, for many people, it comes with considerable difficulty; and to cognition scientists, it remains rather mysterious. Here I outline a plan for testing and applying a novel cognitive theory of reading.

Overview of the Plan

The plan expands my recent model, PONG (Snell, 2024, Psych Rev), with a groundbreaking perspective on visuo-spatial attention to capture many reading behaviours (WP1). The exciting prospect is that PONG, in a single stroke, informs three big debates:

1. Parallel processing (WP2)
2. Position-coding (WP3)
3. Peripheral interference (WP4)

WP2: Eye-Tracking and EEG

In WP2, a novel combination of eye-tracking and EEG, Gaze-Contingent Rapid Invisible Frequency Tagging (GC-RIFT), will provide a first-ever direct window on the attentional distribution during reading.

WP3: Word Position Coding

It is known that you can read this fine. But many readers also fail to see the error in 'Do love you me?'. The topic of word position coding is new to the field, and PONG predicts key roles for attention and statistical learning herein. WP3 uses GC-RIFT to track their relative contributions in time and space, propelling a first-ever unifying account of letter- and word position coding.

WP4: Dyslexia and Attention

PONG predicts that letter and word recognition is hindered by surrounding text; and possibly this is more severe in dyslexic readers. WP4 tests PONG's new account of dyslexia in which diffuse attention plays a causal role.

New Reading Interface: IRIS

An exciting element here is my new reading interface IRIS (the Interface that Reduces Interference using Saliency). Readers view texts while their eyes are tracked. Fixated words are shown at a higher contrast than surrounding text. Preliminary results show strikingly faster reading.

Future Directions

Upgraded IRIS will tune its parameters to individual readers on the basis of incoming oculomotor data. This holds both theoretical and practical promise: testing dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers, IRIS' parameters will reveal reading profiles, to inform specific treatments and to further bolster the PONG theory.