Physiological process of reading

Physiological process of reading

The Neuron

Three types of knowledge used when reading

Transmission of messages at the neural level

Brain mechanisms for language

Eye movements

·         Fixation- the eyes stopping or getting fixated on the word or words. The duration of fixation is the length of time the eyes has to pause.

·         Inter-fixation- eyes moving from stopping point to the other; left to right or up to down movement.

·         Return-sweeps- eyes swinging back from the end of the line to the beginning of the next line.

Different information are stored in appropriate areas of the cerebral cortex

                ·      Saccades- Short quick hops and jump movements to move ahead on a
                                line of print.

·      Regressions- Backward right-to-left movement in case there is a need to double-check what is being read.

·      Span of Recognition- eye’s recognition of a group of words. It is believed that readers can add to their reading ability by widening the span of recognition by means of chunking of phrases, a focus on the total word pattern.