SWIFT A Dynamical Model of Saccade Generation During Reading

• Published in: Psychological review Vol. 112; no. 4; pp. 777 - 813
• Main Authors: Engbert, Ralf, Nuthmann, Antje, Richter, Eike M, Kliegl, Reinhold
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01-10-2005
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Cognitive Processes; Eye Movements; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Human Body; Humans; Language; Mathematical analysis; Mathematical Modeling; Mathematical Models; Models, Psychological; Phenomenology; Problem Solving; Production and perception of written language; Program Evaluation; Program Proposals; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reading; Reading Research; Saccades; Sight; Spatial Ability; Word Recognition; Human; Reading; Language; Cognition; Dynamic model; Mathematical model; Saccadic eye movement
• ISSN: 0033-295X; 1939-1471
• DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.112.4.777

Mathematical models
have become an important tool for understanding the control of eye movements during
reading. Main goals of the development of the SWIFT model (
R. Engbert, A. Longtin, & R. Kliegl, 2002
) were
to investigate the possibility of spatially distributed processing and to implement a
general mechanism for all types of eye movements observed in reading experiments. The
authors present an advanced version of SWIFT that integrates properties of the oculomotor
system and effects of word recognition to explain many of the experimental phenomena faced
in reading research. They propose new procedures for the estimation of model parameters
and for the test of the model's performance. They also present a mathematical analysis of
the dynamics of the SWIFT model. Finally, within this framework, they present an analysis
of the transition from parallel to serial processing.