Colloquium Cognitive Systems

Reading with two eyes - about binocular coordination and advantages

Dr. phil. Stefanie Jainta, FHNW Olten, Switzerland

Abstract. Reading is a sophisticated, uniquely human skill which requires the simultaneous operation of visual, oculomotor, attentional and linguistic processes. During normal reading, vergence eye movements establish a stable vertical alignment as a pre-requisite for efficient horizontal motor fusional responses (i.e. vergence movements), which in turn serve to maximise correspondence in retinal activation between the two eyes. This facilitates the sensory fusion of the two inputs and provides a stable and single percept of the text. Sensory fusion can take place over a small range of fixation disparities (i.e. slight alignment errors of the eyes), which are (as other vergence adjustments) sensitive to quality aspects of the text. The present talk will characterize typical binocular coordination during reading and show that binocular fusion is a valuable pre-requisite over which further visual and lexical processes can work most efficiently: binocular vision provides clear advantages for reading which extent to lexical processing of the just read text. Thus, the complex interplay between the human visual system and the language processing system seams crucial for effective reading and the impacts of such evidence will be discussed.

Bio. 1995-2006 - Psychologiestudium und Promotion an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität zu Münster, D.

2002-2009 und 2011-2016 - Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am IfADo - Institut für Arbeitsforschung in Dortmund, D.

2009-2010 - DFG-Forschungsstipendiatin am CNRS, Paris, Frankreich.

2010-2011 - DFG-Forschungsstipendiatin an der University of Southampton, England.

Seit 2016 Professorin für Wirtschaftspsychologie an der ISM – International School of Management, Dortmund (D), (Teilzeit) und wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Institut für Optometrie der FHNW, Olten, Schweiz.