NOT THE FINAL PUBLISHED VERSION Landing Positions 2 Running head: FIXATION POSITIONS ON MISSPELLED WORDS Orthographic Familiarity Influences Initial Eye Fixation Positions in Reading

An important issue in the understanding of eye movements in reading is what kind of non-foveal information can influence where we move our eyes. In Experiment 1, first fixation landing positions were nearer the beginning of misspelled words. Experiment 2 showed that the informativeness of word beginnings does not influence where words are first fixated. In both experiments, refixations were more likely to be to the left of the initial fixation position if the words were misspelled. Also, there was no influence of spelling on prior fixation durations or refixation probabilities, that is, there was no evidence for parafoveal-on-foveal effects. The results show that the orthographic familiarity, but not informativeness, of word initial letter sequences influences where words are first fixated. Landing Positions 4 There is considerable evidence to suggest that the visual characteristics of text largely determine where the eyes land during reading. The position of the first fixation on words is mainly dependent on word length, which is visually represented by th