Comprehension processes and eye movement patterns in the reading of surprise-ending stories

This study investigates the pattern of eye movements of skilled adult readers when encountering a surprise ending to a story. Subjects read three surprise-ending stories while their eye movements were being monitored. As a control condition, some of the stories they read gave the surprise away at the beginning. There was an increase in the number of fixations associated with rereading the surprising lines of the stories when compared to the same lines in the control condition. There was also a small increase in the mean duration of fixations on the surprising lines, but there was no change in mean saccade length. These results suggest that even the most global levels of processing must be considered as an influence on the eye movement control system