On the control of eye saccades in reading

In the reading of text, the series of retinal images is determined by position and duration of eye fixations. The problem here is whether eye saccades need individual programming on the basis of proceeding text recognition. We attempted to bring the series of retinal images under experimental control to establish whether reading can occur if subsequent retinal images are externally determined. Under these conditions, both oral and silent reading turned out to be possible at speeds similar to ordinary reading. Duration and shift of subsequent retinal images were not critical. It is suggested that only the average proceeding of the eyes over the text need be controlled by text recognition.