The relationship between subvocalization and eye movements during silent reading

Abstract

Many individuals engage in subvocalization during silent reading. Morita & Takahashi （2019） argue that subvocalization and vocalization have similar functions based on their study that manipulated them in a reading comprehension task. However, there is yet no support for the assumption that the eye-movement patterns of readers who frequently subvocalize whilst reading should resemble those of reading aloud. The present study is a modified replication of Morita and Takahashi’s Experiment 2. Forty undergraduate and graduate participants were asked to read 12 short stories as their eye-movements were tracked and their subvocalization frequencies were measured. The results indicated the readers who frequently subvocalized exhibited longer reading times with more fixations whilst reading silently compared to readers who subvocalized less frequently, which is consistent with our hypothesis. However, further research is warranted because the method used to measure subvocalization frequencies is not sufficiently reliable.