COP Reading - Schneps et al (2013), Frey and Bosse (2018), Galli et al (2020), Shi et al (2020)

Yellow highlight = interesting research point
Red italic = my comments/thoughts

Shorter Lines Facilitate Reading in Those Who Struggle

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0071161
Schneps, M., Thomson, J., Sonnert, G., Pomplun, M., Chen, C. and Heffner-Wong, A. (2013) Shorter Lines Facilitate Reading in Those Who Struggle. PLoS ONE, 8(8).

• People with dyslexia, who ordinarily struggle to read, sometimes remark that reading is easier when e-readers are used. Here, we used eye tracking to observe high school students with dyslexia as they read using these devices. Among the factors investigated, we found that reading using a small device resulted in substantial benefits, improving reading speeds by 27%, reducing the number of fixations by 11%, and importantly, reducing the number of regressive saccades by more than a factor of 2, with no cost to comprehension.
• Given that an expected trade-off between horizontal and vertical regression was not observed when line lengths were altered, we speculate that these effects occur because sluggish attention spreads perception to the left as the gaze shifts during reading. Short lines eliminate crowded text to the left, reducing regression.
• The effect of increased letter spacing to reduce crowding, were also found to modulate the oculomotor (eye movement) dynamics in reading, but whether these factors resulted in benefits or costs depended on characteristics, such as visual attention span, that varied within our sample.
• Do the advantages of short lines found here in a sample of students with dyslexia, carry over to typical readers?

- Thinking about different audiences and how publication design can impact people of different learning abilities
- Mentions line length, starting to bring in design principles more. Elements like these need to be discussed further in practical, making sure they work for the reader. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Perceptual span, visual span, and visual attention span: Three potential ways to quantify limits on visual processing during reading

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aline_Frey2/publication/325092494_Perceptual_span_visual_span_and_visual_attention_span_Three_potential_ways_to_quantify_limits_on_visual_processing_during_reading/links/5b0d5694a6fdcc8c25386acc/Perceptual-span-visual-span-and-visual-attention-span-Three-potential-ways-to-quantify-limits-on-visual-processing-during-reading.pdf
Aline Frey & Marie-Line Bosse (2018): Perceptual span, visual span, and visual attention span: Three potential ways to quantify limits on visual processing during reading, Visual Cognition, D

• Perceptual Span turned out to be the most prominent concept in terms of explaining spatiotemporal decisions in eye movement control during reading. Accordingly, PS is considered the reference span for models of eye guidance during text reading, supported by underlying assumption that eye movements during reading depend on parafoveal processing.
• Perceptual Span mainly relies on multiple “top-down” influences, such as individual differences in reading abilities or text readability.
  

- Found this article confusing, more research needed to see its relevance to the project

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Striving for Modernity: Layout and Abstracts in the Biomedical Literature

https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/8/3/38

Galli, C., Colangelo, M.T., and Guizzardi, S (2020) Striving for Modernity: Layout and Abstracts in the Biomedical Literature. Publications, 8(3).

• The choice of layout dictates how information is distributed across a page and can guide the reader through the text with visual cues, bring related information together and thereby create cohesion.
• It has been shown that the choice of typeface and typographic layout affects the visual rhetorical impression of readers, and a consistent, uniform look is mostly associated with “academic”, “informative”, “professional” descriptors in experimental settings [2].
• When considering printed articles, a two-column layout readily distinguishes academic papers from other genres, for instance, narrative books or even most textbooks (Figure 1). According to a broadly mentioned common knowledge, the main advantage of two-column layouts is the possibility to cram more text into a smaller page space by decreasing font size and shortening lines, with narrower margins, while keeping an adequate font size/line length ratio to make reading unimpeded.
  - The impact of columns can affect how the reader perceives the text, talking about columns and how they're beneficial to communicate a sense of the content being information compared to having a single column which communicates a more linear, story like narrative. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Construction of Cognitive Maps to Improve Reading Performance by Text Signaling: Reading Text on Paper Compared to on Screen

ttps://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.571957/full
Shi, Z., Tang, T. and Yin, L., 2020. Construction of Cognitive Maps to Improve Reading Performance by Text Signaling: Reading Text on Paper Compared to on Screen. Frontiers in Psychology, 11.

• This study randomly divided 75 college students into a paper reading group and an on-screen reading group. Both groups were tested for navigation and reading comprehension in response to three different forms of signaling
• The results showed that when plain text was presented, the navigation and comprehension scores of the paper reading group were significantly higher than those of the on-screen reading group.
• When the human brain collects visual information about an object, it also collects information about its surroundings and connects them together (Jabr, 2013; Li et al., 2013).
• During the reading process, readers first identify “landmarks,” namely, important concepts, knowledge, or information. Then, they construct routes between the landmarks, i.e., front and back, far and near, as well as hierarchical relationships between concepts, knowledge, or information in logical and spatial positions. Finally, they integrate these landmarks and relationships into survey knowledge, i.e., build textual cognitive maps (Foo et al., 2005; Voeroes et al., 2011).
• The construction of such cognitive maps not only helps to locate the content that has been read, but also leads to more effective retention and recall of text information (Rothkopf, 1971; Lovelace and Southall, 1983; O’Hara et al., 1999; Morineau et al., 2005).
• Text signaling is one of the most used reading strategies (Li et al., 2016). Text signals include words, phrases, sentences, or special symbols that can appear in different places within a text, but rather than adding any new content, they emphasize the structure or specific content of the text (Britton et al., 1982; Lorch, 1989; Van Gog, 2014).
  - Similar to hierarchy, needs to be considered t assist the development of a mental map. 
• In multimedia learning, it is also known as the signaling principle or cueing principle, and it refers to the finding that people learn better when signals are added that guide attention to certain elements of the material or highlight the structure (Mayer, 2005; Van Gog, 2014). (again feels like principles of hierarchy, but these have more psychological backing so could refer to these in essay and join with hierarchy principles to develop an argument)
• Signaling forms mainly consist of physical signaling and verbal signaling. Physical signaling is defined as emphasizing important information and words mainly by highlighting, underlining, and bold formatting. Verbal signaling includes headings, summaries, and organizing charts (He and Mo, 2000; Mayer, 2005).
• The results showed that the reading comprehension and navigation scores in the case of signaling were significantly higher than those of non-signaling, indicating that signals help to construct cognitive maps during reading, which showed a signaling promotion effect. (The signaling promotion effect is defined as the promotion effect of text signals on comprehension processes and information retention of a text (Lorch et al., 1993; Lorch and Lorch, 1996; He and Mo, 2000).)
• First, concerning the impact of signals on background information, rich background information not only helps the brain to process and encode textual content but also facilitates identification of the location and extraction of specific information (Chun and Jiang, 1998; Morineau et al., 2005). - this background information can provide cues of the structure of the text allowing an information rich mental map to be made in the brain.
  - Links to andragogy and the way adults learn by building on past experience. 
  - Publications when aiming to inform if presenting new concepts need to start with a basic foundation of the topic and then build on this as they go along. 
• Whether the text was presented on paper or screen, physical, and verbal signals of texts could help readers to navigate, construct cognitive maps, and improve their reading performance.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To Read:

Effects of text structure on use of cognitive capacity during reading: 
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1982-20298-001

Why the Brain Prefers Paper: 
http://www.keepmeposted.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/REPORT_Why-the-Brain-Prefers-Paper-2013.pdf

The Influence of Font Type on Information Recall:
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.561.9349&rep=rep1&type=pdf