Abstracts - Earli

same picture. Test persons were eye-tracked while they decided which combination contentwisecould be considered most objective and most subjective. Analysis of time spenditure showed thattest persons used app. 25% more time on the subjective than on the objective task. Time used oneach task was overall the same, but in three-picture layouts testpersons used more time at picturesthan at answers, in one-picture layouts more time at answers than at pictures. App. 92% of choicesfor the objective content relation were as foreseen, app. 77% for the subjective. The experimentshowed that interdependedness should be considered when making visual communication and thatboth layout and complexity of content influences the behavior of the reader.Are there age differences in utilization of illustrations in reading science textbooks?Oddny Judith Solheim, University of Stavanger, NorwayMarianne Roskeland, University of Stavanger, NorwayPer Henning Uppstad, University of Stavanger, NorwayThis project aims at studying how students in two different age groups read science textbooks withillustrations. By tracking their eye-movements one may register how much time these groups useon the plain text on one side and the illustrations on the other, and one may search for patterns inhow – or if – they switch between the two modalitites. Literature on iconotext or multimodal textis widely based on assumptions that are not well documented with regard to eye-movementsduring reading of such text. Our project can be regarded as a modest start in getting at some suchinformation. In a study of high- and low-achievers Hannus and Hyßnä (1999) found differences inhow children integrated text and illustrations. In the present study we investigate differencesbetween children of different age groups.Newspaper reading, eye tracking and multimodalityKenneth Holmqvist, Lund University, SwedenJana Holsanova, Lund University, SwedenNils Holmberg, Lund University, SwedenReaders’ visual interaction with multimodal documents has been investigated in four eye-trackingstudies on newspaper reading. Multimodal documents are divided into information graphics andarticles containing text, photos and photo captions. Analyses of eye movement data from twoexperimental studies show that spatial layout of information graphics affects reading style, amountof reading, and fixation order. Results from one study shows that the amount of reading ininformation graphics is positively correlated to the comprehension of information graphics. In thecase of news articles containing photos, two studies provide evidence that photo size and photocontent have no general significant effect on reading time of related textual content. Analyses ofscanpaths between picture objects and text objects within the same newspaper article show thattext elements such as headlines and intros are fixated first, followed by a large number oftransitions to pictures, and thereafter a large number of transitions to article text. Experimentalresults from one study show that short text length and easy text difficulty in articles are positivelyrelated to reading depth and article comprehension.– 22 –