Viewing Behavior in Complex Passages-An Exploratory Eye-tracking Study.

There have been multiple studies focusing on how visual arrangements can impact the viewing behavior of online content, but little research has been done that evaluates the effect of complexity of textual information on viewing patterns. To fill this gap, we studied how users view longer textual passages and how text simplification could impact the viewing pattern for such passages. We extracted a relatively complex passage (18th-grade reading difficulty level) from GRE sample tests. We then simplified it to 12th-grade reading difficulty level using a set of guidelines developed in prior studies. After that, we ran an eye-tracking experiment with 65 participants. Half participants were asked to read the original passage, and the rest were asked to read the simplified version. The results showed that text simplification substantially impacted the viewing behavior, notably it increased attention to the last parts of the passage.