Reading Comprehension as Embodied Action: Exploratory Findings on Nonlinear Eye Movement Dynamics and Comprehension of Scientific Texts

Reading comprehension is often conceptualized in terms of the internal processing of linguistic information and construction of accurate mental representations. In contrast, an ecological-enactive approach rejects this internalist focus and instead emphasizes the dynamic process of reader-text coupling in which eye movements play a constitutive role. In this study, we employed recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) to examine the relationship between reading comprehension and eye movement dynamics, based on eye-tracking data from the Potsdam Textbook Corpus recorded from beginners and experts reading scientific texts, followed by comprehension questionnaires. Moreover, we compared the findings from RQA to classical eye movement measures (number of fixations, mean fixation duration, regression fixation proportion). The results indicated that classical eye movement measures did not predict reading comprehension reliably, whereas recurrences in gaze steps were reliably associated with reading comprehension proficiency. Contrary to our original hypothesis, experts showed more irregular, rather than more regular, eye movement dynamics, and these were linked to more proficient reading comprehension. In line with previous research on naturalistic reading using nonlinear methods, the present findings suggest that reading comprehension is best understood as emerging from interaction-dominant coordination processes.