This dissertation discusses the effects of dyslexia on reading behavior and cognition. It does so by first outlining the overall incidence of dyslexia, providing current definitions, giving a history of scientific inquiry and discussing relevant contemporary research. Thirteen different analyses are then discussed (ten a priori and three post-hoc). Individuals with dyslexia were found to have increased fixation duration, first run dwell time, total dwell time, and refixation probability. The dyslexia group was also highly sensitive to lexical predictability. Within the reading network, the BOLD response was depressed in dyslexia during reading in the following regions: the left medial and inferior temporal gyrus, the left temporal pole, the right cerebellum, right occipital gyrus and the right parahippocampal gyrus. A second regions of interest analysis in the reading network revealed dyslexia was associated with a depressed BOLD response to lexical predictability in the following regions: left supplementary motor area, posterior middle frontal gyrus, and the left temporal pole. A regions of interest analysis in the oculomotor network revealed a depressed BOLD response in the following regions during reading: the left parietal eye fields and the cerebellum. One oculomotor region had a depressed BOLD response to lexical predictability due to dyslexia: the left frontal eye fields. This sensitivity to lexical predictability and depression in the BOLD response is suggestive of reduced input into higher cortical areas. Future study should be focused on finding the common origin of this bottom-up deficit.

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) are at risk for reading disability and academic failure, and there remains a lack of scientific consensus about the underlying deficits that may explain their language difficulties. This study examined how language ability predicts preschoolers' eye movements during a naturalistic storybook reading task, a possible indicator of comprehension processes in real-time. We used eye-tracking measures to examine comprehension processes in 49 preschoolers with wide-ranging language abilities, using language skill as a continuous predictor variable. Participants viewed and listened to a storybook presented on an eye-tracking computer. Portions of each illustration that corresponded with a noun phrase in the text were considered target images during the time course of the spoken referent. Eye-tracking analyses revealed that children had similar latency to target images regardless of language level. However, language ability was a significant predictor of proportion of fixations; children with higher language skills had more fixations on target images and less fixations on control images than children with lower language skills. These results suggest that children with lower language abilities attended to the story but did not sufficiently sustain attention to relevant images and continued to attend to extraneous images after the onset of spoken noun phrases. Speech-language pathologists and early childhood educators should be aware that children with language difficulties may need help identifying what is most important to attend to during shared storybook reading.

While reading behaviors have been studied extensively in L1 reading studies through the use of eye-tracking and L2 reading has been measured through inherently indirect means, there is a relative lack of research done on early and late reading measures of ESL readers. Eye-tracking technology, available to researchers only in the past few decades, has opened the field to a new means of measuring these early and late measures of reading in second language learners. This study investigates the reading behaviors of 34 native Portuguese and Chinese readers who read in both their native languages (L1) and in their second language (L2), which is English. It was found that readers processed their reading differently in response to different text difficulties and varied between the different native languages.

The current research built on Yan, Miller, Li, and Shu’s (2008) eye-tracking study, which examined how second grade native Chinese speakers focused on Pinyin and Chinese characters while reading sentences. This research also used eye-tracking to examine how Chinese foreign Language learners (CFL) fixated on Pinyin and Chinese characters to determine if Pinyin facilitated or distracted from character learning. Two groups participated in this research: first semester university students enrolled in a beginning level Chinese class, and third, fourth, and fifth grade students enrolled in Chinese dual language immersion (DLI). All participants were asked to read eight sentences in Chinese with Pinyin placed above the characters. These sentences included familiar, unfamiliar, and new characters based on the students’ curricula. Results indicated that the DLI students spent significantly more time and fixations on Pinyin than characters, whereas the first semester university students spent more time and fixations on unfamiliar and new characters than Pinyin. The students also completed a questionnaire about Pinyin, which showed that the majority of elementary students liked having Pinyin above the characters and did not think that Pinyin was distracting. A much smaller percentage of first semester university students liked having Pinyin above the characters, but the majority realized that it was distracting. It seems that the first semester university students used Pinyin as a tool, but the DLI students used it as a crutch. Pedagogical suggestions are provided.

Children with lower language abilities, including children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) are at risk for persistent reading difficulties. Previous studies have demonstrated that children with lower language abilities display eye movements different from their typically developing peers while hearing nouns in a naturalistic storybook reading context. This study examined how language ability and various lexical characteristics interact with 4- and 5-year- olds' eye movements during a naturalistic storybook reading task. We used eye-tracking technology to measure eye movements of 49 preschoolers with variable language skill. The children looked at storybook pictures on an eye tracking computer while they listened to a narration of the story. Target areas of each illustration corresponded to verbs in the text (i.e., images of the subjects and objects referred to by the verb). Results revealed that all children, regardless of language ability, were more likely to be looking at the target images while a target verb was being spoken than when a different word was being spoken. This relationship grew stronger as language ability increased. Additionally, lexical variables (age of acquisition, number of syllables, concreteness, frequency, and occurrences in the story) also impacted the likelihood that children were looking at the target images. Because the interaction of each lexical variable, language ability, and time was different, clinical implications suggest that speech-language pathologists, early childhood educators, and parents should be aware of these interactions in selecting storybooks with specific word stimuli. Such careful consideration of word stimuli may help children identify what illustrations are important during shared storybook reading.

Trusting autonomous vehicles is seen as crucial for their dissemination. However, research on autonomous driving so far is restricted by using closed training courses or simulators and by comparing behaviour and evaluation while driving oneself (a manual car) with being driven (by an autonomous car). In the current study, we investigated passengers’ eye movements, categorized as safety-relevant or not safety-relevant, and trust ratings while being driven, once manually and once by an autonomous car, in real traffic as well as in a simulator. As some of the effects observed in the field experiment might have been caused by driving style, driving style was additionally varied in the simulator. Fixations in safety-relevant regions (e.g., on the road and steering wheel) were observed more frequently during safety critical driving situations than during regular driving. More safety-relevant fixations for the autonomous compared to the manual driving mode were observed particularly in the field. Trust ratings were affected by driving mode mainly in the simulator: Here, being driven autonomously led to a lower reported trust than believing to be driven by a human driver. Driving style showed to affect trust ratings, but not gaze behaviour in the simulator experiment. Correlations between gazing into safety relevant regions and trust ratings were of smaller descriptive size than in recent investigations on drivers, suggesting that gazing into safety-relevant regions as objective alternative to trust ratings may not be as exhaustive for passengers as for drivers.

The ability to visually explore the world is a substantial and crucial factor for humans to interact and navigate in their environment. Given the importance of the visual system, it is no wonder that vision research has become one of the major fields in cognitive science. Eye tracking studies hereby revealed three main factors, that guide our visual perception and attention. These factors can be described as bottom-up and top-down features, as well as spatial properties. Whereas previous research has put a lot of effort in investigating each of these factors in detail, the combined interaction of the factors - especially regarding spatial properties and biases - is less well understood. This thesis deals with the different aspects of several features influencing visual behavior. I present four studies that examine different aspects of images with respect to their spatial properties. Hereby, I elaborate the global salience of images as spatial factor, which can be impacted by top-down features, such as emotions. Further, I describe how the effect of image sizes as a spatial property is linked with visual exploration and exploitation. In study 1 (Chapter 2) we investigated the global salience of images and its properties. While recording of eye movements, participants freely observed several image pairs, where one image has been shown on the left, and one image on the right side of the screen. Based on results of the eye tracking recordings, we trained a logistic regression model to calculate a global salience coefficient for each image that can be ranked in order to predict the location - left or right image - of the first fixations in an image pair. Our trained model was able to accurately predict the first fixation of an image pair, indicating that images indeed provide a unique global salience score. Hereby, we showed that the global salience of an image is independent of local salience and further that a given task or familiarity of the images affected the respective global salience. In study 2 (Chapter 3) we investigated the influence of emotions as top-down factor on natural visual behavior. Participants had been emotionally primed either by a sequence of positive or negative laden images. Afterwards, we recorded participants' eye movements while being confronted with image pairs, were one positive and one negative image - left and right respectively - was presented simultaneously. Results showed that positively primed participants tended to shift overt attention towards negative images in the stimulus pairs. In a later memory request, we further showed that such participants had better recall performance of negative image content. Thus, we concluded that positive priming increases attention and memory towards negative content. In study 3 (Chapter 4) we investigated the trade-off between the exploration (i.e. initiate fixations to unseen image areas) and exploitation (i.e. stay and process the currently fixated information in depth) of natural images with varying sizes. Participants freely observed images of different sizes and categories while eye movements have been recorded. For exploration we tested the distribution of fixations measured by the central tendency and entropy, as well as number of fixations and saccade amplitudes. The exploitation was derivated from the fixation duration. In our results, we found that larger image sizes led to a shift from exploitation towards exploration. That is, images have been explored more broaden while in-depth processing reduced accordingly. In study 4 (Chapter 5) we investigated the effect of image sizes in natural viewing behavior within patients suffering from retinitis pigmentosa (RP); an inherited disease that causes progressive peripheral visual-field loss. The purpose of this study was to examine whether visual behavior differed when the scene content was shown in various extents of the perceived visual field. For this, participants with varying degrees of visual-field loss and healthy control participants freely observed images of different sizes while eye movements were recorded. For healthy control participants we could replicate the effects already described in Chapter 4. That is, larger images lead to a shift from exploitation to exploration. Surprisingly, on group level RP patients scanned the images similar to the healthy control participants. However, on individual level RP patients also showed individual idiosyncratic explorative strategies when the observed scene exceeded their visible field. We thus concluded, that although retinitis pigmentosa leads to a severe loss of the visual field, there seems to be no general adaptive mechanism adapting visual exploration accordingly. Instead, individuals rely on individual strategies, leading to high heterogeneity in the RP group. In a nutshell, our results showed that images provide unique global salience coefficients that can predict attraction of visual attention. However, emotions as top-down factor affect these global salience coefficients as shown by a shift of attention towards negative image content. The size of an image as spatial property affects natural viewing behavior in such way that in-depth processing (exploitation) shifts towards broader exploration in large images. These results remain remarkably stable, even when the image size extends the visual field (in RP patients). Summarized, the studies in this thesis were motivated to gain and deepen knowledge in the interplay between distinct factors - with an emphasis on spatial properties - that impact visual behavior and attention.

The diploma thesis focuses on consumer behaviour on the website of providers operating leases. The aim of the thesis is to identify and describe the factors that affect consumers in this market. Based on findings of the whole research is formulated description of consumer behaviour in the operating lease market and recommendations for their providers. To realize this aim were used eye-tracking method (n=20), in-depth interviews (n=20) and questionnaire(n=118).

The Internet allows customers to share their experiences with, and opinions on, goods and services with other customers, that is, to engage in e-WOM communication. This paper consists of two major sections. The aim of the first one is to define the main e-WOM behaviour characteristics of Czech consumers and their motivations for transmission and exposure e-WOM behaviour. For this purpose, a questionnaire survey (n = 220) is conducted with a target group of people aged 16 to 54 years. The results indicate that the main reasons for exposure e-WOM behaviour are saving decision-making time, making better buying decisions, reducing cognitive dissonance and advice seeking when having product issues. In the case of transmission e-WOM behaviour, consumers are motivated by altruistic reasons, benefits of collective power and venting negative feelings. The second, experimental, section of this work examines the consumer's attention depending firstly on the e-WOM valence, the structural elements and the brand type, and secondly on the different characteristics of online reviews. In the first place, the results of the eye-tracking research (n = 24) illustrate a statistically significant impact of the interaction between the brand type and the e-WOM valence on consumer attention and in the second place it shows the dominance of the reviewer's name in attracting consumer attention. An in-depth interview is conducted in order to enlighten the results of eye-tracking research. Academic and managerial implications are discussed.

The present diploma thesis deals with impact of packaging and labelling on purchase decision of juices by generation Y. The aim of the thesis is to identify the influence of juice packaging and propose recommendations for producers of these beverages. Quantitative research in the form of a questionnaire survey (n = 384) is used to achieve this goal, as well as qualitative research (n = 38), combining eye-tracking technology with in-depth interview and blind test. The emphasis is mainly placed on identification of the main attributes and motives, affecting consumer buying behaviour of juices, together with revealing the influence of colours and graphic elements on consumer decision-making. The relevance of the material and shape of the packaging in relation to the consumers' purchase intention of the generation Y is also researched. In the light of the findings, recommendations for producers of fruit juice are suggested at the end of the thesis.