As a result of this, readers will often not consider all text to be of equal importance, depending on their task. Another difference is the fact that there is so much information on the Web, that it is often not considered viable to read all available information for comprehension. Hyperlinks are visually salient and have been shown to anchor attention during reading on the Web. One specific difference is the presence of hyperlinks, words that enable users to navigate to a different webpage when clicked. presence of hyperlinks, length of sentences, and position on the screen).Ĭurrent research has consistently shown that reading on the Web differs from reading in other contexts. We suggest readers are less able to establish the importance of a sentence when skim reading, even though importance could have been assessed by information that would be fairly easy to extract (i.e. When skim reading, however, importance ratings had a lesser impact on online reading behaviour than when reading for comprehension. In Experiment 2, higher importance scores resulted in longer sentence reading times, measured as fixation durations. Long sentences with more links were rated as more important regardless of their position on the page. It was also found that short sentences with more links were rated as more important, but only when they were presented at the top of the page.

Results from Experiment 1 show readers rated sentences without hyperlinks as being of less importance than sentences that did feature hyperlinks, and this effect is larger when sentences are lower on the page. Reading times of sentences were analysed in relation to the type of task and the importance ratings from Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, a different set of participants read these passages while their eye movements were tracked, with the task being either reading for comprehension or skim reading. In Experiment 1, participants rated the importance of sentences across passages of Wikipedia text. Across two experiments, we examine how hyperlinks influence perceived importance of sentences and how perceived importance in turn affects reading behaviour. It has previously been shown that readers spend a great deal of time skim reading on the Web and that this type of reading can affect comprehension of text. Kaakinen, Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, #Īnd Denis Drieghe, Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing # Weal, Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, # Gemma Fitzsimmons, Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, # Jayes, Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, #

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