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From eye tracking perspective, reading occurs in the manner where eyes move back and forth across the lines, going from one word to another before making a swift move to the first word in the next line (Jarodzka & Brand-Gruwel, 2017). In this duration, the eyes sometimes make a stop at a word and this action is often described as Fixation (Hyönä, Lorch & Kaakinen, 2002) and this fixation can be further categorized as forward and backward fixations (Rayner, 1998). According to the eye mind hypothesis proposed by Just and Carpenter (1980), it is believed that high and longer fixation duration reflect difficulties in processing the information. By understanding the nature of the fixation and other eye movement data (such as first pass duration and second pass duration), reading researchers are able to tap into readers’ cognitive processes from internal attention perspectives (Rayner & Juhasz, 2004). In education, for example, studies on reading difficulties have benefitted from eye tracking perspectives as they allow researchers to get a deeper understanding about the cognitive processes of reading behaviours exhibited by struggling readers (Mihat, Azman, & Soh, 2018). Furthermore, the eye tracking methodology generates what Rayner et al. (2012) refers to as convergence data (not to be mistaken with convergence mixed methods), where data gathered from internal attention (eye movement data) and external attention (comprehension score) are integratedly analysed to explain the relationship between reading processes and reading performance. Such insights from eye tracking analysis have introduced multifaceted perspectives on how readers read (Holmqvist et al., 2017), and the impetus for its increasing application in other research fields apart from education and language studies.
Interestingly since eye tracking was first introduced in the 1901s, eye tracking research capabilities has continually changed and further developed as technology improved. Upgraded technology has produced more sophisticated eye trackers and provided another option for researchers to opt apart from the screen-based version (Holmqvist et al., 2017). Additionally, latest versions of eye tracking devices now showcase wearable apparatus which enables researchers to mobilize their studies beyond confined labs and into the real-world paradigm. This flexibility has also introduced discussions about pertinent changes needed in the procedural data collection, which previously has been strictly lab based and obviously executed in controlled environments (Godfroid, 2020), eliciting mainly quantitative data. With the increasing need to understand the way the brain reads and processes what it reads in more natural circumstances, the need to include qualitative sources of data has become ever more necessary. To this end, recent studies in the field have adopted the mixed method approach in eye tracking by incorporating interviews to elicit rich descriptions of the eye movement data from the readers as they explain their reading process through their eye movements (see Tham, Chau, & Thang, 2019; Thang & Abdul Aziz, 2019). However, the inclusion of qualitative tool such as the interview protocol in eye tracking research studies has been at best sporadic with no clear descriptions provided on what and when the interviews should be conducted.
This lack in knowledge on what and when to utilize interviews in established data collection procedures can weaken the validity and reliability of the qualitative data elicited. The said gap is discussed in this article which reports on the use of the interview protocol in a research conducted to investigate the cognitive reading processes exhibited by young readers reading real-world texts as stimuli, using the wearable eye tracking device. In this article, the application of the interview protocol as a qualitative tool and the authentic stimuli are examined based on the eye tracking device usability evaluation framework adapted from Cheng (2011). Based on the findings, implications for the inclusion of interview protocol in eye tracking methodology will be established. At the same time, this article highlights the usability of authentic text stimuli in eye tracking research methodology. The following sections highlight the applications of interviews as a tool to elicit qualitative eye-tracking data, as well as the use of real-world text employed in an eye-tracking study which investigates reading processes using naturalistic stimuli.