[Elementary processes of information acquisition in reading].

Two problems are essential to current theoretical discussion on eye movements in reading: what information is being acquired during a fixation and what is the basis for the decision when and where to move the eye with a saccade? Following a discussion of empirical evidence related to these issues preliminary results of an extensive reading study are reported. The distribution of saccade landing sites in words of different length (preferred viewing position) as well as relations between initial fixation position and refixation frequency (optimal viewing position) indicate that word fixation patterns primarily depend on low-level percepto-oculomotor factors.