Watch Your Eyes Read
Your camera follows your eyes while you read a page, then while you read with RSVP. See the difference as two lines.
How it works
- Allow the camera and look at a red dot for three seconds.
- Read a short story as a normal page. Keep your head fairly still.
- Read a second story with RSVP. Then see both eye traces side by side.
Your eyes jumped 164 times on the page and 7 times with RSVP.
Length
Works best on a laptop or desktop, in good light, with your face in the middle of the picture. Glasses are fine.
Let’s find your eyes.
Read this as a normal page.
Press Start, read to the end at your normal pace, then press Done.
Now the same length with RSVP.
Words appear one at a time in one spot. Keep your eyes on the red letter.
Questions about eye movements in reading
How do your eyes move when you read?
In jumps. The eyes stop on a word for about a quarter of a second, jump seven to nine letters forward, and stop again. At the end of each line they sweep back to the left. Roughly one jump in ten goes backward. Plotted over time, reading a page looks like a sawtooth.
Why does RSVP feel different?
With RSVP every word appears in the same spot, so the eyes have nowhere to go. The jumps and the sweeps back to the start of each line disappear, and the trace goes flat. That is the whole idea of the method, and this tool lets you see it on your own eyes.
Is my video recorded or uploaded?
No. The camera picture is analysed on your device, frame by frame, and thrown away. Only numbers such as eye position and blink counts are kept, and only in this browser tab.
How accurate is a webcam for this?
Good enough to see large eye movements such as the sweep at the end of a line, and to count jumps roughly. It cannot tell which word you are looking at. Laboratory eye trackers are about ten times more precise. Treat the counts as a comparison between the two ways of reading, not as exact measurements.