Reading, Processing and Interacting with Hypertext on the Web Gemma Fitzsimmons, Mark J Weal and Denis Drieghe The Influence of Hyperlinks on Reading on the Web: An Empirical Approach.

Why is it important to study reading on the Web? In the first quarter of 2016, 87.9% of adults in the UK (45.9 million) had, in the last 3 months, used the internet In 2015, the internet was accessed almost every day, by 78% of adults (39.3 million) Users of the Web engage in a wide variety of different activities: searching for information reading the news/reading for comprehension sending and receiving email social networking Within all of these activities, the primary task that users engage in is reading text

What is the difference between reading on the Web and traditional reading? Hyperlinks Salient (shown in blue, or at least highlighted compared to the rest of the text) Navigation

Eye movement example Rayner and Pollatsek (1989) found that the more difficult the text the longer the fixations and the shorter the saccades and more backward-directed eye movements (regressions) are made to re-read information Eye movements are a measure of online cognitive processing (Liversedge & Findlay, 2000)

Experiment 1A Does Displaying a Word in a Different Colour to the Rest of the Text Change Reading Behaviour?

Experiment 1A Results All colours skipped less often

Experiment 1B Does a Hyperlinked Word Change Reading Behaviour? Does Hyperlinking Interact with Lexical Processing? 32 participants - 4 conditions 2 (Word Type) x 2 (Word Frequency) Word Frequency Why did we use a frequency manipulation? To see if high level information of hyperlinks interacts from lexical processing High Log HAL frequency – 9.91 Low Log HAL frequency – 5.75 Word Type

Experimental Stimuli Demand/rigour Phone/scarf Salt/grit Sleep/inert

Experiment 1B results Did not show reduction in skipping Increased re-reading of previous content for low frequency, linked words

Experiment 1C Does Displaying Multiple Words in a Different Colour to the Rest of the Text Change Reading Behaviour?

Experiment 1C Results Replicates Experiment 1A, reduction in skipping for single coloured words Disappears when there are multiple coloured words Reduced saliency/ oversignalling

Experiment 2 How Do the Properties of the Text on a Webpage Affect the Importance Rating of the Content? We asked participants to rate each sentence for its importance in the text on a scale of 1(not important) - 5(very important) Two versions of the experiment– one with links and one with the links removed

Experiment 2 Results How does the Presence of Links Affect the Importance of Unlinked Text? Yes, unlinked sentences in a linked context are rated lower The sentences containing links are rated as more important and are therefore, by comparison, taking importance away from the sentences without links

Experiment 2 Results Are Sentences with Links Rated as More Important than Sentences Without Links? Yes, sentences with links are rated higher This effect was more apparent towards the bottom of the page, because having a link present serves as a boost to importance This has less of an impact at the top of the page, where sentences are rated as very important in general

Experiment 2 Results Does Having More Links Increase Importance Rating of the Sentences? Yes, sentences with more links are rated higher Short sentences with more links that were at the top of page were rated higher, but this drops off as the reader moves down the page Long sentences with many links were rated higher, no matter the position of the sentence on the page This suggests that links do make a sentence more important, especially for long sentences

Experiment 3 How does skim reading affect the way we read hypertext? 32 participants - 8 conditions 2 (Task Type) x 2 (Word Type) x 2 (Word Frequency) Word Frequency Why did we use a frequency manipulation? To see if high level information of hyperlinks interacts from lexical processing High Log HAL frequency – 9.91 Low Log HAL frequency – 5.75 Task Type Read normally Word Type Skim read

Experiment 3 Results Unlinked words skipped more when skim reading

Experiment 3 Results Unlinked words when skim reading are not fully processed (lack of frequency effect)

Experiment 3 Results Accuracy was lower when the text was being skim read Marginal effect of Importance, higher accuracy for questions relating to the most important information Task High importance Low importance Reading for comprehension 91% 90% Skim reading 87% 84%

Experiment 4 How Does Clicking and Navigating Hypertext Affect Reading Behaviour and Comprehension and How Does Skim Reading Interact with this? 32 participants - 8 conditions 2 (Task Type) x 2 (Word Type) x 2 (Word Frequency) Word Frequency Why did we use a frequency manipulation? To see if high level information of hyperlinks interacts from lexical processing High Log HAL frequency – 9.91 Low Log HAL frequency – 5.75 Task Type Read normally Word Type Skim read

Experiment 4 Results: Early effects Replicates Experiment 3 Unlinked words are not processed to the same degree when skim reading

Experiment 4 Results: Late effects Replicates Experiment 1B Low frequency, linked words show increased rereading of the previous content

Experiment 4 Results: Comprehension accuracy The main difference between Experiment 3 and 4 is the ability to click links and navigate the environment This resulted in a reduction in comprehension, could be due to: Increased cognitive load A difference in the stimulus set Task Experiment 3 Experiment 4 Reading for comprehension 91% 66% Skim reading 86% 60%

Conclusions This thesis has provided a novel approach to understanding how people read on the Web It has taken the theories from eye movements and reading research and takes a stepwise approach to move from the controlled experiments to a more ecologically valid approach We have created new methodologies and laid the foundations for future research to continue to understand how we read, process and interact with hypertext on the Web Creation of knowledge bases in hypertext environments Differing levels of comprehension – simple vs complex inferences Searching for information in a non-linear space

Thank you for your attention!