Morphological Complexity and Word Frequency Effects on Saccadic Control in English Reading

Recent research on eye movements has largely converged on the view that eye guidance during reading is primarily driven by low-level visual features. However, this perspective has been increasingly challenged by findings from agglutinative languages such as Uighur, Finnish, and Mongolian, where high-level linguistic factors—including morphological complexity and word frequency—have been shown to influence fixation location. The present study aimed to test the generalizability of these effects by examining their impact in English. Rather than using suffixed words, we focused on a different morphological structure: compound words. Consistent with previous research, we found that word frequency significantly affected first-fixation location. However, no significant effect of morphological complexity was observed. We discuss implications for theoretical accounts of saccade generation during reading.