Eye Movement Differences in Japanese Text Reading between Cognitively Healthy Older and Younger Adults

We analyzed the eye movements of cognitively healthy older adults while reading Japanese text and compared them with those of younger adults. We found that it is essential to match the reading speeds of older and younger adults to accurately compare eye movement parameters during their reading. Cognitively healthy older adults had longer fixation durations, fewer fixations, and fewer extra fixations than younger adults. Meanwhile, cognitively healthy older adults had a length of forward saccades comparable to that of younger adults. These results suggest that the reduced efficiency due to a longer fixation duration is compensated for by fewer fixations in cognitively healthy older adults who read at the same speed as younger adults.