Reading time and eye movement methods to study the processing of social information

In this article, the advantages of reading time methods to investigate the processing of social information are presented. First the theoretical and the methodological basis of reading time measures is discussed. Subsequently, the application of two different reading time methods is illustrated in two experiments. The experiments investigated the differences in the processing of person information that was presented either with or without conjunctions. Reading times which were analyzed as on-line measures showed that the first integration process while reading person information was strongly facilitated due to the introduction of conjunctions where the integration of the information immediately following the conjunction in a sentence was affected. Finally, the use of reading time methods is discussed in terms of further research in other areas of social cognition.