AUTHOR=Ferro Marcello , Ognibene Dimitri , Pezzulo Giovanni , Pirrelli Vito TITLE=Reading as active sensing: a computational model of gaze planning during word recognition JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neurorobotics VOLUME=4 YEAR=2010 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurorobotics/articles/10.3389/fnbot.2010.00006 DOI=10.3389/fnbot.2010.00006 ISSN=1662-5218 ABSTRACT=

We offer a computational model of gaze planning during reading that consists of two main components: a lexical representation network, acquiring lexical representations from input texts (a subset of the Italian CHILDES database), and a gaze planner, designed to recognize written words by mapping strings of characters onto lexical representations. The model implements an active sensing strategy that selects which characters of the input string are to be fixated, depending on the predictions dynamically made by the lexical representation network. We analyze the developmental trajectory of the system in performing the word recognition task as a function of both increasing lexical competence, and correspondingly increasing lexical prediction ability. We conclude by discussing how our approach can be scaled up in the context of an active sensing strategy applied to a robotic setting.