Eye movement during skill acquisition: More evidence for the information-reduction hypothesis.

Two experiments tested H. Haider and P. A. Frensch's (1996) information-reduction hypothesis that people learn, with practice, to distinguish between task-relevant and task-redundant information and to limit their processing to task-relevant information. Participants verified alphabetic strings (e.g., E 4 J K L) containing task-relevant and task-redundant information. In Experiment 1, the positioning of task-relevant information within the strings and the consistency of positioning were manipulated. Degree of information reduction as reflected in reduced reaction times was not affected by the positioning of the relevant information and was only slightly affected by consistency of the positioning. In Experiment 2, eye movements were recorded. Results suggest that task-redundant information is ignored at a perceptual rather than a conceptual level of processing. Thus, existing theories of skill acquisition should include mechanisms that capture the practice-related increase in the selective use of information.