Paragraph-based Faded Text Facilitates Reading Comprehension

We propose a new text layout that facilitates reading comprehension. By sequentially fading out characters sentence-by-sentence from the beginning of each paragraph, we highlight the paragraph structure of the entire text and the relative positions of the sentences. To evaluate the effectiveness of the paragraph-based faded text in a reading comprehension, we measure the comprehension, eye movements, and recognition for both the proposed method and a conventional standard method. In the proposed method, rates of correct answers to text comprehension questions are improved. Moreover, the proposed method leads to slower reading speeds and better recognition rates for the first sentences of paragraphs, which are displayed in a relatively thicker mode. With the paragraph-based faded text, the reader is naturally facilitated to pay attention to the first sentence of each paragraph, suggesting that this reading style could result in a more accurate text comprehension.