Keeping an Eye on Effort: Effort and Effortlessness in Visual Word Recognition through the Lens of Pupillometry and Eye Movements.

The notion of mental effort and effortlessness has been ubiquitous in the psychological literature on skill learning for over a century, yet remains poorly operationalized. Using pupillometry and eye movement recordings, we directly examine the cognitive effort involved in word reading among adults, children, skilled and unskilled (dyslexic) readers.