Parafovea

Parafovea or the parafoveal belt is a region in the retina that circumscribes the fovea and is part of the macula lutea.

[4] The benefit the parafoveal preview has is also mediated by how common the word in the parafovea is, with less common words providing less of a reduction in fixation duration when they reach foveal fixation.

[5] As the clarity of information in the parafovea is not as great as in the fovea, the SWIFT model of eye movements in reading, while allowing for parallel processing, accounts for this difference by assigning the parafoveal less processing power the further away it is from the foveal fixation.

In categorization tasks of natural scenes information from the parafovea can be used to determine the gist of a scene well enough for a categorization judgement, though with reduced sensitivity and speed in comparison to foveal vision.

[6] An effect of parafoveal preview has also been found for emotional scenes presented in the parafovea, with people more likely shift their fixation point on emotional stimuli than neutral stimuli, when both options are presented parafoveally.