EXPRESS: The Effect of Positive Emojis on Reading: An Eye-Movement Study

Emojis are widely used in digital communication to convey emotion, yet their impact on word-level reading in sentence contexts remains unclear. We conducted an eye-tracking experiment examining how positive versus neutral face emojis embedded mid-sentence affect the processing of preceding and following words. Positive rather than neutral emojis yielded parafoveal-on-foveal effects on the n–1 word, evidenced by longer first-fixation, gaze duration, and single-fixation measures. This valence effect persisted after accounting for mislocated fixations, indicating that parafoveal emotional processing modulated foveal reading. However, the n+1 word showed no valence-based differences, suggesting limited priming effects in continuous reading, potentially due to "wrap-up" processes at the emoji. At the sentence level, positive emojis led to faster overall reading times and higher valence ratings, although in a pre-test non-emojified sentences were rated more positively than emojified versions. These findings reinforce parallel eye-movement control models, highlighting how emoji sentiment can shape real-time reading.