Researchers at Aalto University, together with international partners, have developed the most accurate model yet of how humans read. The new model uses reinforcement learning, a type of AI used in robotics, to explain—and recreate—the choices readers make as they move through text.

“For the first time we’ve used AI methods to understand—not just mimic—how people read,” says Professor Antti Oulasvirta from Aalto University. In a study to be published Monday, Aug. 10, in Nature Human Behaviour, researchers say the model could power smarter augmented reality (AR) displays and tailor complex texts to different readers and everyday situations.

Earlier models learned from large data sets pairing text snippets with eye-tracking data, then mimicked human behavior, but they lacked true understanding of the content and didn’t generalize well across languages or contexts, Oulasvirta explains. In contrast, the new model follows the psychological mechanisms readers use to direct attention, revealing how understanding is built as the eyes move through words, sentences and paragraphs.