A study investigated the process of information extraction in reading in order to determine whether language constraints in texts reduced the amount of visual detail noticed by the reader during the reading of specific words. A detailed examination was made of 20 college students' eye movement patterns as they read a group of selected passages. The passages contained manipulations of word variables that involved interword redundancy and distorted spelling patterns. The results supported the claim that language constraint does affect the manner in which information in text is processed during reading and suggested that certain aspects of visual detail have a high degree of cognitive prominence. In essence, readers noticed specific letter information within a text segment being fixated, even in those instances when such detail was not needed for the identification of a specific word. (FL)