Reading is a pervasive and cognitively demanding activity that underpins modern human culture. It is a prime instance of a class of tasks where eye movements are coordinated for the purpose of comprehension. Existing theories explain either eye movements or comprehension during reading, but the critical link between the two remains unclear. Here, we propose resource-rational optimization as a unifying principle governing adaptive reading behavior. Eye movements are selected to maximize expected comprehension while minimizing cognitive and temporal costs, organized hierarchically across nested time scales: fixation decisions support word recognition; sentence-level integration guides skipping and regression; and text-level comprehension goals shape memory construction and rereading. A computational implementation successfully replicates an unprecedented range of findings in human reading, from lexical effects to comprehension outcomes. Together, these results suggest that resource rationality provides a general mechanism for coordinating perception, memory, and action in knowledge-intensive human behaviors, offering a principled account of how complex cognitive skills adapt to limited resources.

翻译：阅读是一种普遍存在且认知需求较高的活动，构成了现代人类文化的基础。它是一类任务的典型实例，其中眼动被协调以实现理解目的。现有理论要么解释阅读过程中的眼动，要么解释理解过程，但两者之间的关键联系仍不明确。在此，我们提出资源理性优化作为支配适应性阅读行为的统一原则。眼动的选择旨在最大化预期理解效果，同时最小化认知与时间成本，并在嵌套的时间尺度上分层组织：注视决策支持词汇识别；句子层面的整合指导跳读与回视；而文本层面的理解目标则塑造记忆构建与重读行为。一项计算实现成功复现了人类阅读中前所未有的广泛发现，从词汇效应到理解结果。这些结果共同表明，资源理性为知识密集型人类行为中感知、记忆与行动的协调提供了通用机制，为复杂认知技能如何适应有限资源提供了原则性解释。