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ABSTRACT: It is well established that fixation durations during reading vary with processing difficulty, but there are different views on how oculomotor control, visual perception, shifts of attention, and lexical (and higher cognitive) processing are coordinated. Evidence for a one-to-one translation of input delay into saccadic latency would provide a much needed constraint for current theoretical proposals. Here, we tested predictions of such a direct-control perspective using the stimulus-onset delay (SOD) paradigm. Words in sentences were initially masked and, on fixation, were individually unmasked with a delay (0-, 33-, 66-, 99-ms SODs). In Experiment 1, SODs were constant for all words in a sentence; in Experiment 2, SODs were manipulated on target words, while nontargets were unmasked without delay. In accordance with predictions of direct control, nonzero SODs entailed equivalent increases in fixation durations in both experiments. Yet, a population of short fixations pointed to rapid saccades as a consequence of low-level information at nonoptimal viewing positions rather than of lexical processing. Implications of these results for theoretical accounts of oculomotor control are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance 02/2013; · 3.06 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages
Visual Cognition 01/2013; · 2.05 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Two eye movement experiments investigated intra-word spacing (the space between letters within words) and inter-word spacing (the space between words) to explore the influence these variables have on eye movement control during reading. Both variables are important factors in determining the optimal use of space in a line of text, and fonts differ widely in how they employ these spaces. Prior research suggests that the proximity of flanking letters influences the identification of a central letter via lateral inhibition or crowding. If so decrements in intra-word spacing may produce inhibition in word processing. Still other research suggests that increases in intra-word spacing can disrupt the integrity of word units. In English, inter-word spacing has a large influence on word segmentation and is important for saccade target selection. The results indicate interplay between intra and inter word spacing which influence a font’s readability. Additionally, these studies highlight the importance of word segmentation processes and have implications for the nature of lexical processing (serial vs. parallel).
Attention Perception & Psychophysics 01/2013; · 2.04 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: In 2 experiments, we tested the prediction that reading is more efficient when characters belonging to a word are presented simultaneously than when they are not in Chinese reading using a novel variation of the moving window paradigm (McConkie & Rayner, 1975). In Experiment 1, we found that reading was slowed down when Chinese readers could not see characters belonging to a word simultaneously compared to when they could do so. In Experiment 2, when Chinese readers could choose whether the 2 characters in the moving window contained a word or 2 characters that did not constitute a word, they had a clear tendency to look at 2 characters belonging to a word simultaneously. The results of the current study provide strong evidence that character processing is affected by word knowledge and the processing of other characters belonging to the same word in Chinese reading, and add to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that words do have psychological reality for Chinese readers. The results also suggest that the eye movement control strategy of Chinese readers is rather flexible in that it can be adjusted online to modify the characteristics of the window. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition 10/2012; · 2.85 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: In this chapter we provide a discussion of eye movement research investigating aspects of processing during reading. We first provide a general introduction, drawing attention to two different fields of research within the area of eye movements and reading: visual processing during reading and linguistic processing during reading. We then discuss some of the main areas of research within the field of visual processing during reading, followed by a section discussing some of the main areas of linguistic processing during reading. In both sections, we discuss studies that have had a substantial impact within the field along with more recent research examining questions that are currently under investigation. Throughout the chapter we emphasize methodological issues stressing the importance of fully understanding different aspects of the eye movement record in order to provide the most fully specified account of eye movement behavior. We conclude by arguing that researchers working in the area of linguistic processing during reading should be aware of the work conducted in the area of visual processing during reading and vice versa. Finally, we claim that a full understanding of research in each of these areas is necessary if we are ever to develop a formal and comprehensive model of reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
10/2012;
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ABSTRACT: Describes the work in which the authors updated the E-Z reader model (E. D. Reichle et al, 1998) to account for the initial landing positions in words and refixations during reading. Prior simulations by R. G. Reilly and J. K. O'Reagan (1998) suggested that fixation locations are primarily determined by word length information, and that the identification of words plays only a minimal role in deciding where to move the eyes. This claim appears to be problematic for the E-Z reader model in that within the model lexical access is the engine that drives the eyes forward during reading. However, the authors show that a newer version of E-Z reader which still assumes that lexical access is the engine driving eye movements, accurately predicts the locations of fixations and within-word refixations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
10/2012;
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ABSTRACT: Readers continuously receive parafoveal information about the upcoming word in addition to the foveal information about the currently fixated word. Previous research (Inhoff, Radach, Starr, & Greenberg, 2000) showed that the presence of a parafoveal word that was similar to the foveal word facilitated processing of the foveal word. We used the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to manipulate the parafoveal information that subjects received before or while fixating a target word (e.g., news) within a sentence. Specifically, a reader's parafovea could contain a repetition of the target (news), a correct preview of the posttarget word (once), an unrelated word (warm), random letters (cxmr), a nonword neighbor of the target (niws), a semantically related word (tale), or a nonword neighbor of that word (tule). Target fixation times were significantly lower in the parafoveal repetition condition than in all other conditions, suggesting that foveal processing can be facilitated by parafoveal repetition. We present a simple model framework that can account for these effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance 08/2012; · 3.06 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: One of the words that readers of English skip most often is the definite article the. Most accounts of reading assume that in order for a reader to skip a word, it must have received some lexical processing. The definite article is skipped so regularly, however, that the oculomotor system might have learned to skip the letter string t-h-e automatically. We tested whether skipping of articles in English is sensitive to context information or whether it is truly automatic in the sense that any occurrence of the letter string the will trigger a skip. This was done using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to provide readers with false parafoveal previews of the article the. All experimental sentences contained a short target verb, the preview of which could be correct (i.e., identical to the actual subsequent word in the sentence; e.g., ace), a nonword (tda), or an infelicitous article preview (the). Our results indicated that readers tended to skip the infelicitous the previews frequently, suggesting that, in many cases, they seemed to be unable to detect the syntactic anomaly in the preview and based their skipping decision solely on the orthographic properties of the article. However, there was some evidence that readers sometimes detected the anomaly, as they also showed increased skipping of the pretarget word in the the preview condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition 07/2012; · 2.85 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Recent evidence suggests that, compared with hearing people, deaf people have enhanced visual attention to simple stimuli viewed in the parafovea and periphery. Although a large part of reading involves processing the fixated words in foveal vision, readers also utilize information in parafoveal vision to preprocess upcoming words and decide where to look next. In the study reported here, we investigated whether auditory deprivation affects low-level visual processing during reading by comparing the perceptual span of deaf signers who were skilled and less-skilled readers with the perceptual span of skilled hearing readers. Compared with hearing readers, the two groups of deaf readers had a larger perceptual span than would be expected given their reading ability. These results provide the first evidence that deaf readers' enhanced attentional allocation to the parafovea is used during complex cognitive tasks, such as reading.
Psychological Science 06/2012; 23(7):816-23. · 4.43 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Eye movements of Chinese readers were monitored as they read sentences containing a critical character that was either a 1-character word or the initial character of a 2-character word. Due to manipulation of the verb prior to the target word, the 1-character target word (or the first character of the 2-character target word) was either plausible or implausible, as an independent word, at the point at which it appeared, whereas the 2-character word was always plausible. The eye movement data showed that the plausibility manipulation did not exert an influence on the reading of the 2-character word or its component characters. However, plausibility significantly influenced reading of the 1-character target word. These results suggest that processes of semantic integration in reading Chinese are performed at a word level, instead of a character level, and that word segmentation must take place very early in the course of processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition 05/2012; 38(6):1801-9. · 2.85 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Do we access information from any object we can see, or do we access information only from objects that we intend to name? In 3 experiments using a modified multiple object naming paradigm, subjects were required to name several objects in succession when previews appeared briefly and simultaneously in the same location as the target as well as at another location. In Experiment 1, preview benefit-faster processing of the target when the preview was related (a mirror image of the target) compared to unrelated (semantically and phonologically)-was found for the preview in the target location but not a location that was never to be named. In Experiment 2, preview benefit was found if a related preview appeared in either the target location or the third-to-be-named location. Experiment 3 showed the difference between results from the first 2 experiments was not due to the number of objects on the screen. These data suggest that attention serves to gate visual input about objects based on the intention to name them and that information from one intended-to-be-named object can facilitate processing of an object in another location. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition 05/2012; · 2.85 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Although most studies of reading English (and other alphabetic languages) have indicated that readers do not obtain preview benefit from word n + 2, Yang, Wang, Xu, and Rayner (2009) reported evidence that Chinese readers obtain preview benefit from word n + 2. However, this effect may not be common in Chinese because the character prior to the target word in Yang et al.'s experiment was always a very high frequency function word. In the current experiment, we utilized a relatively low frequency word n + 1 to examine whether an n + 2 preview benefit effect would still exist and failed to find any preview benefit from word n + 2. These results are consistent with a recent study which indicated that foveal load modulates the perceptual span during Chinese reading (Yan, Kliegl, Shu, Pan, & Zhou, 2010). Implications of these results for models of eye movement control are discussed.
Reading and Writing 05/2012; 25(5):1079-1091. · 1.44 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) was used to examine whether high level information affects preview benefit during Chinese reading. In two experiments, readers read sentences with a 1-character target word while their eye movements were monitored. In Experiment 1, the semantic relatedness between the target word and the preview word was manipulated so that there were semantically related and unrelated preview words, both of which were not plausible in the sentence context. No significant differences between these two preview conditions were found, indicating no effect of semantic preview. In Experiment 2, we further examined semantic preview effects with plausible preview words. There were four types of previews: identical, related & plausible, unrelated & plausible, and unrelated & implausible. The results revealed a significant effect of plausibility as single fixation and gaze duration on the target region were shorter in the two plausible conditions than in the implausible condition. Moreover, there was some evidence for a semantic preview benefit as single fixation duration on the target region was shorter in the related & plausible condition than the unrelated & plausible condition. Implications of these results for processing of high level information during Chinese reading are discussed.
Reading and Writing 05/2012; 25(5):1031-1052. · 1.44 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: We explored the effect of stroke removal from Chinese characters on eye movements during reading to examine the role of stroke
encoding in character identification. Experimental sentences were comprised of characters with different proportions of strokes
removed (15, 30, and 50%), and different types of strokes removed (beginning, ending, and strokes that ensured the configuration
of the character was retained). Reading times, number of fixations and regression measures all showed that Chinese characters
with 15% of strokes removed were as easy to read as Chinese characters without any strokes removed. However, when 30%, or
more of a character’s strokes were removed, reading characters with their configuration retained was easiest, characters with
ending strokes removed were more difficult, whilst characters with beginning strokes removed were most difficult to read.
The results strongly suggest that not all strokes within a character have equal status during character identification, and
a flexible stroke encoding system must underlie successful character identification during Chinese reading.
KeywordsStroke removal–Chinese character identification–Eye movements
Reading and Writing 04/2012; 25(5):951-979. · 1.44 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The effect of spacing in relation to word segmentation was examined for four groups of non-native Chinese speakers (American, Korean, Japanese, and Thai) who were learning Chinese as second language. Chinese sentences with four types of spacing information were used: unspaced text, word-spaced text, character-spaced text, and nonword-spaced text. Also, participants' native languages were different in terms of their basic characteristics: English and Korean are spaced, whereas the other two are unspaced; Japanese is character based whereas the other three are alphabetic. Thus, we assessed whether any spacing effects were modulated by native language characteristics. Eye movement measures showed least disruption to reading for word-spaced text and longer reading times for unspaced than character-spaced text, with nonword-spaced text yielding the most disruption. These effects were uninfluenced by native language (though reading times differed between groups as a result of Chinese reading experience). Demarcation of word boundaries through spacing reduces non-native readers' uncertainty about the characters that constitute a word, thereby speeding lexical identification, and in turn, reading. More generally, the results indicate that words have psychological reality for those who are learning to read Chinese as a second language, and that segmentation of text into words is more beneficial to successful comprehension than is separating individual Chinese characters with spaces.
Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied 04/2012; 18(2):192-202. · 1.75 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The question of whether meaning can be extracted from unidentified parafoveal words was examined using fluent Spanish-English
bilinguals. In Experiment 1, subjects fixated on a central cross, and a preview word was presented to the right of fixation
in parafoveal vision. During the saccade to the parafoveal preview word, the preview was replaced by the target word, which
the subject was required to name. In Experiment 2, subjects read sentences containing the target word, and, as in the naming
task, a preview word was replaced by the target word when the subject’s saccade crossed a boundary location. In both experiments,
preview words were identical to the target word, translations, orthographic controls for the translations, or unrelated words
in the opposite language. In both experiments, the preview benefit from the translation conditions was no greater than would
be predicted by the orthographic similarity of the preview to the target. Hence, the data indicated that subjects obtained
no useful semantic information from words seen parafoveally that enabled them to identify them more quickly on the subsequent
fixation.
Attention Perception & Psychophysics 04/2012; 63(5):875-890. · 2.04 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Previous research has examined parafoveal processing during silent reading, but little is known about the role of these processes in oral reading. Given that masking parafoveal information slows down silent reading, we asked whether a similar effect also occurs in oral reading. To investigate the role of parafoveal processing in silent and oral reading, we manipulated the parafoveal information available to readers by changing the size of a gaze-contingent moving window. Participants read silently and orally in a one-word window and a three-word window condition as we monitored their eye movements. The lack of parafoveal information slowed reading speed in both oral and silent reading. However, the effects of parafoveal information were larger in silent reading than in oral reading, because of different effects of preview information on both when the eyes move and how often. Parafoveal information benefitted silent reading for faster readers more than for slower readers.
Attention Perception & Psychophysics 02/2012; 74(4):634-40. · 2.04 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Recently, there has been considerable debate about whether readers can identify multiple words in parallel or whether they are limited to a serial mode of word identification, processing one word at a time (see, e.g., Reichle, Liversedge, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 2009). Similar questions can be applied to bimorphemic compound words: Do readers identify all the constituents of a compound word in parallel, and does it matter which of the morphemes is identified first? We asked subjects to read compound words embedded in sentences while monitoring their eye movements. Using the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975), we manipulated the preview that subjects received of the compound word before they fixated it. In particular, the morpheme order of the preview was either normal (cowboy) or reversed (boycow). Additionally, we manipulated the preview availability for each of the morphemes separately. Preview was thus available for the first morpheme only (cowtxg), for the second morpheme only (enzboy), or for neither of the morphemes (enztxg). We report three major findings: First, there was an effect of morpheme order on gaze durations measured on the compound word, indicating that, as expected, readers obtained a greater preview benefit when the preview presented the morphemes in the correct order than when their order was reversed. Second, gaze durations on the compound word were influenced not only by preview availability for the first, but also by that for the second morpheme. Finally, and most importantly, the results show that readers are able to extract some morpheme information even from a reverse order preview. In summary, readers obtain preview benefit from both constituents of a short compound word, even when the preview does not reflect the correct morpheme order.
Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) 01/2012; · 1.96 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: In this article, we extend our previous work (Reichle, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 2012) using the principles of the E-Z Reader model to examine the factors that determine when and where the eyes move in both reading and non-reading tasks, and in particular the role that word/stimulus familiarity plays in determining when the eyes move from one word/stimulus to the next. In doing this, we first provide a brief overview of E-Z Reader, including its assumption that word familiarity is the "engine" driving eye movements during reading. We then review the theoretical considerations that motivated this assumption, as well as recent empirical evidence supporting its validity. We also report the results of three new simulations that were intended to demonstrate the utility of the familiarity check in three tasks: (1) reading; (2) searching for a target word in embedded in text; and (3) searching for the letter O in linear arrays of Landolt Cs. The results of these simulations suggest that the familiarity check always improves task efficiency by speeding its rate of performance. We provide several arguments as to why this conclusion is not likely to be true for the two non-reading tasks, and in the final section of the paper, we provide a fourth simulation to test the hypothesis that problems associated with the mis-identification of words may also curtail the too liberal use of word familiarity.
Visual Cognition 01/2012; 20(4-5):360-390. · 2.05 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: When making a decision, people spend longer looking at the option they ultimately choose compared other options-termed the gaze bias effect-even during their first encounter with the options (Glaholt & Reingold, 2009a, 2009b; Schotter, Berry, McKenzie & Rayner, 2010). Schotter et al. (2010) suggested that this is because people selectively encode decision-relevant information about the options, on-line during the first encounter with them. To extend their findings and test this claim, we recorded subjects' eye movements as they made judgments about pairs of images (i.e., which one was taken more recently or which one was taken longer ago). We manipulated whether both images were presented in the same color content (e.g., both in color or both in black-and-white) or whether they differed in color content and the extent to which color content was a reliable cue to relative recentness of the images. We found that the magnitude of the gaze bias effect decreased when the color content cue was not reliable during the first encounter with the images, but no modulation of the gaze bias effect in remaining time on the trial. These data suggest people do selectively encode decision-relevant information on-line.
Visual Cognition 01/2012; 20(9):1110-1129. · 2.05 Impact Factor
