Integrating information across fixations during reading: The use of orthographic bodies and of exterior letters.

Eye movements were recorded to determine whether the parafoveally visible orthographic body of a bisyllabic target word facilitated recognition during the next target fixation. Eye-movement-contingent display changes revealed part of the target, including its orthographic body, or its beginning letters, when it was parafoveally available, but the full target was visible after it was fixated. Target viewing durations showed no benefit from parafoveal preview of orthographic bodies. Instead, preview benefits derived primarily from the preview of word-initial letters. Examination of oculomotor activity revealed that single target fixations were common when the pretarget word received more than one fixation; conversely, more than one target fixation was common when the pretarget word had received a single fixation. Interword fixation strategies thus affected target viewing, but use of parafoveal target previews was unaffected by these strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The frequency-predictability interaction in reading: It depends where you're coming from.

A word's frequency of occurrence and its predictability from a prior context are key factors determining how long the eyes remain on that word in normal reading. Past reaction-time and eye movement research can be distinguished by whether these variables, when combined, produce interactive or additive results, respectively. Our study addressed possible methodological limitations of prior experiments. Initial results showed additive effects of frequency and predictability. However, we additionally examined launch site (the distance from the pretarget fixation to the target) to index the extent of parafoveal target processing. Analyses revealed both additive and interactive effects on target fixations, with the nature of the interaction depending on the quality of the parafoveal preview. Target landing position and pretarget fixation time were also considered. Results were interpreted in terms of models of language processing and eye movement control. Our findings with respect to parafoveal preview and fixation time constraints aim to help parameterize eye movement behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movement control during reading: Fixation measures reflect foveal but not parafoveal processing difficulty.

Explored whether, during natural reading, the difficulty of the upcoming parafoveal word affects eye movement behavior on the currently fixated word. A model in which visual attention is allocated in parallel over both the fixated and the upcoming parafoveal word predicts such an effect, while a sequential attention allocation model, in which attention is directed first to the fixated word and then to the upcoming parafoveal word, does not. An experiment was conducted with 24 college students in which 2 manipulations of parafoveal difficulty were made. Data show that neither the frequency nor the combined length, frequency, and class of the upcoming word affected eye movement behavior on the current word. Findings support the model of eye movement control in reading. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Determinants of parafoveal preview benefit in high and low working memory capacity readers: Implications for eye movement control.

The experiment in this article extended studies by A. W. Inhoff and K. Rayner (see record 1988-06513-001) and J. M. Henderson and F. Ferreira (see record 1990-18858-001) to determine how the printed frequency of two adjacent words influenced the benefit of having parafoveal preview of the 2nd word. High- and low-span participants (assessed by M. Daneman and P. A. Carpenter's, [see PA, Vol 66:2775] Reading Span Test) were tested to determine whether working memory capacity influenced parafoveal preview benefit. Parafoveal preview benefit was determined by an interaction of both words' frequencies in first fixation and by the 2nd word's frequency in gaze duration. However, readers were generally fixated closer to the beginning of the 2nd word when the 1st word was low frequency. When the viewing distance confound was minimized, the prior word's frequency did affect parafoveal preview benefit. Parafoveal preview benefit did not vary between reading groups. Group distributions of fixation duration provided no evidence for J. M. Henderson and F. Ferreira's fixation cutoff model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exterior letters are not privileged in the early stage of visual word recognition during reading: Comment on Jordan, Thomas, Patching and Scott-Brown (2003).

Potential sources for the discrepancy between the letter position effects in T. R. Jordan, S. M. Thomas, G. R. Patching, and K. C. Scott-Brown's (2003; see record 2003-07955-013) and D. Briihl and A. W. Inhoff s (1995; see record 1995-20036-001) studies are examined. The authors conclude that the lack of control over where useful information is acquired during reading in Jordan et al.'s study, rather than differences in the orthographic consistency and the availability of word shape information, account for the discrepant effect pattern in the 2 studies. The processing of a word during reading begins before it is fixated, when beginning letters occupy a particularly favorable parafoveal location that is independent of word length. Knowledge of parafoveal word length cannot be used to selectively process exterior letters during the initial phase of visual word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movement control in reading: Evidence against semantic preprocessing.

Prior experiments reported by G. Underwood and his colleagues have suggested that information about the informative parts of parafoveal words that have not yet been fixated can influence where readers fixate next. The basic finding that they have reported is that the eyes move farther into a word when the information that uniquely identifies the word is at the end of the word rather than at the beginning of the word. On the basis of such results, it has been suggested that semantic processing influences eye movement behavior in reading. Some theoretical and methodological problems are raised with the prior experiments, and an attempt to replicate the finding is reported. With a highly accurate eyetracking system, the basic finding could not be replicated. An alternative account of eye movement control in reading is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The use of information below fixation in reading and in visual search.

Two experiments examined whether or not readers obtain useful information from below the currently fixated line. In Exp 1, 15 adults read passages of text, and the availability of visual information below the line fixated was manipulated using a variant of the moving window technique. Reading was no slower when there was no letter information below the fixated line than when there was full information below the fixated line. However, a condition that made the strings of letters below the fixated line less wordlike caused reading to be slowed down by about 6%. In Exp 2, 15 adults searched for a target word through passages of text. There was no clear evidence that the availability of information below the line made search more efficient. It appears that in reading, little visual information is extracted below the line of text fixated. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do readers obtain preview benefit from word n + 2? A test of serial attention shift versus distributed lexical processing models of eye movement control in reading.

Two experiments tested predictions derived from serial lexical processing and parallel distributed models of eye movement control in reading. The boundary paradigm (K. Rayner, 1975) was used, and the boundary location was set either at the end of word n - 1 (the word just to the left of the target word) or at the end of word n - 2. Serial lexical processing models predict that there should be preview benefit only when the boundary is set at word n - 1 (when the target word will be the next word fixated) and no preview benefit when the boundary is set at word n - 2. Parallel lexical models, on the other hand, predict that there should be some preview benefit in both situations. Consistent with the predictions of the serial lexical processing models, there was no preview benefit for a target word when the boundary was set at the end of word n - 2. Furthermore, there was no evidence of parafoveal-on-foveal effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movement control during reading: Effects of word frequency and orthographic familiarity.

Word frequency and orthographic familiarity were independently manipulated as readers' eye movements were recorded. Word frequency influenced fixation durations and the probability of word skipping when orthographic familiarity was controlled. These results indicate that lexical processing of words can influence saccade programming (as shown by fixation durations and which words are fixated). Orthographic familiarity, but not word frequency, influenced the duration of prior fixations. These results provide evidence for orthographic, but not lexical, parafoveal-on-foveal effects. Overall, the findings have a crucial implication for models of eye movement control in reading: There must be sufficient time for lexical factors to influence saccade programming before saccade metrics and timing are finalized. The conclusions are critical for the fundamental architecture of models of eye movement control in reading- namely, how to reconcile long saccade programming times and complex linguistic influences on saccades during reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements and the use of parafoveal word length information in reading.

Eye movements were monitored in 4 experiments that explored the role of parafoveal word length in reading. The experiments employed a type of compound word where the deletion of a letter results in 2 short words (e.g., backhand, back and). The boundary technique (K. Rayner, 1975) was employed to manipulate word length information in the parafovea. Accuracy of the parafoveal word length preview significantly affected landing positions and fixation durations. This disruption was larger for 2-word targets, but the results demonstrated that this interaction was not due to the morphological status of the target words. Manipulation of sentence context also demonstrated that parafoveal word length information can be used in combination with sentence context to narrow down lexical candidates. The 4 experiments converge in demonstrating that an important role of parafoveal word length information is to direct the eyes to the center of the parafoveal word. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Against parafoveal semantic preprocessing during eye fixations in reading.

Investigated 2 reading models, focused attention and semantic preprocessing, in which nonfoveal information plays an important role. A reading experiment was conducted with 24 normally seeing members of a university community. Ss' eye movements were recorded as they read sentences, and a display change occurred before they fixated on a critical target word. In the target word location, 1 of 4 alternative previews was initially presented: the target word itself, a word semantically related to it, an unrelated word, and a nonword visually similar to the target. The various visual processes occurring during the experiment and the retinal regions involved are discussed. Results are inconsistent with the semantic preprocessing but consistent with the focused-attention model of reading. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parafoveal processing of words and saccade computation during eye fixations in reading.

Studied parafoveal word processing during eye fixations in reading to answer two questions: (a) Is the processing of parafoveally available words limited to the identification of beginning letters? (b) Does the parafoveal processing of words affect the following interword saccade? Reading afforded either no parafoveal preview, preview of beginning trigrams, preview of ending trigrams, or preview of the whole parafoveal word. Previews were controlled by replacing original letters either with X's or dissimilar letters. Preview benefits were larger for the whole word previews than for beginning or ending trigram previews. X-masks yielded preview benefits from intact beginning and ending trigrams but dissimilar letter masks yielded benefits from beginning trigrams only. Saccades were larger for whole word previews than for no previews. These results support Logogen-type models of word recognition and a model of saccade computation that posits a time-locked functional relation between the acquisition of parafoveal word information and the positioning of each fixation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transposed-letter effects in reading: Evidence from eye movements and parafoveal preview.

Three eye movement experiments were conducted to examine the role of letter identity and letter position during reading. Before fixating on a target word within each sentence, readers were provided with a parafoveal preview that differed in the amount of useful letter identity and letter position information it provided. In Experiments 1 and 2, previews fell into 1 of 5 conditions: (a) identical to the target word, (b) a transposition of 2 internal letters, (c) a substitution of 2 internal letters, (d) a transposition of the 2 final letters, or (e) a substitution of the 2 final letters. In Experiment 3, the authors used a further set of conditions to explore the importance of external letter positions. The findings extend previous work and demonstrate that transposed-letter effects exist in silent reading. These experiments also indicate that letter identity information can be extracted from the parafovea outside of absolute letter position from the first 5 letters of the word to the right of fixation. Finally, the results support the notion that exterior letters play important roles in visual word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parafoveal load of word N+1 modulates preprocessing effectiveness of word N+2 in Chinese reading.

Preview benefits (PBs) from two words to the right of the fixated one (i.e., word N + 2) and associated parafoveal-on-foveal effects are critical for proposals of distributed lexical processing during reading. This experiment examined parafoveal processing during reading of Chinese sentences, using a boundary manipulation of N + 2-word preview with low- and high-frequency words N + 1. The main findings were (a) an identity PB for word N + 2 that was (b) primarily observed when word N + 1 was of high frequency (i.e., an interaction between frequency of word N + 1 and PB for word N + 2), and (c) a parafoveal-on-foveal frequency effect of word N + 1 for fixation durations on word N. We discuss implications for theories of serial attention shifts and parallel distributed processing of words during reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye-hand span and coding of text during copytyping.

Examined concurrent oculomotor and manual activities during copytyping to determine whether (1) typists keep the eyes 1-sec ahead of the executed keypress, (2) control of eye–hand (E–H) coordination follows the lexical representation of to-be-typed text, and (3) typists seek visual information beyond the boundaries of the fixated word. To-be-typed text contained high- and low-frequency target words that were either short or long. Two viewing conditions were used revealing either the directly fixated word only or the fixated word plus the next word in the text. The results showed no support for the 1-sec E–H lag hypothesis. The E–H span was also not affected by the visibility of text but was a function of word frequency, suggesting that E–H coordination follows the lexical representation of text. Effects of window size indicated that typists seek visual information beyond the boundaries of the fixated word. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Extraction of information to the left of the fixated word in reading.

The present experiment used 2 different eye-contingent display change techniques to determine whether information is extracted from English text even when it is to the left of the currently fixated word. Preview display changes were during the 1st saccade entering the target word region, whereas postview display changes were during the 1st saccade leaving that region. Previews and postviews were either identical, related, or unrelated to the target word. "Wrong" information in the target-word region affected reading even when that information was seen only after readers were fixating to the right of that region: When readers skipped the target word, such information caused readers to regress to the target word more; when readers initially fixated the target word, such information increased "2nd-pass" processing time on the target region. The data suggest that readers often still attend to a word after it is skipped and that when readers fixate a word, they occasionally attend to the word after they have begun to fixate the next word. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical access during eye fixations in reading: Effects of word-initial letter sequence.

Tested the constraint hypothesis, which states that lexical access in reading is initiated on the basis of word-initial letter information obtainable in the parafoveal region, in 2 experiments. Ss were 36 college students with normal vision. Eye movements were monitored while Ss read sentences containing target words whose initial trigram (Exp I) or bigram (Exp II) imposed either a high or a low degree of constraint in the lexicon. In contradiction to the hypothesis, high-constraint words (e.g., dwarf) received longer fixations than did low-constraint words (e.g., clown), despite the fact that high-constraint words have an initial letter sequence shared by few other words in the lexicon. A comparison of fixation times in viewing conditions with and without parafoveal letter information showed that the amount of decrease in target fixation time due to prior parafoveal availability was the same for high- and low-constraint targets. It is concluded that increased familiarity of word-initial letter sequence is beneficial to lexical access and that familiarity affects the efficiency of foveal but not parafoveal processing. A list of the sentences used in the 2 experiments is appended. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological codes are used in integrating information across saccades in word identification and reading.

A major issue in reading is the extent to which phonological information is used in visual word perception. The present experiments demonstrated that phonological information acquired on 1 fixation from a word in the parafovea is used to help identify that word when it is later fixated. A homophone of a target word, when presented as a preview in the parafovea, facilitated processing in the target word seen on the next fixation more than a preview of a word matched with the homophone in visual similarity to the target word. This facilitation was observed both in the time to name an isolated target word and in the fixation time on the target word while silently reading a sentence; the preview was virtually never consciously identified in either task. Because the visual similarity of the preview to the target also plays a part in the facilitative effect on the preview, however, codes other than phonological codes are preserved across saccades. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Vowel processing during silent reading: Evidence from eye movements.

Two eye movement experiments examined whether skilled readers include vowels in the early phonological representations used in word recognition during silent reading. Target words were presented in sentences preceded by parafoveal previews in which the vowel phoneme was concordant or discordant with the vowel phoneme in the target word. In Experiment 1, the orthographic vowel differed from the target in both the concordant and discordant preview conditions. In Experiment 2, the vowel letters in the preview were identical to those in the target word. The phonological vowel was ambiguous, however, and the final consonants of the previews biased the vowel phoneme either toward or away from the target's vowel phoneme. In both experiments, shorter reading times were observed for targets preceded by concordant previews than by discordant previews. Implications for models of word recognition are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)