Preview benefit and parafoveal-on-foveal effects from word n + 2.

Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm with the boundary placed after word n, the experiment manipulated preview of word n + 2 for fixations on word n. There was no preview benefit for 1st-pass reading on word n + 2, replicating the results of K. Rayner, B. J. Juhasz, and S. J. Brown (2007), but there was a preview benefit on the 3-letter word n + 1, that is, after the boundary but before word n + 2. Additionally, both word n + 1 and word n + 2 exhibited parafoveal-on-foveal effects on word n. Thus, during a fixation on word n and given a short word n + 1, some information is extracted from word n + 2, supporting the hypothesis of distributed processing in the perceptual span. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parafoveal processing of word n + 2 during reading: Do the preceding words matter?

We used the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to test two hypotheses that might explain why no conclusive evidence has been found for the existence of n + 2 preprocessing effects. In Experiment 1, we tested whether parafoveal processing of the second word to the right of fixation (n + 2) takes place only when the preceding word (n + 1) is very short (Angele, Slattery, Yang, Kliegl, & Rayner, 2008); word n + 1 was always a three-letter word. Before crossing the boundary, preview for both words n + 1 and n + 2 was either incorrect or correct. In a third condition, only the preview for word n + 1 was incorrect. In Experiment 2, we tested whether word frequency of the preboundary word (n) had an influence on the presence of preview benefit and parafoveal-on-foveal effects. Additionally, Experiment 2 contained a condition in which only preview of n + 2 was incorrect. Our findings suggest that effects of parafoveal n + 2 preprocessing are not modulated by either n + 1 word length or n frequency. Furthermore, we did not observe any evidence of parafoveal lexical preprocessing of word n + 2 in either experiment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult age differences in the perceptual span during reading.

Following up on research suggesting an age-related reduction in the rightward extent of the perceptual span during reading (Rayner, Castelhano, & Yang, 2009), we compared old and young adults in an N + 2-boundary paradigm in which a nonword preview of word N + 2 or word N + 2 itself is replaced by the target word once the eyes cross an invisible boundary located after word N. The intermediate word N + 1 was always three letters long. Gaze durations on word N + 2 were significantly shorter for identical than nonword N + 2 preview both for young and for old adults, with no significant difference in this preview benefit. Young adults, however, did modulate their gaze duration on word N more strongly than old adults in response to the difficulty of the parafoveal word N + 1. Taken together, the results suggest a dissociation of preview benefit and parafoveal-on-foveal effect. Results are discussed in terms of age-related decline in resilience towards distributed processing while simultaneously preserving the ability to integrate parafoveal information into foveal processing. As such, the present results relate to proposals of regulatory compensation strategies older adults use to secure an overall reading speed very similar to that of young adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 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)     

The effects of "neighborhood size" in reading and lexical decision.

Assessed the effects of neighborhood size ("N")—the number of words differing from a target word by exactly 1 letter (i.e., "neighbors")—on word identification. In Exps 1 and 2, the frequency of the highest frequency neighbor was equated, and N had opposite effects in lexical decision and reading. In Exp 1, a larger N facilitated lexical decision judgments, whereas in Experiment 2, a larger N had an inhibitory effect on reading sentences that contained the words of Exp 1. Moreover, a significant inhibitory effect in Exp 2 that was due to a larger N appeared on gaze duration on the target word, and there was no hint of facilitation on the measures of reading that tap the earliest processing of a word. In Exp 3, the number of higher frequency neighbors was equated for the high-N and low-N words, and a larger N caused target words to be skipped significantly more and produced inhibitory effects later in reading, some of which were plausibly due to misidentification of the target word when skipped. Regression analyses indicated that, in reading, increasing the number of higher frequency neighbors had a clear inhibitory effect on word identification and that increasing the number of lower frequency neighbors may have a weak facilitative effect on word identification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tracking the mind during reading via eye movements: Comments on Kliegl, Nuthmann, and Engbert (2006).

R. Kliegl, A. Nuthmann, and R. Engbert (see record 2006-01956-002) reported an impressive set of data analyses dealing with the influence of the prior, present, and next word on the duration of the current eye fixation during reading. They argued that outcomes of their regression analyses indicate that lexical processing is distributed across a number of words during reading. The authors of this comment question their conclusions and address 4 different issues: (a) whether there is evidence for distributed lexical processing, (b) whether so-called parafoveal-on-foveal effects are widespread, (c) the role of correlational analyses in reading research, and (d) problems in their analyses because they use only cases in which words are fixated exactly once. (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)     

Evidence for a parallel input serial analysis model of word processing.

A parallel input serial analysis (PISA) model of word processing was developed and tested. The goal was to expand on the "critical processing duration" hypothesis of N. F. Johnson et al (1989) so that both single-word and multiple-word presentation, letter detection data could be explained. In Experiments 1–3 four different word frequency categories on a single-presentation, letter detection task were used. These three experiments indicated that there was a curvilinear relationship between word frequency and letter detection reaction time (RT). That is, letter detection RTs for medium-high-frequency words were significantly longer than letter detection RTs for very-high-, low-, and very-low-frequency words. These results support the PISA model rather than the A. F. Healy et al (see record 1987-23957-001) version of the unitization model. In Experiments 4–5 multiple-presentation (i.e., two words), letter detection tasks were used. The PISA model could also account for the results from these two experiments, but the unitization model could not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do chinese readers obtain preview benefit from word n + 2? Evidence from eye movements.

The boundary paradigm (K. Rayner, 1975) was used to determine the extent to which Chinese readers obtain information from the right of fixation during reading. As characters are the basic visual unit in written Chinese, they were used as targets in Experiment 1 to examine whether readers obtain preview information from character n + 1 and character n + 2. The results from Experiment 1 suggest they do. In Experiment 2, 2-character target words were used to determine whether readers obtain preview information from word n + 2 as well as word n + 1. Robust preview effects were obtained for word n + 1. There was also evidence from gaze duration (but not first fixation duration), suggesting preview effects for word n + 2. Moreover, there was evidence for parafoveal-on-foveal effects in Chinese reading in both experiments. Implications of these results for models of eye movement control are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of generalized and episode specific memories in the word frequency effect in recognition.

Frequency, recency, and type of prior exposure to very low- and high-frequency words were manipulated in a 3-phase (i.e., familiarization training, study, and test) design. Increasing the frequency with which a definition for a very low-frequency word was provided during familiarization facilitated the word's recognition in both yes–no (Experiment 1) and forced-choice paradigms (Experiment 2). Recognition of very low-frequency words not accompanied by a definition during familiarization first increased, then decreased as familiarization frequency increased (Experiment 1). Reasons for these differences were investigated in Experiment 3 using judgments of recency and frequency. Results suggested that prior familiarization of a very low-frequency word with its definition may allow a more adequate episodic representation of the word to be formed during a subsequent study trial. Theoretical implications of these results for current models of memory are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The word grouping hypothesis and eye movements during reading.

The distribution of landing positions and durations of first fixations in a region containing a noun preceded by either an article (e.g., the soldiers) or a high-frequency 3-letter word (e.g., all soldiers) were compared. Although there were fewer first fixations on the blank space between the high-frequency 3-letter word and the noun than on the surrounding letters (and the fixations on the blank space were shorter), this pattern did not occur when the noun was preceded by an article. R. Radach (1996) inferred from a similar experiment that did not manipulate the type of short word that 2 words could be processed as a perceptual unit during reading when the first word is a short word. As this different pattern of fixations is restricted to article-noun pairs, it indicates that word grouping does not occur purely on the basis of word length during reading; moreover, as the authors demonstrate, one can explain the observed patterns in both conditions more parsimoniously without adopting a word-grouping mechanism in eye movement control during reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Search for a singular word or nonword.

Observers looked for an out-of-category item, either a singular word in a list of nonwords (i.e., random collections of letters) or a singular nonword in a list of words. When list items were presented simultaneously (Exp 1), words were detected faster than nonwords, but a singular word in a nonword list was missed more often than a singular nonword in a word list. These results are consistent with the internal-noise principle (INP). According to the INP, legal letter sequences are more likely to be misperceived as illegal than are illegal sequences as legal; thus, there was more rechecking of perceived nonwords than perceived words. With rapid serial visual presentation of list items (Exp 2), the effect of list type vanished. The missing-feature principle, which credits unresolved letters and features to legal letter sequences wherever possible, was as strong and evident as the INP during early processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence for distributivity effects in comprehension.

In the current article, we introduce a new methodology for detecting whether a word in a sentence is conceptually represented as plural and use it to shed light on a debate about whether comprehenders interpret singular indefinite noun phrases within a distributed predicate as plural during online reading. Experiment 1 extended a methodology previously used by Berent, Pinker, Tzelgov, Bibi, and Goldfarb (2005) to test individual words or word pairs by having readers judge, at a critical word, whether 1 or 2 words appeared on a computer screen while performing self-paced reading on a sentence presented in 1- and 2-word chunks. In line with Berent et al., Experiment 1 indicated that participants were slower to judge that 1 word was on the screen when the word was plural (e.g., cats) than when it was singular (e.g., cat). Experiment 2 used this paradigm to show that readers build different conceptual representations for distributed versus collective predicates and interpret a singular indefinite noun phrase within a distributed predicate as plural (e.g., Kaup, Kelter, & Habel, 2002; but cf. Filik, Paterson, & Liversedge, 2004; Paterson, Filik, & Liversedge, 2008). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Limiting lexical activation limits perceptual priming in masked word identification

Four experiments tested the hypothesis that perceptual priming of a word depends on the prior lexical processing of the word (Rajaram & Roediger, 1993; Weldon, 1991). Experiment 1 showed that first-letter naming reduced priming relative to reading a whole word on two tests: word fragment completion and masked word identification. In Experiment 2, naming the first letter of a word took longer than naming the letter presented alone, and led to better masked word identification. Experiment 3 showed that masked word identification was enhanced by prior word processing more for low frequency words than for high frequency words, but only when words had been read aloud. Experiment 4 tested whether the auditory input accruing from reading a word aloud was the source of facilitation and frequency effects. Participants judged either the frequency of the whole display or the positional frequency of the first letter in the display, and indicated their decisions manually. The major findings from Experiment 3 were replicated, ruling out the cross-modal source of those effects. It was concluded that activation of a lexical unit, one component of word processing (Vriezen, Moscovitch, & Bellos, 1995), is a critical determinant of the perceptual priming of that word.     

Differential sensitivity of perceptual identification for words and pseudowords to test expectations: Implications for the locus of word frequency effects.

Four experiments using a study-test paradigm provide evidence of differences in the nature of perceptual enhancement effects for words compared with results for meaningless pseudowords. Ss studied words (Exps 1, 2, and 4) or pseudowords (Exps 3 and 4) presented from 1 to 6 times in a list, then performed perceptual identification tests of studied and nonstudied items. Better identification of studied than of nonstudied items (i.e., a priming effect) was found for words and nonwords, but for words the function relating enhancement to the amount of prior exposure (i.e., a repetition effect) depended on whether Ss expected a later recall test. The results support dual-process accounts of word identification that assume a flexible use of either lexical code activation or episodic trace retrieval. A framework for understanding priming, repetition, and word frequency effects is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition during reading is followed by subvocal articulation.

Three experiments examined whether the identification of a visual word is followed by its subvocal articulation during reading. An irrelevant spoken word (ISW) that was identical, phonologically similar, or dissimilar to a visual target word was presented when the eyes moved to the target in the course of sentence reading. Sentence reading was further accompanied by either a sequential finger tapping task (Experiment 1) or an articulatory suppression task (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 revealed sound-specific interference from a phonologically similar ISW during posttarget viewing. This interference was absent in Experiment 2, where similar and dissimilar ISWs impeded target and posttarget reading equally. Experiment 3 showed that articulatory suppression left the lexical processing of visual words intact and that it did not diminish the influence of visual word recognition on eye guidance. The presence of sound-specific interference during posttarget reading in Experiment 1 is attributed to deleterious effects of a phonologically similar ISW on the subvocal articulation of a target. Its absence in Experiment 2 is attributed to the suppression of a target’s subvocal articulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading speech and hearing print: Constraining models of visual word recognition by exploring connections with speech perception.

Current models of reading and speech perception differ widely in their assumptions regarding the interaction of orthographic and phonological information during language perception. The present experiments examined this interaction through a 2-alternative, forced-choice paradigm, and explored the nature of the connections between graphemic and phonemic processing subsystems. Exps 1 and 2 demonstrated a facilitation-dominant influence (i.e., benefits exceed costs) of graphemic contexts on phoneme discrimination, which is interpreted as a sensitivity effect. Exps 3 and 4 demonstrated a symmetrical influence (i.e., benefits equal costs) of phonemic contexts on grapheme discrimination, which can be interpreted as either a bias effect, or an equally facilitative/inhibitory sensitivity effect. General implications for the functional architecture of language processing models are discussed, as well as specific implications for models of visual word recognition and speech perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Binocular fixation disparity in single word displays.

It has been claimed that the recognition of words displayed in isolation is affected by the precise location at which they are fixated. However, this putative role for fixation location has yet to be reconciled with the finding from reading research that binocular fixations are often misaligned and, therefore, more than 1 location in a word is often fixated simultaneously. The accuracy and alignment of binocular fixations during single word processing have not been assessed previously. To investigate this issue, words were presented for lexical decision at locations around a central fixation point. Eye-tracking data revealed that participants often fixated inaccurately and that fixations were frequently misaligned, but that this did not affect word recognition. The findings show that binocular fixation disparity is pervasive even in single word displays and a potential source of confound for research into effects of fixation location on word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Establishing a time-line of word recognition: evidence from eye movements and event-related potentials

The average duration of eye fixations in reading places constraints on the time for lexical processing. Data from event related potential (ERP) studies of word recognition can illuminate stages of processing within a single fixation on a word. In the present study, high and low frequency regular and exception words were used as targets in an eye movement reading experiment and a high-density electrode ERP lexical decision experiment. Effects of lexicality (words vs pseudowords vs consonant strings), word frequency (high vs low frequency) and word regularity (regular vs exception spelling-sound correspondence) were examined. Results suggest a very early time-course for these aspects of lexical processing within the context of a single eye fixation.     

Syllabic effects in word processing: evidence from the structural induction paradigm

Spoken words have a rich structural organization in memory, consisting of syllabic and subsyllabic representations. A phoneme monitoring paradigm, in which the target phoneme occurs more frequently in one syllabic position than another (e.g., onset of the 2nd syllable vs. the coda of the 1st syllable: neu-tral vs. nut-meg; C. Pallier, N. Sebastian-Galles, T. Felguera, A. Christophe, & J. Mehler, 1993) was used to explore the formation of syllabic structure during word processing. Experiment 2 investigated how a recognition system that uses syllabic structure processes words with unclear syllable boundaries (e.g., pa-lace or pal-ace?). Two methodological issues were explored: The importance of a baseline condition for measuring effects of induction (Experiment 1) and the form of the representation used in the induction paradigm (Experiment 3). Findings suggest that syllabic structure begins to form early in word processing, and they demonstrate the adequacy of the induction procedure for measuring such processes.