Bilingual lexical access in context: Evidence from eye movements during reading.

Current models of bilingualism (e.g., BIA+) posit that lexical access during reading is not language selective. However, much of this research is based on the comprehension of words in isolation. The authors investigated whether nonselective access occurs for words embedded in biased sentence contexts (e.g., A. I. Schwartz & J. F. Kroll, 2006). Eye movements were recorded as French–English bilinguals read English sentences containing cognates (e.g., piano), interlingual homographs (e.g., coin, meaning corner in French), or matched control words. Sentences provided a low or high semantic constraint for target-language meanings. Both early-stage comprehension measures (e.g., first fixation duration, gaze duration, and skipping) and late-stage comprehension measures (e.g., go-past time and total reading time) showed significant cognate facilitation and interlingual homograph interference for low-constraint sentences. For high-constraint sentences, however, only early-stage comprehension measures were consistent with nonselective access. There was no evidence of cognate facilitation or interlingual homograph interference for late-stage comprehension measures. Thus, nonselective bilingual lexical access at early stages of comprehension is rapidly resolved in semantically biased contexts at later stages of comprehension. (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)     

The time course of plausibility effects on eye movements in reading: Evidence from noun-noun compounds.

Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences containing noun-noun compounds that varied in frequency (e.g., elevator mechanic, mountain lion). The left constituent of the compound was either plausible or implausible as a head noun at the point at which it appeared, whereas the compound as a whole was always plausible. When the head noun analysis of the left constituent was implausible, reading times on this word were inflated, beginning with the first fixation. This finding is consistent with previous demonstrations of very rapid effects of plausibility on eye movements. Compound frequency did not modulate the plausibility effect, and all disruption was resolved by the time readers' eyes moved to the next word. These findings suggest (contra Kennison, 2005) that the parser initially analyzes a singular noun as a head instead of a modifier. In addition, the findings confirm that the very rapid effect of plausibility on eye movements is not due to strategic factors, because in the present experiment, unlike in previous demonstrations, this effect appeared in sentences that were globally plausible. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading spaced and unspaced Chinese text: Evidence from eye movements.

Native Chinese readers' eye movements were monitored as they read text that did or did not demark word boundary information. In Experiment 1, sentences had 4 types of spacing: normal unspaced text, text with spaces between words, text with spaces between characters that yielded nonwords, and finally text with spaces between every character. The authors investigated whether the introduction of spaces into unspaced Chinese text facilitates reading and whether the word or, alternatively, the character is a unit of information that is of primary importance in Chinese reading. Global and local measures indicated that sentences with unfamiliar word spaced format were as easy to read as visually familiar unspaced text. Nonword spacing and a space between every character produced longer reading times. In Experiment 2, highlighting was used to create analogous conditions: normal Chinese text, highlighting that marked words, highlighting that yielded nonwords, and highlighting that marked each character. The data from both experiments clearly indicated that words, and not individual characters, are the unit of primary importance in Chinese reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word misperception, the neighbor frequency effect, and the role of sentence context: Evidence from eye movements.

An eye movement experiment was conducted to investigate whether the processing of a word can be affected by its higher frequency neighbor (HFN). Target words with an HFN (birch) or without one (spruce) were embedded into 2 types of sentence frames: 1 in which the HFN (birth) could fit given the prior sentence context, and 1 in which it could not. The results suggest that words can be misperceived as their HFN, and that top-down information from sentence context strongly modulates this effect. Implications for models of word recognition and eye movements during reading are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inferred goals in narratives: Evidence from self-paced reading, recall, and eye movements.

Three convergent methodologies were used to investigate the generation and reinstatement of goals not explicitly stated in a text. Readers read paragraphs adapted from J. S. Huitema, S. Dopkins, C. M. Klin, and J. L. Myers's (1993) study, which conveyed a character's goal early in the text. The goal was either stated explicitly or implied. An event was described later in the text that was either consistent or inconsistent with the goal. Line-by-line reading data, recall for the narratives, and eye-movement data were collected. Evidence is presented that readers infer a character's goal online at the time the information is presented, and the inferred goal functions like an explicitly stated goal in online comprehension processes and in the resulting memory representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word recognition and syntactic attachment in reading: Evidence for a staged architecture.

In 3 experiments, the author examined how readers' eye movements are influenced by joint manipulations of a word's frequency and the syntactic fit of the word in its context. In the critical conditions of the first 2 experiments, a high- or low-frequency verb was used to disambiguate a garden-path sentence, while in the last experiment, a high- or low-frequency verb constituted a phrase structure violation. The frequency manipulation always influenced the early eye movement measures of first-fixation duration and gaze duration. The context manipulation had a delayed effect in Experiment 1, influencing only the probability of a regressive eye movement from later in the sentence. However, the context manipulation influenced the same early eye movement measures as the frequency effect in Experiments 2 and 3, though there was no statistical interaction between the effects of these variables. The context manipulation also influenced the probability of a regressive eye movement from the verb, though the frequency manipulation did not. These results are shown to confirm predictions emerging from the serial, staged architecture for lexical and integrative processing of the E–Z Reader 10 model of eye movement control in reading (Reichle, Warren, & McConnell, 2009). It is argued, more generally, that the results provide an important constraint on how the relationship between visual word recognition and syntactic attachment is treated in processing models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 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)     

Spider fearful individuals attend to threat, then quickly avoid it: Evidence from eye movements.

According to cognitive models of anxiety, anxiety patients exhibit an early reflexive attentional bias toward threat stimuli, which may be followed by intentional avoidance of these stimuli. To determine the time course of attentional vigilance and avoidance, the authors conducted an eye-tracking study in which 22 highly spider fearful participants (SFs) and 23 nonanxious control participants (NACs) studied groups of 4 pictures (spider, butterfly, dog, and cat). The authors found that the very first fixation was on a spider picture more often in SFs than in NACs. However, SFs quickly moved their eyes away from the spider they had fixated first, yielding shorter gaze durations than NACs. Afterward, SFs exhibited shorter gaze durations on spiders than NACs for the rest of the 1-min presentation time. This early reflexive attentional bias toward threat followed by avoidance of threat may explain earlier failures to find attentional biases in anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deficits in cross-race face learning: Insights from eye movements and pupillometry.

The own-race bias (ORB) is a well-known finding wherein people are better able to recognize and discriminate own-race faces, relative to cross-race faces. In 2 experiments, participants viewed Asian and Caucasian faces, in preparation for recognition memory tests, while their eye movements and pupil diameters were continuously monitored. In Experiment 1 (with Caucasian participants), systematic differences emerged in both measures as a function of depicted race: While encoding cross-race faces, participants made fewer (and longer) fixations, they preferentially attended to different sets of features, and their pupils were more dilated, all relative to own-race faces. Also, in both measures, a pattern emerged wherein some participants reduced their apparent encoding effort to cross-race faces over trials. In Experiment 2 (with Asian participants), the authors observed the same patterns, although the ORB favored the opposite set of faces. Taken together, the results suggest that the ORB appears during initial perceptual encoding. Relative to own-race face encoding, cross-race encoding requires greater effort, which may reduce vigilance in some participants. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Information integration across eye movements.

The visual world contains more information than can be perceived in a single glance. Consequently, humans make eye and head movements and somehow construct a stable and continuous representation of the visual environment from these successive views. How this is accomplished has puzzled psychologists for over a century. The present research investigated the properties of transsaccadic integration, the integration of information across saccadic eye movements. The results of several experiments suggest that the mental representation of the environment that is constructed across eye movements is surprisingly schematic and undetailed, and based more on the contents of the current fixation than on one's memory for the contents of previous fixations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The time course of word frequency and case alternation effects on fixation times in reading: Evidence for lexical control of eye movements.

Participants' eye movements were monitored while they read sentences in which high-frequency and low-frequency target words were presented either in normal font (e.g., account) or case alternated (e.g., aCcOuNt). The influence of the word frequency and case alternation manipulations on fixation times was examined. Although both manipulations had comparable effects on standard first-pass fixation measures, word frequency, but not case alternation was found to influence the duration of the first fixation in trials with multiple first-pass fixations. Assuming that lexical processing is more often incomplete at the termination of the first in multiple first-pass fixations than at the end of single first-pass fixations, the present findings provide strong evidence for an influence of word frequency on early lexical processing. Importantly, such a demonstration of a fast acting influence of a lexical variable on fixation times satisfies a critical prerequisite for establishing lexical control of eye movements in reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tracing attention and the activation flow in spoken word planning using eye movements.

The flow of activation from concepts to phonological forms within the word production system was examined in 3 experiments. In Experiment 1, participants named pictures while ignoring superimposed distractor pictures that were semantically related, phonologically related, or unrelated. Eye movements and naming latencies were recorded. The distractor pictures affected the latencies of gaze shifting and vocal naming. The magnitude of the phonological effects increased linearly with latency, excluding lapses of attention as the cause of the effects. In Experiment 2, no distractor effects were obtained when both pictures were named. When pictures with superimposed distractor words were named or the words were read in Experiment 3, the words influenced the latencies of gaze shifting and picture naming, but the pictures yielded no such latency effects in word reading. The picture-word asymmetry was obtained even with equivalent reading and naming latencies. The picture-picture effects suggest that activation spreads continuously from concepts to phonological forms, whereas the picture-word asymmetry indicates that the amount of activation is limited and task dependent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distractor interference during smooth pursuit eye movements.

When 2 targets for pursuit eye movements move in different directions, the eye velocity follows the vector average (S. G. Lisberger & V. P. Ferrera, 1997). The present study investigates the mechanisms of target selection when observers are instructed to follow a predefined horizontal target and to ignore a moving distractor stimulus. Results show that at 140 ms after distractor onset, horizontal eye velocity is decreased by about 25%. Vertical eye velocity increases or decreases by 1°/s in the direction opposite from the distractor. This deviation varies in size with distractor direction, velocity, and contrast. The effect was present during the initiation and steady-state tracking phase of pursuit but only when the observer had prior information about target motion. Neither vector averaging nor winner-take-all models could predict the response to a moving to-be-ignored distractor during steady-state tracking of a predefined target. The contributions of perceptual mislocalization and spatial attention to the vertical deviation in pursuit are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recent studies of eye movements in reading.

Grouping the studies under the general topic headings of techniques of measurement, analysis of the reading process, training to improve eye movements, typography and eye movements, and eye movements and fatigue the author reviews the relevant research literature which has appeared since January, 1945. In general there has been a dimunition of interest in this area. However, there has appeared a large amount of work on visual fixation, speed of eye movements, reaction time of the eye, oculomotor efficiency, and vision during eye movements. There is a need for more basic research. 72-item bibliography. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Task effects on eye movements during reading.

The present study examined how proofreading and reading-for-comprehension instructions influence eye movements during reading. Thirty-seven participants silently read sentences containing compound words as target words while their eye movements were being recorded. We manipulated word length and frequency to examine how task instructions influence orthographic versus lexical–semantic processing during reading. Task instructions influenced both temporal and spatial aspects of eye movements: The initial landing position in words was shifted leftward, the saccade length was shorter, first fixation and gaze duration were longer, and refixation probability was higher during proofreading than during reading for comprehension. Moreover, in comparison to instructions for reading for comprehension, proofreading instructions increased both orthographic and lexical–semantic processing. This became apparent in a greater word length and word frequency effect in gaze duration during proofreading than during reading for comprehension. The present study suggests that the allocation of attentional resources during reading is significantly modulated by task demands. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stable individual differences across images in human saccadic eye movements.

Individual differences in eye movements during picture viewing were examined across image format, content, and foveal quality in 3 experiments. Experiment 1 demonstrated that an individual's fixation durations were strongly related across 3 types of scene formats and that saccade amplitudes followed the same pattern. In Experiment 2, a similar relationship was observed for fixation durations across faces and scenes, although the amplitude relationship did not hold as strongly. In Experiment 3, the duration and amplitude relationships were observed when foveal information was degraded and even removed. Eye movement characteristics differ across individuals, but there is a great deal of consistency within individuals when viewing different types of images. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationship between visual attention and eye movements.

Experimental psychologists have recently amassed a great deal of evidence supporting the hypothesis that the visual system can select a particular location over other locations in the visual field for further analysis without overtly orienting the eyes to the selected location. At the same time, we know that during reading and scene perception, the eyes are overtly directed to new regions of the visual field every 200 to 300 msec on average. How are covert shifts of attention and overt movements of the eyes related during complex visual-cognitive tasks? The available evidence from studies of the perceptual span in reading suggests that attention is allocated asymmetrically around the fixation point, with more information acquired in the direction that the eyes are moving. Based on this evidence and evidence from explorations of eye movement control in reading, the author presents a tentative model of the relationship between attention and eye movements, called the Sequential Attention Model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of eye and head movements in detecting information about fly balls.

The authors attempted to identify perceptual mechanisms that pick up information for initiating a run to catch fly balls and for judging their landing locations. Fly balls have been shown to be tracked with the eyes and head (R. R. D. Oudejans, C. F. Michaels, F. C. Bakker, & K. Davids, 1999). This raised the question of whether constraining eye and head movements of experienced baseball players by having them wear eye-movement-preventing goggles (eye movements would lead to losing sight of the ball) or a head-movement-preventing neck brace, or both, would limit their capacity (a) to start running in the correct direction and (b) to make correct judgments about the balls' landing locations. Restrictions had minimal effects on response accuracy, but response latency was affected. The goggles increased latency of both running and judging. Moreover, the neck brace decreased judgment time, particularly for difficult balls, suggesting that head stability is important for making judgments. High performance levels suggested that the perceptual system was flexible; that is, different parts of the system can perform the same function. The implications of these findings for perceptual mechanisms are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)