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 Movements and Word Skipping During Reading Revisited.

The authors examined word skipping in reading in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, skipping rates were higher for a preview of a predictable word than for a visually similar nonword, indicating there is full recognition in parafoveal vision. In Experiment 2, foveal load was manipulated by varying the frequency of the word preceding either a 3-letter target word or a misspelled preview. There was again a higher skipping rate for a correct preview and a lower skipping rate when there was a high foveal load, but there was no interaction, and the pattern of effects in fixation times was the same as in the skipping data. Experiment 2 also showed significant skipping of nonwords similar to the target word, indicating skipping based on partial information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 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)     

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)     

Previewing the neighborhood: The role of orthographic neighbors as parafoveal previews in reading.

In 2 experiments, a boundary technique was used with parafoveal previews that were identical to a target (e.g., sleet), a word orthographic neighbor (sweet), or an orthographically matched nonword (speet). In Experiment 1, low-frequency words in orthographic pairs were targets, and high-frequency words were previews. In Experiment 2, the roles were reversed. In Experiment 1, neighbor words provided as much preview benefit as identical words and greater benefit than nonwords, whereas in Experiment 2, neighbor words provided no greater preview benefit than nonwords. These results indicate that the frequency of a preview influences the extraction of letter information without setting up appreciable competition between previews and targets. This is consistent with a model of word recognition in which early stages largely depend on excitation of letter information, and competition between lexical candidates becomes important only in later stages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parafoveal preview during reading: Effects of sentence position.

Two experiments examined parafoveal preview for words located in the middle of sentences and at sentence boundaries. Parafoveal processing was shown to occur for words at sentence-initial, mid-sentence, and sentence-final positions. Both Experiments 1 and 2 showed reduced effects of preview on regressions out for sentence-initial words. In addition, Experiment 2 showed reduced preview effects on first-pass reading times for sentence-initial words. These effects of sentence position on preview could result from either reduced parafoveal processing for sentence-initial words or other processes specific to word reading at sentence boundaries. In addition to the effects of preview, the experiments also demonstrate variability in the effects of sentence wrap-up on different reading measures, indicating that the presence and time course of wrap-up effects may be modulated by text-specific factors. We also report simulations of Experiment 2 using version 10 of E-Z Reader (Reichle, Warren, & McConnell, 2009), designed to explore the possible mechanisms underlying parafoveal preview at sentence boundaries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 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)     

Preview benefit during eye fixations in reading for older and younger readers.

Older and younger readers read sentences as their eye movements were recorded, and the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) was used to present either a valid or an invalid parafoveal preview of a target word. During the saccade to the target word, the preview word changed to the target word. For early measures of processing time (first fixation duration and single fixation duration), the standard preview benefit effect (shorter fixation times on the target word with a valid preview than an invalid preview) was obtained for both older and younger readers. However, for gaze duration and go-past time, the preview benefit was somewhat attenuated in the older readers in comparison to the younger readers, suggesting that on some fixations older readers obtain less preview benefit from the word to the right of fixation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

Adult age differences in the effects of sentence context and stimulus degradation during visual word recognition.

I investigated adult age differences in the efficiency of feature-extraction processes during visual word recognition. Participants were 24 young adults (M age?=?21.0 years) and 24 older adults (M age?=?66.5 years). On each trial, subjects made a word/nonword discrimination (i.e., lexical decision) regarding a target letter-string that was presented as the final item of a sentence context. The target was presented either intact or degraded visually (by the presence of asterisks between adjacent letters). Age differences in lexical decision speed were greater for degraded targets than for intact targets, suggesting an age-related slowing in the extraction of feature-level information. For degraded word targets, however, the amount of performance benefit provided by the sentence context was greater for older adults than for young adults. It thus appears that an age-related deficiency at an early stage of word recognition is accompanied by an increased contribution from semantic context. (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)     

Semantic processing of previews within compound words.

Previous studies have suggested that previews of words prior to fixation can be processed orthographically, but not semantically, during reading of sentences (K. Rayner, D. A. Balota, & A. Pollatsek, 1986). The present study tested whether semantic processing of previews can occur within words. The preview of the second constituent of 2-constituent Finnish compound nouns was manipulated. The previews were either identical to the 2nd constituent or they were incorrect in the form of a semantically related word, a semantically unrelated word, or a semantically meaningless nonword. The results indicate that previews of 2nd constituents within compound words can be semantically processed. The results have important implications for understanding the nature of preview and compound word processing. These issues are crucial to developing comprehensive models of eye-movement control and word recognition 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)     

Time Course of Linguistic Information Extraction From Consecutive Words During Eye Fixations in Reading.

Sequential attention shift models of reading predict that an attended (typically fixated) word must be recognized before useful linguistic information can be obtained from the following (parafoveal) word. These models also predict that linguistic information is obtained from a parafoveal word immediately prior to a saccade toward it. To test these assumptions, sentences were constructed with a critical pretarget-target word sequence, and the temporal availability of the (parafoveal) target preview was manipulated while the pretarget word was fixated. Target viewing effects, examined as a function of prior target visibility, revealed that extraction of linguistic target information began 70-140 ms after the onset of pretarget viewing. Critically, acquisition of useful linguistic information from a target was not confined to the ending period of pretarget viewing. These results favor theoretical conceptions in which there is some temporal overlap in the linguistic processing of a fixated and parafoveally visible word during reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult age differences in regional cerebral blood flow during visual world identification: evidence from H215O PET

We used H215O PET to investigate adult age differences in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during the performance of a visual word identification task. The study participants were 20 healthy, right-handed men: 10 young adults between 18 and 27 years of age, and 10 older adults between 63 and 75 years of age. The word identification task comprised six blocks of test trials representing four task conditions; subjects responded manually. The task conditions varied with regard to whether semantic retrieval was required (e.g., word/nonword discrimination vs simple response to each stimulus) and with regard to the difficulty of visual encoding (e.g., words presented normally vs words with asterisks inserted between adjacent letters). Each subject performed all six trial blocks, concurrently with each of six H215O PET scans. Analyses of quantitative CBF data obtained from the arterial time-activity curve demonstrated a significant age-related decline in global CBF rate. Analyses of the changes in rCBF between task conditions indicated that retrieval of semantic information sufficient to distinguish words from nonwords is mediated by a ventral occipitotemporal cortical pathway. Specific areas within this pathway were also associated with visual encoding processes. Several rCBF activations were significantly greater for young adults than for older adults, indicating an age-related decline in processing efficiency within this ventral occipitotemporal pathway. Although the performance data demonstrated a greater age-related slowing for visual encoding than for semantic retrieval, these age-related performance changes were not associated with corresponding changes in rCBF activation.     

On-line processing of written text by younger and older adults.

Word-by-word reading times were measured for young and elderly adults who read single sentences for immediate recall. The reading strategies of young and old were similar in that both groups allocated time to process word-level and constituent-level features. Young and elderly readers differed mainly in how they allocated time for organizational processing: Whereas younger adults allocated extra processing time at sentence boundaries as well as at major and minor clause boundaries, older adults allocated extra time at major and minor clause boundaries only. Results were generally consistent with the notions that processes that are more microlevel (e.g., word access) become automatic with practice and that age deficits are minimal for such processes. Age differences in organization time allocated at clause boundaries, however, suggested age-related limitations in working memory processing. (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)     

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)     

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)