Activation of phonological codes during eye fixations in reading.

Two experiments addressed the issue of whether phonological codes are activated early in a fixation during reading using the fast-priming technique (S. C. Sereno & K. Rayner, 1992). Participants read sentences and, at the beginning of the initial fixation in a target location, a priming letter string was displayed, followed by the target word. Phonological priming was assessed by the difference in the gaze duration on the target word between when the prime was a homophone and when it was a control word equated with the homophone on orthographic similarity to the target. Both experiments demonstrated homophonic priming with prime durations of about 35 ms, but only for high-frequency word primes, indicating that lexicality was guiding the speed of the extraction of phonological codes early in a fixation. Evidence was also obtained for orthographic priming, and the data suggest that orthographic and phonological priming effects interact in a mutually facilitating manner. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye Movements and Phonological Parafoveal Preview: Effects of Reading Skill.

Eye movements of skilled and less skilled readers were monitored as they read sentences containing a target word. The boundary paradigm was used such that when their eyes crossed an invisible boundary location, a preview word changed to the target word. The preview could either be identical to the target word (beach as a preview for beach), a homophone of the target word (beech as a preview for beach), an orthographic control (bench as a preview for beach), or an unrelated consonant string (jfzrp as a preview for beach). Consistent with prior research, skilled readers obtained more preview benefit from the homophone preview than from the orthographic preview. The less skilled readers, however, did not show such an effect. The results indicate that less skilled readers do not use phonological codes to integrate information across eye movements. Indeed, the results also indicate that less skilled readers do not show normal preview benefit effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of phonological codes in integrating information across saccadic eye movements in Chinese character identification.

Prior research has generally assumed either that phonological codes do not contribute to Chinese character identification or that they do so only through a look-up process at the character level. In 3 experiments, a homophone seen parafoveally aided the identification of a target character that was fixated following an eye movement to the preview location. Moreover, high-frequency phonetically regular characters were named faster than high frequency, phonetically irregular characters. Thus, both lexical and sublexical phonological codes of Chinese characters are involved early in the process of character identification. Orthographic information from the preview was also used in character identification, as orthographically similar previews facilitated target identification as well. The evidence for the extraction of semantic information from parafoveal previews was mixed, as synonym previews facilitated in Experiment 2 but not in Experiment 1. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence for the use of assembled phonology in accessing the meaning of printed words.

The role of assembled phonology in visual word recognition was investigated using a task in which participants judged whether 2 words (e.g., PILLOW–BEAD) were semantically related. Of primary interest was whether it would be more difficult to respond "no" to "false homophones" (e.g., BEAD) of words (BED) that are semantically related to target words than to orthographic controls (BEND). (BEAD is a false homophone of BED because –EAD can be pronounced /εd/.) In Experiment 1, there was an interference effect in the response time data, but not in the error data. These results were replicated in a 2nd experiment in which a parafoveal preview was provided for the 2nd word of the pair. A 3rd experiment ruled out explanations of the false homophone effect in terms of inconsistency in spelling-to-sound mappings or inadequate spelling knowledge. It is argued that assembled phonological representations activate meaning in visual word recognition. (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)     

Automatic access of semantic information by phonological codes in visual word recognition.

An important issue in reading research is the role of phonology in visual word recognition. This experiment demonstrated that naming time of a target word (e.g., nut) is facilitated more by a homophone of a semantic associate (e.g., beach) than by a visually similar control (e.g., bench). However, this priming effect from the homophone obtained only when the prime word was exposed for 50 msec and was followed by a pattern mask and not when it was exposed for 200 msec before the pattern mask. In contrast, the "appropriate" prime (e.g., beech) provided facilitation at both exposure durations. Because the priming was obtained with a stimulus onset asynchrony of 250 msec, these data provide support for G. C. Van Orden's (1987) verification model, which posits that meaning is accessed through the automatic activation of phonological information. (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)     

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)     

Multiple lexical codes in reading: Evidence from eye movements, naming time, and oral reading.

The role of semantic, orthographic, and phonological codes in word recognition and text integration in reading was investigated in 4 experiments. Participants read sentences containing words that had multiple semantic codes (e.g., calf), multiple semantic and orthographic codes (e.g., brake-break), or multiple semantic and phonological codes (e.g., tear). Converging evidence from fixation time, naming time, and oral reading indicated that phonological, semantic, and orthographic information about words are sources of early constraint in word processing. Evidence was also found that indicated that phonological codes play an important role in text integration in reading. (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)     

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)     

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)     

Phonologically mediated access to meaning for Kanji: Is a rows still a rose in Japanese Kanji?

It is generally assumed that access to phonology for words written in logographic Japanese Kanji must be mediated by access to their meaning. This proposal was examined in a semantic categorization task with homophones. If the assumption about Kanji processing were true, then homophony should have no effect on semantic judgments. However, there was a significant homophone effect: Reaction times (RTs) were longer and more errors occurred to homophone foils than to control foils. There was also a significant effect of visual similarity: Incorrect target words that were visually similar to correct exemplars of the category names yielded longer RTs and higher error rates. The effects of both visual similarity and homophony were obtained even under conditions of pattern masking (though only on errors). The data suggest that the reading of Kanji is characterized by parallel access to semantics from orthographic and phonological representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word identification in reading proceeds from spelling to sound to meaning.

Van Orden (1987) reported that false positive errors in a categorization task are elevated for homophonic foils (e.g., {hare} for {a part of the human body}). Two new experiments replicate this finding and extend it to nonword homophone foils (e.g., {sute} for {an article of clothing}). False positive errors to nonword homophone foils substantially exceed false positive errors to nonhomophonic nonword spelling controls, showing that the phonological characteristics of the nonword foils are critical. Because nonwords are not represented in the lexicon, this new result implicates computed phonological codes as a source of the categorization errors. Additionally, in each of two experiments, matched word and nonword homophones produced virtually identical error rates. If stimulus nonword homophones are viewed as extremely unfamiliar words, compared with the relatively familiar stimulus word homophones, then our failure to observe an effect of stimulus familiarity strengthens the case that phonological coding plays a role in the identification of all printed words. The fact that the results are obtained in a categorization task that requires reading for meaning (rather than a lexical decision task) makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that phonological mediation plays a role in normal reading of text for meaning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Time course of phonological activation during reading: Evidence from eye fixations.

Eye fixation data suggest that readers use orthographic codes rather than phonological codes to activate word meanings. Whereas proofreading data show that readers are less likely to detect homophonic errors (e.g., He was in his silk stocking feat) than nonhomophonic errors (e.g., He was in his silk stocking fate), the eye fixations revealed that readers initially experienced as much difficulty encountering a homophonic error as a nonhomophonic one. However, homophony facilitated the recovery process, thus suggesting that phonology has its influence after lexical access. Exp 1 showed that the findings were consistent whether the error was the lower frequency homophone (stocking feat) or the higher frequency homophone (feet of courage). Exp 2 showed that proofreading responses are unreliable indices of error detection because even when readers fail to make an overt error detection response, their eye fixations reveal that they have detected the error. (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)     

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)     

Visual and phonological codes in repetition blindness.

Repetition blindness (RB) is the inability to detect or recall a repeated word in rapid serial visual presentation. The role of visual vs phonological (name) similarity in RB was examined. RB was found for single letters, whether printed in the same or different cases, and for single digits, whether represented verbally (nine), as arabic numerals (9), or in a mixture of the 2 formats. Hence, visual similarity is not necessary to produce RB. RB was obtained between homophonic pairs (won/one), showing that phonological similarity is sufficient to produce RB, although visual identity also contributes to RB. It is proposed that RB results when the codes used for initial registration of the targets in short-term memory are similar. This initial code may be predominantly visual or predominantly phonological. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of phonology in the activation of word meanings during reading: Evidence from proofreading and eye movements.

Six experiments explored the role of phonology in the activation of word meanings when words were embedded in meaningful texts. Specifically, the studies examined whether participants detected the substitution of a homophone mate for a contextually appropriate homophone. The frequency of the incorrect homophone, the frequency of the correct homophone, and the predictability of the correct homophone were manipulated. Also, the impact of reading skill was examined. When correct homophones were not predictable and participants had a range of reading abilities, the evidence indicated that phonology plays a role in activating the meanings of low-frequency words only. When the performance of good and poor readers was examined separately, the evidence indicated that good readers primarily activate the meanings of words using the direct route, whereas poor readers primarily activate the meanings of words using the phonological route. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)