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)     

Use of a fixed-base driving simulator to evaluate the effects of experience and PC-based risk awareness training on drivers' decisions

Driver education classes were once seen as a remedy for young drivers' overinvolvement in crashes, but research results from the early 1970s were disappointing. Few changes in the content or methods of instruction occurred until recently, but this could change rapidly. Personal computers (PCs) can now present videos or photorealistic simulations of risky, cognitively demanding traffic scenarios that require quick responses without putting the participant at risk. As such programs proliferate, evaluating their effectiveness poses a major challenge. We report the use of a fixed-base driving simulator to study the effects of both experience on the road and PC-based risk awareness training on younger drivers' part-task simulator driving performance in risky traffic scenarios. We ran three groups of drivers on the simulator: one group first trained on the PC (younger, inexperienced drivers) and two groups who received no PC training (younger, inexperienced and experienced drivers). Overall, the younger, inexperienced drivers who were trained on a PC operated their vehicles in risky scenarios in ways that differed measurably from those of the untrained younger, inexperienced drivers and, more important, in ways that we believe would decrease their exposure to risk considering that, on average, their behavior was more similar to the behavior of the untrained, experienced drivers. More research is needed to demonstrate whether these findings apply on the open road to the larger population of younger drivers. However, at least initially, the research suggests that PC-based risk awareness training programs have the potential to reduce the high crash rate among younger, inexperienced drivers.     

Reading Finnish compound words: eye fixations are affected by component morphemes

The role of morphemic processing in reading was investigated in 2 experiments in which participants read sentences as their eye movements were monitored. The target words were 2-morpheme Finnish compound words. In Experiment 1, the length of the component morphemes was varied and word length was held constant, and in Experiment 2, the uniqueness of the initial morpheme was varied and the rated familiarity and length of the word were held constant. The length of the initial morpheme influenced the location of the second fixation on the target word and the pattern of fixation durations (although it had a negligible influence on the gaze duration of the word). The frequency of the initial morpheme influenced the duration of the first fixation on the target word, had a substantial effect on the gaze duration, and also influenced the location of the first and second fixations on the target word. Subsidiary analyses indicated that these effects were unlikely to stem from orthographic factors such as bigram frequency.     

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)     

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)     

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)     

Unspaced text interferes with both word identification and eye movement control

Subjects read either normal text, text in which the space information between words was absent (either spaces were removed filled with x), or text in which spaces were preserved but the words were flanked by x. In two experiments, reading rate decreased by approx. 50% when space information was not available, suggesting that reading unspaced text is relatively difficult. The removal of space information increased the effect of word frequency on the fixation times for selected target words, indicating that word identification was interfered with by the lack of spaces. In addition, removal of space information influenced the initial landing positions on words, indicating that eye movement control was affected by the absence of spaces. Further analyses were conducted that explored the relationship between these two effects.     

Toward a model of eye movement control in reading

The authors present several versions of a general model, titled the E-Z Reader model, of eye movement control in reading. The major goal of the modeling is to relate cognitive processing (specifically aspects of lexical access) to eye movements in reading. The earliest and simplest versions of the model (E-Z Readers 1 and 2) merely attempt to explain the total time spent on a word before moving forward (the gaze duration) and the probability of fixating a word; later versions (E-Z Readers 3-5) also attempt to explain the durations of individual fixations on individual words and the number of fixations on individual words. The final version (E-Z Reader 5) appears to be psychologically plausible and gives a good account of many phenomena in reading. It is also a good tool for analyzing eye movement data in reading. Limitations of the model and directions for future research are also discussed.     

The activation of phonology during silent Chinese word reading.

The role of phonology in silent Chinese compound-character reading was studied in 2 experiments with native Chinese speakers performing a semantic relatedness judgment task. There was significant interference from a homophone of a "target" word that was semantically related to an initially presented cue word whether the homophone was orthographically similar to the target or not. This interference was only observed for exact homophones (i.e., those that had the same tone, consonant, and vowel). In addition, the effect was not significantly modulated by target or distractor frequency, nor was it restricted to cases of associative priming. Substantial interference was also found from orthographically similar nonhomophones of the targets. Together these data are best accounted for by a model that allows for parallel access of semantics via 2 routes, 1 directly from orthography to semantics and the other from orthography to phonology to semantics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movements and scene perception.

Reviews the work on eye movements (EMs) and scene perception (SP) and discusses (1) the span of effective vision during SP; (2) the role of EMs in SP; (3) integration of information across saccades; (4) scene context, object identification, and EMs; and (5) the control of EMs. The relationship of EMs during reading to EMs during SP is considered. A preliminary model of EM control in SP is described, and directions for future research are suggested. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)