Stress regularity or consistency? Reading aloud Italian polysyllables with different stress patterns

Stress assignment to three- and four-syllable Italian words is not predictable by rule, but needs lexical look-up. The present study investigated whether stress assignment to low-frequency Italian words is determined by stress regularity, or by the number of words sharing the final phonological segment and the stress pattern (stress neighborhood or consistency). Experiment 1 showed an effect of stress neighborhood: words were read aloud faster and more accurately when they had a prevalence of stress "friends," irrespective of stress regularity. Moreover, when irregularly stressed words have a higher number of stress friends compared to regularly stressed words, they are read even faster (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, using visual lexical decision, no difference related to the numerosity of stress friends was found. It is concluded that reading aloud Italian low-frequency words with different stress patterns is mainly affected by the numerosity of lexical types that share a given final sequence and the stress pattern. The phonological nature of the numerosity of lexical representations affecting reading aloud finds support in the absence of such effect in visual lexical decision. These results have implications for models of reading aloud that go beyond monosyllables.     

Eye movements of highly skilled and average readers: Differential effects of frequency and predictability

This study offers a glimpse of the moment-by-moment processes used by highly skilled and average readers during silent reading. The eye movements of adult readers were monitored while they silently read sentences. Fixation durations and the spatial-temporal patterns of eye movements were examined to see whether the two groups of readers exhibited differential effects of frequency and/or predictability. In Experiment 1, high- and low-frequency target words were embedded in nonconstraining sentence contexts. In Experiment 2, the same participants read high- and low-frequency target words that were either predictable or unpredictable, embedded in highly constraining sentence contexts. Results indicated that when target words appeared in highly constraining sentence contexts, the average readers showed different effects of frequency and predictability from those shown in the highly skilled readers. It appears that reading skill can interact with predictability to affect the word recognition processes used during silent reading.     

Word length effects on novel words: Evidence from eye movements

The present study investigated the effects of word length on eye movement behavior during initial processing of novel words while reading. Adult skilled readers’ eye movements were monitored as they read novel or known target words in sentence frames with neutral context preceding the target word. Comparable word length effects on all single-fixation measures for novel and known words suggested that both types of words were subject to similar initial encoding strategies. The impact of the absence of an existing lexical entry emerged in multiple first-pass fixation measures in the form of interactions between word length (long and short) and word type (novel and known). Specifically, readers spent significantly more first-pass time refixating long novel targets than short novel targets; however, the first-pass time spent refixating known controls did not differ as a function of length. Implications of these findings for models of eye movement control while reading, as well as for vocabulary acquisition in reading, are discussed.     

自然阅读中儿童和成人新词学习能力的差异比较:基于眼动的证据

从读者重复学习新词时眼动行为经历的变化,揭示儿童和成人自然阅读中新词学习能力的差异。构造双字假词作为新词,将其嵌在五个语境中,记录儿童和成人阅读时的眼动轨迹。结果发现:随着新词学习次数的递增,儿童和成人在新词上的首次注视时间呈相同变化;在对新词的凝视时间和再注视概率上,成人在第二次阅读时就大幅下降,而小学生在第四次阅读时才开始下降。表明成人新词学习能力高于儿童体现在词汇加工的相对晚期阶段。     

中文阅读中副中央凹与中央凹相互影响的眼动实验

采用眼动轨迹记录法结合边界呈现的实验范式, 当注视点越过特定位置时, 预视字则变为另一目标字, 从而保证预视字只呈现在副中央凹区域。实验1自变量为预视字频率, 预视字与目标字均与当前句子具有语义连贯性。实验发现, 当预视字是低频时, 中央凹的首次注视时间和凝视时间更短。实验2在预视字与当前句子语义不连贯的情况下进一步探讨预视字的字频对中央凹加工的效应。实验发现, 预视字是高频时, 中央凹的首次注视时间和凝视时间更短。然而在以区域作为数据分析的单位时, 副中央凹-中央凹效应仅在首次注视时间上呈现显著。上述结果表明, 副中央凹的词汇属性会对中央凹的加工产生一定的影响, 但这种影响比较微弱, 该结果为阅读加工理论中的并行加工理论提供了一定的支持。     

Lexical processing and text integration of function and content words: Evidence from priming and eye fixations

The results of two experiments comparing processing of function words and content words are reported. In Experiment 1, priming was present for both related function and related content word pairs, as measured in lexical decision response times. In Experiment 2, participants' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences containing either a high- or a low-frequency function or content target word. Average word length and word frequency were matched across the function and content word conditions. Function words showed frequency effects in first-fixation and gaze duration that were similar to those seen for content words. Clear differences in on-line processing of function and content words emerged in later processing measures. These differences were reflected in reading patterns and reading time measures. There was inflated processing time in the phrase immediately following a low-frequency function word, and participants made more regressions to the target word in this condition than in the other three conditions. The priming effects in lexical decision and the word frequency effects in initial processing measures in silent reading for both word types were taken as evidence of common lexical processing for function and content words. The observed differences in later processing measures in the eye-movement data were taken as evidence of differences in the role that the two word types have in sentence processing beyond the lexical level.     

词汇预测性对中文高、低阅读技能儿童眼动行为的影响

操纵目标词的预测性、词频和阅读技能水平,考察句子阅读中词汇预测性对高、低阅读技能儿童眼动行为的影响,揭示其在儿童阅读发展中的作用。结果显示：儿童对高预测词的跳读率更高、注视时间更短,且预测性与词频交互影响跳读率和注视时间;预测性对高阅读技能儿童早期的跳读率影响更大,而对低阅读技能儿童晚期的再阅读时间具有更大影响。结果表明：词汇预测性影响儿童阅读的眼动行为和词汇加工,且作用大小和发生时程受阅读技能调节。     

书面韵律信息与词汇偏向在歧义句歧义消解中的作用

本研究采用眼动法,探讨了被试在理解层次分隔歧义句时,逗号作为书面韵律边界所起到的作用,以及书面韵律边界与词汇信息如何共同影响句子加工。研究选取了裸视视力或矫正视力均正常的母语为汉语的成人,完成一个在自然情境下阅读层次分隔歧义句的句子理解实验,同时记录他们句子阅读时的眼动数据。结果发现：有逗号解歧的句子的阅读时间明显少于没有逗号解歧句子的阅读时间;逗号偏向类型和词汇偏向类型之间存在交互作用,即两者在三种眼动指标上都达到了显著性水平,研究所选的三种眼动指标为首次注视时间、第一遍阅读时间和总注视时间;此外,当逗号偏向将句子结构确定为形容词修饰整个短语结构时,词汇偏向会对语义理解进行调整,表现在三种眼动指标的显著性上。实验结果支持内隐韵律假设,书面韵律信息对歧义句歧义消解的作用从句子加工早期开始,书面韵律信息与词汇偏向的交互作用也发生于句子加工早期。     

Emotion words affect eye fixations during reading

Emotion words are generally characterized as possessing high arousal and extreme valence and have typically been investigated in paradigms in which they are presented and measured as single words. This study examined whether a word's emotional qualities influenced the time spent viewing that word in the context of normal reading. Eye movements were monitored as participants read sentences containing an emotionally positive (e.g., lucky), negative (e.g., angry), or neutral (e.g., plain) word. Target word frequency (high or low) was additionally varied to help determine the temporal locus of emotion effects, with interactive results suggesting an early lexical locus of emotion processing. In general, measures of target fixation time demonstrated significant effects of emotion and frequency as well as an interaction. The interaction arose from differential effects with negative words that were dependent on word frequency. Fixation times on emotion words (positive or negative) were consistently faster than those on neutral words with one exception-high-frequency negative words were read no faster than their neutral counterparts. These effects emerged in the earliest eye movement measures, namely, first and single fixation duration, suggesting that emotionality, as defined by arousal and valence, modulates lexical processing. Possible mechanisms involved in processing emotion words are discussed, including automatic vigilance and desensitization, both of which imply a key role for word frequency. Finally, it is important that early lexical effects of emotion processing can be established within the ecologically valid context of fluent reading.     

How strongly do word reading times and lexical decision times correlate? Combining data from eye movement corpora and megastudies

We assess the amount of shared variance between three measures of visual word recognition latencies: eye movement latencies, lexical decision times, and naming times. After partialling out the effects of word frequency and word length, two well-documented predictors of word recognition latencies, we see that 7–44% of the variance is uniquely shared between lexical decision times and naming times, depending on the frequency range of the words used. A similar analysis of eye movement latencies shows that the percentage of variance they uniquely share either with lexical decision times or with naming times is much lower. It is 5–17% for gaze durations and lexical decision times in studies with target words presented in neutral sentences, but drops to 0.2% for corpus studies in which eye movements to all words are analysed. Correlations between gaze durations and naming latencies are lower still. These findings suggest that processing times in isolated word processing and continuous text reading are affected by specific task demands and presentation format, and that lexical decision times and naming times are not very informative in predicting eye movement latencies in text reading once the effect of word frequency and word length are taken into account. The difference between controlled experiments and natural reading suggests that reading strategies and stimulus materials may determine the degree to which the immediacy-of-processing assumption and the eye–mind assumption apply. Fixation times are more likely to exclusively reflect the lexical processing of the currently fixated word in controlled studies with unpredictable target words rather than in natural reading of sentences or texts.     

中文阅读中快速读者与慢速读者的词频效应

在熟练的中文阅读中,个体阅读效率越高,词汇加工效率是否越高,目前还缺少直接证据。本研究通过记录快速读者与慢速读者在阅读含有高频或低频目标词句子时的眼动轨迹来考察该问题。结果发现,在第一遍注视时间、回视路径时间和总注视时间上,快速读者对高频词与低频词的注视时间无显著差异,但都短于慢速读者;而慢速读者对低频词的注视时间显著长于高频词。即快速读者的早期词汇识别和后期词汇整合效率都较高,不受词频影响;而慢速读者的整个词汇加工效率较低,受词频影响较大。这些结果表明两组读者的词汇加工模式具有本质差异,符合个体差异性观点与词汇质量假说。     

The role of phonology in incidental vocabulary acquisition during silent reading

In two experiments, we investigated the role of phonology in learning new words incidentally during silent reading. Participants read sentence pairs containing novel or known words that varied in homophony (whether another word exists with an alternate spelling for the same pronunciation). In Experiment 1, we monitored readers' eye movements to investigate online processes involved in establishing meanings for novel words. In Experiment 2, participants completed cued recall and vocabulary recognition tasks after the reading session to assess the influence of phonological form on word learning. Eye movement results indicate that readers spent the most time reading novel homophones (e.g., skwosh) and surrounding context, indicating that phonological information is activated early during a reader's initial encounter with a new letter string. Retention measures suggest that readers were able to infer a meaning for each novel word type, despite the increased difficulty associated with reading novel words with familiar phonological forms, and that phonology aided the acquisition of orthography.     

A dual-route perspective on eye movements of dyslexic readers

This study assessed eye movement abnormalities of adolescent dyslexic readers and interpreted the findings by linking the dual-route model of single word reading with the E-Z Reader model of eye movement control during silent sentence reading. A dysfunction of the lexical route was assumed to account for a reduced number of words which received only a single fixation or which were skipped and for the increased number of words with multiple fixations and a marked effect of word length on gaze duration. This pattern was interpreted as a frequent failure of orthographic whole-word recognition (based on orthographic lexicon entries) and on reliance on serial sublexical processing instead. Inefficiency of the lexical route was inferred from prolonged gaze durations for singly fixated words. These findings were related to the E-Z Reader model of eye movement control. Slow activation of word phonology accounted for the low skipping rate of dyslexic readers. Frequent reliance on sublexical decoding was inferred from a tendency to fixate word beginnings and from short forward saccades. Overall, the linkage of the dual-route model of single word reading and a model of eye movement control led to a useful framework for understanding eye movement abnormalities of dyslexic readers.     

词素位置概率在中文阅读中的作用：词汇判断和眼动研究

中文词切分的认知机制一直是心理语言学关注的焦点问题之一,研究发现中文读者可使用词素位置概率等语言学线索帮助词切分,而首、尾词素位置概率的重要程度以往研究观点并不一致。本研究通过词汇判断和眼动实验,考察中文读者对首、尾词素位置概率的利用情况。实验1a和1b采用词汇判断任务,考察在不同词频条件下词首与词尾词素位置概率对词汇识别的影响。在错误率和反应时指标上,高频词条件下词首与词尾词素位置概率效应不显著;低频词条件下词首词素位置概率效应显著,词尾词素位置概率效应不显著。实验2a和2b采用句子阅读任务,考察在自然阅读情境中被试对词素位置概率的运用。在凝视时间、回视路径时间和总注视时间指标上,低频词条件下词首词素位置概率效应显著,词尾词素位置概率效应不显著。高频词条件下词首与词尾词素位置概率效应均不显著。词汇判断和眼动证据共同表明,词素位置概率信息是中文读者重要的语言词切分线索,且与词尾词素位置概率相比,词首词素位置概率在词汇切分与识别过程中发挥的作用更大。同时,词素位置概率线索的运用会受到词频的影响,研究结果支持复合词加工的混合通达表征模型。     

Sensitivity to probabilistic orthographic cues to lexical stress in adolescent speakers with autism spectrum disorder and typical peers

Lexical stress refers to the opposition of strong and weak syllables within polysyllabic words and is a core feature of the English prosodic system. There are probabilistic cues to lexical stress present in English orthography. For example, most disyllabic English words ending with the letters "-ure" have first-syllable stress (e.g., "pasture", but note words such as "endure"), whereas most ending with "-ose" have second-syllable stress (e.g., "propose", but note examples such as "glucose"). Adult native speakers of English are sensitive to these probabilities during silent reading. During testing, they tend to assign first-syllable stress when reading a nonword such as "lenture" but second-syllable stress when reading "fostpose" (Arciuli & Cupples, 2006 ). Difficulties with prosody, including problems processing lexical stress, are a notable feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current study investigated the ability of adolescents with ASD (13-17 years of age) to show this sensitivity compared with a group of typically developing peers. Results indicated reduced sensitivity to probabilistic cues to lexical stress in the group with ASD. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

An eye movement corpus study of the age-of-acquisition effect

In the present study, we investigated the effects of word-level age of acquisition (AoA) on natural reading. Previous studies, using multiple language modalities, showed that earlier-learned words are recognized, read, spoken, and responded to faster than words learned later in life. Until now, in visual word recognition the experimental materials were limited to single-word or sentence studies. We analyzed the data of the Ghent Eye-tracking Corpus (GECO; Cop, Dirix, Drieghe, & Duyck, in press), an eyetracking corpus of participants reading an entire novel, resulting in the first eye movement megastudy of AoA effects in natural reading. We found that the ages at which specific words were learned indeed influenced reading times, above other important (correlated) lexical variables, such as word frequency and length. Shorter fixations for earlier-learned words were consistently found throughout the reading process, in both early (single-fixation durations, first-fixation durations, gaze durations) and late (total reading times) measures. Implications for theoretical accounts of AoA effects and eye movements are discussed.     

Linguistic rhythm guides parsing decisions in written sentence comprehension

Various recent studies attest that reading involves creating an implicit prosodic representation of the written text which may systematically affect the resolution of syntactic ambiguities in sentence comprehension. Research up to now suggests that implicit prosody itself depends on a partial syntactic analysis of the text, raising the question of whether implicit prosody contributes to the parsing process, or whether it merely interprets the syntactic analysis. The present reading experiments examine the influence of stress-based linguistic rhythm on the resolution of local lexical-syntactic ambiguities in German. Both speech production data from unprepared oral reading and eye-tracking results from silent reading demonstrate that readers favor syntactic analyses that allow for a prosodic representation in which stressed and unstressed syllables alternate rhythmically. The findings contribute evidence confirming immediate and guiding effects of linguistic rhythm on the earliest stages of syntactic parsing in reading.     

Lexical processes and eye movements in neglect dyslexia

Neglect dyslexia is a disturbance in the allocation of spatial attention over a letter string following unilateral brain damage. Patients with this condition may fail to read letters on the contralesional side of an orthographic string. In some of these cases, reading is better with words than with non-words. This word superiority effect has received a variety of explanations that differ, among other things, with regard to the spatial distribution of attention across the letter string during reading. The primary goal of the present study was to explore the interaction between attention and lexical processes by recording eye movements in a patient (F.C.) with severe left neglect dyslexia who was required to read isolated word and non-word stimuli of various length. F.C.'s ocular exploration of orthographic stimuli was highly sensitive to the lexical status of the letter string. We found that: (1) the location to which F.C. directed his initial saccade (obtained approximately 230 ms post-stimulus onset) differed between word and non-word stimuli; (2) the patient spent a greater amount of time fixating the contralesional side of word than non-word strings. Moreover, we also found that F.C. failed to identify the left letters of a string despite having fixated them, thus showing a clear dissociation between eye movement responses and conscious access to orthographic stimuli. Our data suggest the existence of multiple interactions between lexical, attentional and eye movement systems that occur from very initial stages of visual word recognition.     

The effect of word frequency, word predictability, and font difficulty on the eye movements of young and older readers

Young adult and older readers' eye movements were recorded as they read sentences containing target words that varied in frequency or predictability. In addition, half of the sentences were printed in a font that was easy to read (Times New Roman) and the other half were printed in a font that was more difficult to read (Old English). Word frequency, word predictability, and font difficulty effects were apparent in the eye movement data of both groups of readers. In the fixation time data, the pattern of results was the same, but the older readers had larger frequency and predictability effects than the younger readers. The older readers skipped words more often than the younger readers (as indicated by their skipping rate on selected target words), but they made more regressions back to the target words and more regressions overall. The E-Z Reader model was used as a platform to evaluate the results, and simulations using the model suggest that lexical processing is slowed in older readers and that, possibly as a result of this, they adopt a more risky reading strategy.     

阅读障碍儿童与其年龄和能力匹配儿童阅读空格文本的注视位置效应

采用EyeLink II眼动仪, 选取阅读障碍儿童及与其年龄相同、阅读能力水平相同的儿童为被试, 要求他们阅读正常无空格和词间空格句子。结果发现, 在阅读正常无空格和词间空格句子时, 阅读障碍儿童与年龄匹配组和能力匹配组儿童一样, 单次注视时往往将首次注视定位于词的中心, 多次注视时首次注视往往落在词的开头; 当首次注视落在词的开头时再注视该词的概率增加, 而且再注视往往落在词的结尾部分。我们认为, 中国儿童在阅读过程中采用的是“战略-战术”策略。