Predictability effects during reading in the absence of parafoveal preview

The predictability of upcoming words facilitates both spoken and written language comprehension. One interesting difference between these language modalities is that readers’ routinely have access to upcoming words in parafoveal vision while listeners must wait for each fleeting word from a speaker. Despite readers’ potential glimpse into the future, it is not clear if and how this bottom-up information aids top-down prediction. The current study manipulated the predictability of target words and their location on a line of text. Targets were located in the middle of the line (preview available) or as the first word on a new line (preview unavailable). This represents an innovative method for manipulating parafoveal preview which utilises return sweeps to deny access to parafoveal preview of target words without the use of invalid previews. The study is the first to demonstrate gaze duration word predictability effects in the absence of parafoveal preview.     

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.     

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.     

The influence of visual contrast and case changes on parafoveal preview benefits during reading

Reingold and Rayner (2006) showed that the visual contrast of a fixated target word influenced its viewing duration, but not the viewing of the next (posttarget) word in the text that was shown in regular contrast. Configurational target changes, by contrast, influenced target and posttarget viewing. The current study examined whether this effect pattern can be attributed to differential processing of the posttarget word during target viewing. A boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) was used to provide an informative or uninformative posttarget preview and to reveal the word when it was fixated. Consistent with the earlier study, more time was spent viewing the target when its visual contrast was low and its configuration unfamiliar. Critically, target contrast had no effect on the acquisition of useful information from a posttarget preview, but an unfamiliar target configuration diminished the usefulness of an informative posttarget preview. These findings are consistent with Reingold and Rayner's (2006) claim that saccade programming and attention shifting during reading can be controlled by functionally distinct word recognition processes.     

Early morphological effects in reading: Evidence from parafoveal preview benefit in Hebrew

Hebrew words are composed of two interwoven morphemes: a triconsonantal root and a word pattern. We examined the role of the root morpheme in word identification by assessing the benefit of presentation of a parafoveal preview word derived from the same root as a target word. Although the letter information of the preview was not consciously perceived, a preview of a word derived from the same root morpheme as the foveal target word facilitated eye-movement measures of first-pass reading (i.e.,first fixation and gaze duration). These results are the first to demonstrate early morphological effects in the context of sentence reading in which no external task is imposed on the reader, and converge with previous findings of morphemic priming in Hebrew using the masked priming paradigm, and morphemic parafoveal preview benefit effects in a single-word identification task.     

Rethinking parafoveal processing in reading: Serial-attention models can explain semantic preview benefit and N+2 preview effects

During reading, some information about the word to the right of fixation in the parafovea is typically acquired prior to that word being fixated. Although some degree parafoveal processing is uncontroversial, its precise nature and extent are unclear. For example, can it advance up to the level of semantic processing? Additionally, can it extend across more than two spatially adjacent words? Affirmative answers to either of these questions would seemingly be problematic for serial-attention models of eye-movement control in reading, which maintain that attention is allocated to only one word at a time (see Reichle, 2011). However, in this paper we report simulation results using one such model, E-Z Reader (Reichle, Pollatsek, Fisher, & Rayner, 1998), to examine the two preceding questions. These results suggest the existence of both semantic preview and N+2 preview effects, indicating that they are not incompatible with serial-attention models. We discuss the implications of these findings for models of eye-movement control in reading and provide a new theoretical framework for conceptualizing parafoveal processing during reading and its influence on eye movement behaviour.     

快速与慢速读者的中央凹加工对副中央凹预视的影响

在中文阅读中,预视量是否存在个体差异及其是否受中央凹加工调节,尚不清楚。本研究采用眼动技术和边界范式,通过操纵前目标词的加工负荷(高、低)与目标词的预视(相同、假字)来考察快速与慢速读者的中央凹加工对副中央凹预视的影响。结果显示,中央凹负荷主效应显著;快速读者对低负荷词的首次和单次注视短于高负荷词,而慢速读者对两种负荷词的首次和单次注视无差异,表明快速读者能更快利用词汇特性加工中央凹词汇。预视主效应显著,即与假字预视相比,相同预视使两组读者都对目标词的注视更短、向前眼跳更长、跳读率更高;而且该效应与中央凹负荷没有交互作用。这表明快速读者与慢速读者提取了等量预视,且不受其中央凹加工的调节。E-Z读者模型和SWIFT模型不能完全解释当前结果。     

Parafoveal preview benefits during silent and oral reading: Testing the parafoveal information extraction hypothesis

The preview of a parafoveally visible word conveys benefits when it is subsequently fixated. The current study examined whether these benefits are determined by the effectiveness of parafoveal information extraction, as implied by current models of eye movement control during reading, or by the effectiveness with which extracted information is integrated when a previewed word is fixated. For this, the boundary technique was used to manipulate the extent to which parafoveal information could be extracted, and text was read silently or orally. Consistent with prior work, a parafoveal target word preview conveyed fewer benefits when less parafoveal information could be extracted, target viewing durations were longer during oral than during silent reading, and the two factors interacted in the target fixation data, with smaller preview benefits during oral than during silent reading. Survival analyses indicated that this occurred because parafoveal information use occurred at later point in time during oral reading. Diminished opportunity for parafoveal information extraction also diminished target skipping rate, and it resulted in smaller saccades to target words, but these effects were not influenced by reading mode. Parafoveally extracted information was thus used less effectively during oral reading only when it involved the integration of parafoveally extracted information during subsequent target viewing. The dissociation of extraction from integration challenges current models of eye movement control.     

An incremental boundary study on parafoveal preprocessing in children reading aloud: Parafoveal masks overestimate the preview benefit

Parafoveal preprocessing is an important factor for efficient reading and, in eye-movement studies, is typically investigated by means of parafoveal masking: Valid previews are compared to instances in which masks prevent preprocessing. A long-held assumption was that parafoveal preprocessing, as assessed by this technique, only reflects facilitation (i.e., a preview benefit). Recent studies, however, suggested that the benefit estimate is inflated due to interference of the parafoveal masks, i.e., the masks inflict processing costs. With children from Grades 4 and 6, we administered the novel incremental priming technique. The technique manipulates the salience of the previews by systematically varying its perceptibility (i.e., by visually degrading the previews). This technique does not require a baseline condition, but makes it possible to determine whether a preview induces facilitation or interference. Our salience manipulation of valid previews revealed a preview benefit in the children of both Grades. For two commonly used parafoveal masks, we observed interference corroborating the notion that masks are not a proper baseline. With the novel incremental boundary technique, in contrast, one can achieve an accurate estimate of the preview benefit.     

Use of phonological codes for Chinese characters: evidence from processing of parafoveal preview when reading sentences

The role of phonological coding for character identification was examined with the benefit of processing parafoveal characters in eye fixations while reading Chinese sentences. In Experiment 1, the orthogonal manipulation of phonological and orthographic similarity can separate two types of phonological benefits for homophonic previews, according to whether these previews share the same phonetic radical with the targets or not. The significant phonological benefits indicate that phonological coding is activated early when the character is in the parafovea. Experiment 2 manipulated the character's consistency value and found that the phonological preview benefits are reliable only when the targets are high consistency characters. The results of two experiments suggest that phonological computation is rapid and early at both character and radical levels for Chinese character identification.     

Letter encoding in visual word identification: more evidence for a word-integration explanation for parafoveal preview effects in reading.

A letter string presented briefly in the parafovea facilitates naming a foveally presented word provided that the two stimuli are orthographically similar. The facilitation (called priming) is asymmetrical in that to obtain it, both letter strings must have the first letters in common. One possible explanation, a letter-integration hypothesis, proposes that readers only identify the letters at the beginning of the parafoveal stimulus, an action that facilitates processing the target. Another explanation, a word-integration hypothesis, postulates that all the letters of the parafoveal stimulus are identified and that the asymmetry occurs because the first letters of the parafoveal stimulus are weighted more heavily than the later ones. The two accounts differ in the way the position of the first letter is determined: The first postulates that readers know the side to identify first without reference to the stimulus; the second postulates that readers establish an order on the stimuli postcategorically. To distinguish the views, we presented English and Hebrew stimuli to bilingual readers. Readers could not anticipate the position of the first letters; hence, if the letter-integration explanation is correct, the asymmetry in the priming should be attenuated. Consistent with the word-integration explanation, however, priming occurred when the target shared the beginning letters with the prime in both languages.     

Early parafoveal processing in reading Chinese sentences

The possibility that during Chinese reading information is extracted at the beginning of the current fixation was examined in this study. Twenty-four participants read for comprehension while their eye movements were being recorded. A pretarget-target two-character word pair was embedded in each sentence and target word visibility was manipulated in two time intervals (initial 140 ms or after 140 ms) during pretarget viewing. Substantial beginning- and end-of-fixation preview effects were observed together with beginning-of-fixation effects on the pretarget. Apparently parafoveal information at least at the character level can be extracted relatively early during ongoing fixations. Results are highly relevant for ongoing debates on spatially distributed linguistic processing and address fundamental questions about how the human mind solves the task of reading within the constraints of different writing systems.     

The acquisition of parafoveal word information in reading

A somewhat counterintuitive finding has emerged from experiments that restrict the "window" of visual information available on a fixation during reading: fixation duration increases even though there is less information to process on a fixation. The two most likely explanations for this phenomenon are: (1) that the reader extracts abnormal information outside the window and this slows down processing; (2) that a restricted window does not allow a preview of a word before it is fixated, and hence identification of the word is slower when the word subsequently is fixated. In the present experiments, these two alternatives were tested. Conditions in which the size of the window alternated between fixations were compared with conditions in which the size of the window remained constant from fixation to fixation. This manipulation allowed us to separate effects due to restriction of the size of the window on the current fixation from preview benefits (which would be due to restriction of the size of the window on the prior fixation). Two experiments demonstrated clear beneficial effects on fixation duration due to receiving a preview of a word on the fixation prior to when it was fixated. In contrast, restriction of the size of the window had only marginal effects on the fixation on which that restriction occurred. In addition, a subsidiary analysis suggested that the benefit of previewing a word was influenced by its length; for short words, a preview primarily allowed the reader to skip the word more frequently, whereas for longer words, a preview primarily shortened the fixation time on the word when it was later fixated.     

Reaction time reduction after parafoveal preview in a lexical decision task

Time and the accuracy of a lexical decision performed on a letter string (either a word or nonword), presented foveally after a parafoveal preview displayed at 5 degrees of eccentricity and 100 msec. duration were measured. Students of Padova University, 10 women and 7 men, ages 19 to 23 years were subjects. The hypothesis investigated was whether the facilitatory effect, a reduction in lexical decision time due to the parafoveal preview, was tied to global visual information acquired in the visual periphery during the preview presentation. In Exp. 1, eight subjects performed the task either with no preview (No Preview) or with a preview presented at 5 degrees eccentricity in two conditions, preview of the same foveal string (Preview-Letters) and preview of symbols ("x xx...") of the same length as the foveal string (Preview Symbols). In Exp. 2, 9 subjects performed the task with two preview conditions, No Preview and preview of the foveal string in uppercase letters at 5 degrees of eccentricity (Preview Uppercase). Analyses suggested the reduction in lexical decision time due to the Preview with respect to the No Preview condition is tied to global information extracted during parafoveal presentation. The reduction in lexical decision time depends on word texture, i.e., letters' identities and also word boundary, in addition to word length.     

Masking of foveal and parafoveal vision during eye fixations in reading

A window or visual mask as moved across text in synchrony with the reader's eye movements. The size of the window or mask was varied so that either information in foveal or parafoveal vision was masked on each fixation. In another experiment, the onset of the mask was delayed for a certain amount of time following the end of the saccade. The results of the experiments point out the relative importance of foveal and parafoveal vision for reading and further indicate that most of the visual information necessary for reading can be acquired during the first 50 msec that information is available during an eye fixation.     

The influence of parafoveal typographical errors on eye movements in reading

Three experiments are reported, examining the effects of a typographical error in parafoveal vision on aspects of foveal inspection time and saccade targeting. All the experiments involved reading for comprehension. A contingent presentation procedure ensured that typographical errors were restored to their correct form before they were viewed in foveal vision: They were never available for foveal processing. In Experiment 1, the error was formed by replacing the first letter of the target word with a second occurrence of its second letter, producing an illegal nonword. This manipulation had no significant effect on foveal inspection time, but lowered the probability that a short word (“de” or “du”) prior to the target would be skipped. In Experiment 2 the familiarity of the target's initial letters was maintained constant across conditions. This manipulation removed the target 1 skipping effect, suggesting that the outcome of Experiment 1 was due to orthographic rather than lexical illegality, but revealed shorter foveal inspection times as a function of the presence of the error. Experiment 3 manipulated lexical and sublexical properties of the parafoveal typing error. Properties of the parafoveal error again influenced prior foveal inspection times. The pattern of results suggested that the determining properties were sublexical rather than lexical. The results as a whole are incompatible with a view of information processing in reading in which foveal processing remains immune from concurrent parafoveal influences.     

Lexical and sublexical semantic preview benefits in Chinese reading

Semantic processing from parafoveal words is an elusive phenomenon in alphabetic languages, but it has been demonstrated only for a restricted set of noncompound Chinese characters. Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm, this experiment examined whether parafoveal lexical and sublexical semantic information was extracted from compound preview characters. Results generalized parafoveal semantic processing to this representative set of Chinese characters and extended the parafoveal processing to radical (sublexical) level semantic information extraction. Implications for notions of parafoveal information extraction during Chinese reading are discussed.