Reading strategy modulates parafoveal-on-foveal effects in sentence reading

Task demands and individual differences have been linked reliably to word skipping during reading. Such differences in fixation probability may imply a selection effect for multivariate analyses of eye-movement corpora if selection effects correlate with word properties of skipped words. For example, with fewer fixations on short and highly frequent words the power to detect parafoveal-on-foveal effects is reduced. We demonstrate that increasing the fixation probability on function words with a manipulation of the expected difficulty and frequency of questions reduces an age difference in skipping probability (i.e., old adults become comparable to young adults) and helps to uncover significant parafoveal-on-foveal effects in this group of old adults. We discuss implications for the comparison of results of eye-movement research based on multivariate analysis of corpus data with those from display-contingent manipulations of target words.     

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.     

Getting ahead of yourself: Parafoveal word expectancy modulates the N400 during sentence reading

An important question in the reading literature regards the nature of the semantic information readers can extract from the parafovea (i.e., the next word in a sentence). Recent eye-tracking findings have found a semantic parafoveal preview benefit under many circumstances, and findings from event-related brain potentials (ERPs) also suggest that readers can at least detect semantic anomalies parafoveally (Barber, Van der Meij, & Kutas, Psychophysiology, 50(1), 48–59, 2013). We use ERPs to ask whether fine-grained aspects of semantic expectancy can affect the N400 elicited by a word appearing in the parafovea. In an RSVP-with-flankers paradigm, sentences were presented word by word, flanked 2° bilaterally by the previous and upcoming words. Stimuli consisted of high constraint sentences that were identical up to the target word, which could be expected, unexpected but plausible, or anomalous, as well as low constraint sentences that were always completed with the most expected ending. Findings revealed an N400 effect to the target word when it appeared in the parafovea, which was graded with respect to the target’s expectancy and congruency within the sentence context. Furthermore, when targets appeared at central fixation, this graded congruency effect was mitigated, suggesting that the semantic information gleaned from parafoveal vision functionally changes the semantic processing of those words when foveated.     

Inhibitory neighbor priming effects in eye movements during reading

We report an eye movement experiment investigating whether prior processing of a word’s orthographic neighbor in a sentence influences subsequent word processing during reading. There was greater difficulty in early word processing when a target word’s neighbor rather than a control word appeared earlier in a sentence; this effect was uninfluenced by the relative lexical frequency of the word and its neighbor. We discuss this inhibitory neighbor priming effect in terms of competitive network models of word recognition and the process of lexical identification in the E-Z Reader model of oculomotor control (e.g., Reichle, Pollatsek, Fisher, & Rayner, 1998).     

Context effects in repetition priming are sense effects

This articlereports three experiments that investigate the role ofcontext in repetition priming using a lexical decision task. The experiments show that repetition priming is either eliminated or significantly reduced if a change in context also alters the perceived sense of a nonhomographic target word. If perceived sense is not altered, a change in context is inconsequential. This points to the important role played by perceived sense in repetition priming. An explanation within a sense-specific activation framework is proposed in preference to a modified processing view.     

Word skipping during sentence reading: effects of lexicality on parafoveal processing

Two experiments examined how lexical status affects the targeting of saccades during reading by using the boundary technique to vary independently the content of a letter string when seen in parafoveal preview and when directly fixated. Experiment 1 measured the skipping rate for a target word embedded in a sentence under three parafoveal preview conditions: full preview (e.g., brain–brain), pseudohomophone preview (e.g., brane–brain), and orthographic nonword control preview (e.g., brant–brain); in the first condition, the preview string was always an English word, while in the second and third conditions, it was always a nonword. Experiment 2 investigated three conditions where the preview string was always a word: full preview (e.g., beach–beach), homophone preview (e.g., beech–beach), and orthographic control preview (e.g., bench–beach). None of the letter string manipulations used to create the preview conditions in the experiments disrupted sublexical orthographic or phonological patterns. In Experiment 1, higher skipping rates were observed for the full (lexical) preview condition, which consisted of a word, than for the nonword preview conditions (pseudohomophone and orthographic control). In contrast, Experiment 2 showed no difference in skipping rates across the three types of lexical preview conditions (full, homophone, and orthographic control), although preview type did influence reading times. This pattern indicates that skipping not only depends on the presence of disrupted sublexical patterns of orthography or phonology, but also is critically dependent on processes that are sensitive to the lexical status of letter strings in the parafovea.     

The effects of ageing and visual noise on conceptual integration during sentence reading

The effortfulness hypothesis implies that difficulty in decoding the surface form, as in the case of age-related sensory limitations or background noise, consumes the attentional resources that are then unavailable for semantic integration in language comprehension. Because ageing is associated with sensory declines, degrading of the surface form by a noisy background can pose an extra challenge for older adults. In two experiments, this hypothesis was tested in a self-paced moving window paradigm in which younger and older readers’ online allocation of attentional resources to surface decoding and semantic integration was measured as they read sentences embedded in varying levels of visual noise. When visual noise was moderate (Experiment 1), resource allocation among young adults was unaffected but older adults allocated more resources to decode the surface form at the cost of resources that would otherwise be available for semantic processing; when visual noise was relatively intense (Experiment 2), both younger and older participants allocated more attention to the surface form and less attention to semantic processing. The decrease in attentional allocation to semantic integration resulted in reduced recall of core ideas in both experiments, suggesting that a less organized semantic representation was constructed in noise. The greater vulnerability of older adults at relatively low levels of noise is consistent with the effortfulness hypothesis.     

The effects of ageing and visual noise on conceptual integration during sentence reading

The effortfulness hypothesis implies that difficulty in decoding the surface form, as in the case of age-related sensory limitations or background noise, consumes the attentional resources that are then unavailable for semantic integration in language comprehension. Because ageing is associated with sensory declines, degrading of the surface form by a noisy background can pose an extra challenge for older adults. In two experiments, this hypothesis was tested in a self-paced moving window paradigm in which younger and older readers' online allocation of attentional resources to surface decoding and semantic integration was measured as they read sentences embedded in varying levels of visual noise. When visual noise was moderate (Experiment 1), resource allocation among young adults was unaffected but older adults allocated more resources to decode the surface form at the cost of resources that would otherwise be available for semantic processing; when visual noise was relatively intense (Experiment 2), both younger and older participants allocated more attention to the surface form and less attention to semantic processing. The decrease in attentional allocation to semantic integration resulted in reduced recall of core ideas in both experiments, suggesting that a less organized semantic representation was constructed in noise. The greater vulnerability of older adults at relatively low levels of noise is consistent with the effortfulness hypothesis.     

The effects of study-task relevance on perceptual repetition priming

Repetition priming is easily elicited in many traditional paradigms, and the possibility that perceptual priming may be other than an automatic consequence of perception has received little consideration. This issue is explored in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants named the target from a four-item category search study task more quickly than the nontarget study items at a later naming test. Experiment 2 extended this finding to conditions in which stimuli were individually presented at study. In three different study tasks, stimuli relevant to study-task completion elicited priming on a later test, but stimuli presented outside the context of a task did not. In both experiments, recognition was above chance for nonrelevant stimuli, suggesting that participants explicitly remembered stimuli that did not elicit priming. Results suggest that priming is sensitive to study-task demands and may reflect a more adaptive and flexible mechanism for modification of perceptual processing than previously appreciated.     

Beyond binary judgments: Prime validity modulates masked repetition priming in the naming task

Bodner and Masson (2001) reported that masked repetition priming of lexical decisions is often greater when the repetition primes appear on a high, rather than a low, proportion of trials. They suggested that processing episodes are constructed for masked primes and that recruitment of those episodes is affected by the probability that the prime will be useful for processing the target. If context-sensitive recruitment of primes is a general mechanism, a similar effect should also occur in a nonbinary response task. In accord with this hypothesis, using the naming task and a 45-msec prime duration, we show that masked repetition priming effects for uppercase words, case-alternated words, and pseudohomophones were greater when .8 rather than .2 of the trials involved repetition (vs. unrelated) primes. Prime validity effects are consistent with a memory recruitment view of priming but may be difficult to explain using activation-based mechanisms.     

Dissociating mere exposure and repetition priming as a function of word type

The mere exposure effect is defined as enhanced attitude toward a stimulus that has been repeatedly exposed. Repetition priming is defined as facilitated processing of a previously exposed stimulus. We conducted a direct comparison between the two phenomena to test the assumption that the mere exposure effect represents an example of repetition priming. In two experiments, having studied a set of words or nonwords, participants were given a repetition priming task (perceptual identification) or one of two mere exposure (affective liking or preference judgment) tasks. Repetition priming was obtained for both words and nonwords, but only nonwords produced a mere exposure effect. This demonstrates a key boundary for observing the mere exposure effect, one not readily accommodated by a perceptual representation systems (Tulving & Schacter, 1990) account, which assumes that both phenomena should show some sensitivity to nonwords and words.     

Words translated in sentence contexts produce repetition priming in visual word comprehension and spoken word production

Previous research with words read in context at encoding showed little if any long-term repetition priming. In Experiment 1, 96 Spanish–English bilinguals translated words in isolation or in sentence contexts at encoding. At test, they translated words or named pictures corresponding to words produced at encoding and control words not previously presented. Repetition priming was reliable in all conditions, but priming effects were generally smaller for contextualized than for isolated words. Repetition priming in picture naming indicated priming from production in context. A componential analysis indicated priming from comprehension in context, but only in the less fluent language. Experiment 2 was a replication of Experiment 1 with auditory presentation of the words and sentences to be translated. Repetition priming was reliable in all conditions, but priming effects were again smaller for contextualized than for isolated words. Priming in picture naming indicated priming from production in context, but the componential analysis indicated no detectable priming for auditory comprehension. The results of the two experiments taken together suggest that repetition priming reflects the long-term learning that occurs with comprehension and production exposures to words in the context of natural language.     

Inhibitory control during sentence reading in dyslexic children.

The present study focused on the nature of the reading disability of children with the guessing subtype of dyslexia (who read fast and inaccurately). The objective was to separate the excitatory account of their reading disturbance (i.e., in guessers the words' resting levels of activation are oversensitive to semantic context) from the inhibitory account (i.e., guessers tend to react prematurely to (false) candidate words that are activated in the lexicon). To disentangle the above accounts, guessers and normal readers were presented with a sentential priming task (SPT). In the SPT, subjects had to determine whether the final word of a sentence was semantically congruent or incongruent with the sentence, but had to inhibit their 'congruent' or 'incongruent' response in case of an occasionally presented pseudoword. To evoke guessing, each pseudoword closely resembled either a valid congruent or incongruent word. Guessing referred to prematurely accepting a pseudoword as a word that either appropriately or inappropriately completed the sentence. The extent to which subjects guessed at word meaning was evidenced by the false recognition rates (FRR) of the misspelled terminal words. Analyses on the FRRs of the pseudowords showed that guessers had significantly more difficulty in suppressing the 'go tendency' triggered by the pseudowords. It was concluded that the impulsive reading style of guessers should be ascribed to a less efficient suppression mechanism rather than to excessive reliance on contextual information. Specifically, the data were explained by assuming that the availability of the pseudoword's candidate meaning activated the hand to respond with, and that guessers found difficulty in suspending this response until they analyzed all letters in the stimulus and they could be sure of its spelling.     

Masked repetition priming and proportion effects under cognitive load.

The authors used a cognitive load manipulation (rehearsing a string of digits during the trial) to test the automaticity of (a) masked repetition priming and (b) the masked repetition proportion (RP) effect (i.e., greater priming when the proportion of repetition-prime trials is higher) in the lexical decision task. The RP (.2 vs. .8) was varied across blocks. Masked priming was not reduced under load compared with a no-load group. Surprisingly, only the load group showed an RP effect in response latencies, although the no-load group showed an RP effect in the error rates. Our results show that masked priming is automatic, yet the influence of masked primes can nonetheless be adjusted at an unconscious level. Implications for accounts of masked priming are discussed.     

Syntactic priming and the lexical boost effect during sentence production and sentence comprehension: An fMRI study

Behavioral syntactic priming effects during sentence comprehension are typically observed only if both the syntactic structure and lexical head are repeated. In contrast, during production syntactic priming occurs with structure repetition alone, but the effect is boosted by repetition of the lexical head. We used fMRI to investigate the neuronal correlates of syntactic priming and lexical boost effects during sentence production and comprehension. The critical measure was the magnitude of fMRI adaptation to repetition of sentences in active or passive voice, with or without verb repetition. In conditions with repeated verbs, we observed adaptation to structure repetition in the left IFG and MTG, for active and passive voice. However, in the absence of repeated verbs, adaptation occurred only for passive sentences. None of the fMRI adaptation effects yielded differential effects for production versus comprehension, suggesting that sentence comprehension and production are subserved by the same neuronal infrastructure for syntactic processing.     

Distribution effects of orthographic similarity and priming by masked repetition]

This research centres on the effect that the orthographic neighbourhood has in the visual recognition of words. Specifically, we studied to what extent orthographic neighbourhood distribution, that is, the number of letter positions allowing formation of at least one neighbour (Pugh, Rexer, Peter, & Katz, 1994), influences the masked repetition priming effect. In a previous study (Mathey, Robert, & Zagar, 2004), interaction between neighbourhood distribution and orthographic priming was obtained in the lexical decision task. The Interactive Activation Model (IA; McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981) simulated this interaction. With the orthographic priming effect modified for distribution of the neighbourhood of target words, it was necessary to study whether the repetition priming effect also varied as a function of this indicator. Studying this interaction presents a major theoretical issue in specifying the activating and inhibiting processes presented in the IA model. Simulations were produced to obtain precise model predictions regarding the neighbourhood distribution effect in a repetitive priming situation for our experimental material. Target words all had two neighbours that were most frequent. These neighbours were isolated, that is, distributed over two letter positions (e.g.: TAUX/faux-toux), or associated, i.e., concentrated on one single position (e.g., SEAU/beau-peau). Targets were preceded by an identical priming (repetitive priming; e.g.: seau-SEAU) or by controlled priming (e.g., &-SEAU). The simulation results obtained using the IA model show the facilitating effects of neighbourhood distribution and repetitive priming, but no interaction between these factors. The experimental results obtained in a lexical decision task confirm these predictions. Thus, the empirical data replicate the neighbourhood distribution's facilitating effect (Mathey & Zagar, 2000) as well as the facilitating effect of masked repetition (Forster & Davis, 1984). Finally, the most interesting result is that the facilitating effect of repetition is comparable for target words with associated neighbours and target words with isolated neighbours. An explanation of the combined effects of the orthographic neighbourhood and orthographic masked repetition priming, integrating data from literature as well as from the current study, is proposed within the framework of the IA model.     

Phonological representation of words in working memory during sentence reading

The temporal dynamics of a visual target word’s phonological representation was examined by presentation of an irrelevant spoken companion word when the participant’s eyes reached the target’s location during sentence reading. The spoken word was identical, similar, or dissimilar to the phonological specification of the visual target. All spoken words increased the time spent viewing the target, with larger effects in thesimilar anddissimilar spoken word conditions than in theidentical condition. The reading of posttarget text was disrupted when the spoken word was similar but not when it was identical or dissimilar to the target. Phonological interference indicates that a word’s phonological representation remains active after it has been identified during sentence reading.     

Fast priming during eye fixations in reading.

Near-threshold primes were "flashed" in a target location prior to the onset of a target word while Ss read. The type and duration of the prime were manipulated. In Exp. 1, identical, related, and unrelated primes were presented for 60, 45, or 30 ms from onset of an eye fixation. The prime was then replaced with the target word, which remained in place while Ss finished reading the sentence. Fixation time on the target word was measured. Exp. 2 replicated Exp. 1, with two exceptions: A random letter string replaced the identical prime condition, and prime durations of 39, 30, or 21 ms were used. In both experiments, significant priming effects (related vs. unrelated) were obtained when the prime was presented for 30 ms. Results are discussed with regard to subliminal priming effects. Applications to the study of word recognition processes are also discussed.     

Motor set modulates automatic priming effects of uninformative cues

In a series of three experiments, we examined facilitatory and inhibitory effects of uninformative spatial cues in a four-choice reaction time (RT) task that required three different types of responses: detection, reaching, and keypressing. Results revealed a pattern of facilitation and inhibition that strongly depended on response mode: Whereas detection and reaching showed longer RTs for cued than uncued locations (reflecting inhibition of return), keypress responses showed shorter RTs for cued than uncued locations (reflecting automatic response activation). Together, these results provide converging evidence for the Grouping model of precuing effects [Adam, J. J., Hommel, B., & Umiltà, C. (2003). Preparing for perception and action (I): The role of grouping in the response-cuing task. Cognitive Psychology, 46, 302-358; Adam, J. J., Hommel, B., & Umiltà, C. (2005). Preparing for perception and action (II): Automatic and effortful processes in response-cuing. Visual Cognition, 12, 1444-1473].     

Semantic feature activation takes time: longer SOA elicits earlier priming effects during reading

Cognitive Processing - While most previous studies of “semantic” priming confound associative and semantic relations, here we use a simple co-occurrence-based approach to examine...