The Role of Attention in Word Recognition: Results from OB1-Reader

When reading, orthographic information is extracted not only from the word the reader is looking at, but also from adjacent words in the parafovea. Here we examined, using the recently introduced OB1-reader computational model, how orthographic information can be processed in parallel across multiple words and how orthographic information can be integrated across time and space. Although OB1-reader is a model of text reading, here we used it to simulate single-word recognition experiments in which parallel processing has been shown to play a role by manipulating the surrounding context in flanker and priming paradigms. In flanker paradigms, observers recognize a central word flanked by other letter strings located left and right of the target and separated from the target by a space. The model successfully accounts for the finding that such flankers can aid word recognition when they contain bigrams of the target word, independent of where those flankers are in the visual field. In priming experiments, in which the target word is preceded by a masked prime, the model accounts for the finding that priming occurs independent of whether the prime and target word are in the same location or not. Crucial to these successes is the key role that spatial attention plays within OB1-reader, as it allows the model to receive visual input from multiple locations in parallel, while limiting the kinds of errors that can potentially occur under such spatial pooling of orthographic information.     

What Eye Movements Reveal About Later Comprehension of Long Connected Texts

We know that reading involves coordination between textual characteristics and visual attention, but research linking eye movements during reading and comprehension assessed after reading is surprisingly limited, especially for reading long connected texts. We tested two competing possibilities: (a) the weak association hypothesis: Links between eye movements and comprehension are weak and short-lived, versus (b) the strong association hypothesis: The two are robustly linked, even after a delay. Using a predictive modeling approach, we trained regression models to predict comprehension scores from global eye movement features, using participant-level cross-validation to ensure that the models generalize across participants. We used data from three studies in which readers (Ns = 104, 130, 147) answered multiple-choice comprehension questions ~30 min after reading a 6,500-word text, or after reading up to eight 1,000-word texts. The models generated accurate predictions of participants' text comprehension scores (correlations between observed and predicted comprehension: 0.384, 0.362, 0.372, ps < .001), in line with the strong association hypothesis. We found that making more, but shorter fixations, consistently predicted comprehension across all studies. Furthermore, models trained on one study's data could successfully predict comprehension on the others, suggesting generalizability across studies. Collectively, these findings suggest that there is a robust link between eye movements and subsequent comprehension of a long connected text, thereby connecting theories of low-level eye movements with those of higher order text processing during reading.     

The asymmetric effect of regulatory fit on moral judgments of other-oriented lies

We examined whether regulatory fit effects are asymmetric—namely, whether they occur only among individuals with a promotion focus or a prevention focus. We adopted a task where individuals make moral judgments of other-oriented lies and conducted three studies. The results indicated that prevention-focused individuals judged other-oriented lies based on a vigilant strategy as more moral than lies based on an eager strategy (Studies 1 and 2). Meanwhile for promotion-focused individuals, there were no differences between eager and vigilant strategies on moral judgments of other-oriented lies. Additionally, the results suggested that the feeling of rightness is an underlying mechanism of the regulatory fit effects of prevention focus (Study 3).     

Clash of the climates: Examining the paradoxical effects of climates for promotion and prevention

Organizations often communicate seemingly paradoxical strategic imperatives to their employees that reflect a focus on promotion (take risks) and prevention (be prudent), as outlined by regulatory focus theory. When consistently emphasized and reinforced in an organization, these strategic inclinations can emerge as divergent climates for promotion and prevention that cloud the organization's perceived identity and reduce collective organizational commitment among employees. With a coherent organizational identity acting as both a sensemaking tool and a means of potential self-enhancement for employees, we use social identity theory to hypothesize that similarly emphasized promotion and prevention climates are negatively related to employees’ collective organizational commitment and indirectly, negatively related to organizational productivity. We test our hypotheses in a sample of 107 manufacturing organizations, using polynomial regression with response surface analysis to examine how similarly emphasized promotion and prevention climates relate to collective commitment and organizational productivity. Our analyses reveal that as organization-level promotion and prevention climate scores became more similar, collective organizational commitment decreases. Furthermore, we find that similarly emphasized promotion and prevention climates are negatively related to organizational productivity via collective commitment. We reconcile these findings with the organizational paradox and ambidexterity literatures and implicate promising avenues for future research.     

The Effects of Regulatory Fit between Explanation Framing and Applicants’ Regulatory Foci on Applicant Reaction

Abstract

Drawing from regulatory fit theory and the literature on persuasion, the current study is the first to explore whether the fit between explanation framing and applicants’ regulatory foci could enhance applicant reaction. We hypothesized that a positively framed explanation fits with applicants’ promotion foci and that a negatively framed explanation fits with applicants’ prevention foci. Three studies were conducted in which participants with different regulatory foci rated their perceived procedural fairness and organizational attractiveness after reading differently framed recruitment advertisements, rejection letters, and job offer letters. The results supported our hypothesis by showing significant interactions between explanation framing and participants’ regulatory foci on procedural fairness and organizational attractiveness perception in the contexts of recruitment advertising and rejection letters. In these contexts, compared with receiving a negatively framed explanation, promotion-focused recipients reported higher levels of perceived fairness and organizational attractiveness after receiving a positively framed explanation, and promotion-focused recipients’ fairness and attractiveness perceptions were higher than prevention-focused recipients’, after receiving a positively framed explanation. Moreover, perceived procedural fairness mediated the relationship between regulatory fit and perceived organizational attractiveness. However, regulatory fit effects were not found in the context of job offer letters.     

Guess Who Buys Cheap? The Effect of Consumers’ Goal Orientation on Product Preference

The current research examines how goal orientation affects consumer preference among products with different prices. We argue that a less expensive product may have not only lower perceived quality but also greater perceived quality variability. This greater perceived variability provides the opportunity for optimistic, promotion‐oriented consumers to overestimate the quality of the less expensive product. This effect is weaker, however, for a more expensive product that consumers perceive to have less quality variability and which thus provides less room for quality overestimation. As a result, we hypothesize that promotion‐oriented consumers, as compared to prevention‐oriented consumers, will demonstrate a stronger preference for a less expensive product. In a field study and two laboratory experiments, we obtain empirical support both for the hypothesized effect of consumers’ goal orientation on their product preference and for its underlying process. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of our results.     

“We” are Different: Exploring the Diverse Effects of Friend and Family Accessibility on Consumers' Product Preferences

Prior research suggests that close friends and family members exert similar effects on consumer behavior because both represent strong social ties and are subject to communal norms. However, drawing on regulatory focus theory, we postulate that accessibility of friend and family can have divergent impacts on consumers' subsequent purchase decisions. Across four experiments, as well as a pilot study, we demonstrate that accessibility of friend (vs. family) is more likely to activate a promotion focus, which results in more favorable consumer responses toward products with promotion‐focused appeals, whereas accessibility of family (vs. friend) is more likely to activate a prevention focus, which leads to more positive consumer responses toward products with prevention‐focused appeals.     

The effect of visual word features on the acquisition of orthographic knowledge

Research with adults has shown that the distortion of visual word features, and in particular of the multiletter features within words, hampers word recognition. In this study, "CaSe MiXiNg" was employed to examine the effect of disrupting visual word features on the acquisition of orthographic knowledge in children. During the training, 18 beginning and 27 advanced readers (in Grades 2, 4, and 5) repeatedly read a set of pseudowords in either lowercase or mixed case. During this training, case mixing appeared to impair reading speed in both reader groups. At posttest, 1 day after the training, case format was either the same as or different from that during the training. Lowercase pseudowords were recognized faster after a lowercase training than after a mixed-case training. In a second study, case was found not to affect the rapid naming of single letters. The combined results suggest that case mixing disrupted the multiletter features in pseudowords and that the disruption of these features can affect the acquisition of orthographic knowledge.     

Rimes are not necessarily favored by prereaders: evidence from meta- and epilinguistic phonological tasks

This article explores young children's facility in phonological awareness tasks requiring either the detection or the articulation of head, coda, onset, and rime subsyllabic units shared in word pairs. Data are reported from 70 nonreading children and 21 precocious readers attending preschools. Prereading children were able to articulate shared heads, codas, and onsets, although rimes rarely were articulated. Precocious readers were able to articulate shared rimes, but articulation performance was still most accurate for onsets and codas. Rimes and heads were equally accessible in the detection task and were identified more often than onsets and codas (nonreaders) and codas (readers). It is concluded that the articulation advantage for nonrime units cannot simply reflect early reading instruction. This disjoint pattern of phonological awareness in detection and production tasks does not support Goswami's phonological status hypothesis. Results may instead reflect quite distinct influences on epilinguistic and metalinguistic phonological development.     

It's what's on the outside that matters: an advantage for external features in children's word recognition

The relative importance of internal and external letter features of words in children's developing reading was investigated to clarify further the nature of early featural analysis. In Experiment 1, 72 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds read aloud words displayed as wholes, external features only (central features missing, thereby preserving word shape information), or internal features only (central features preserved). There was an improvement in the processing of external features compared with internal features as reading experience increased. Experiment 2 examined the processing of the internal and external features of words employing a forward priming paradigm with 60 8-, 10-, and 12-year-olds. Reaction times to internal feature primes were equivalent to a nonprime blank condition, whereas responses to external feature primes were faster than those to the other two prime types. This advantage for the external features of words is discussed in terms of an early and enduring role for processing the external visual features in words during reading development.