Attention allocation to the right and left of a fixated word: Use of orthographic information from multiple words during reading

Eye movement contingent display changes were used to manipulate the information to the right of a fixated target in one experiment and to its right and left in a second experiment. Experiment 1 showed large increases in target viewing duration when orthographically illegal information was visible to the right of the target. Experiment 2 yielded smaller effects of orthographically illegal information in the parafovea on target viewing. Experiment 2 also showed that readers obtained useful information to the right of a fixated target irrespective of the type of information that was visible to the target's left. These results indicate that orthographic information is obtained from more than one word prior to saccade programming, and that the processing of orthographic information to the right and left of a fixated target is functionally independent.