The influence of foveal lexical processing load on parafoveal preview and saccadic targeting during Chinese reading

Neural correlates for word-frequency effect in Chinese natural reading

Word frequency effect has always been of interest for reading research because of its critical role in exploring mental processing underlying reading behaviors. Access to word frequency information has long been considered an indicator of the beginning of lexical processing and the most sensitive marker for studying when the brain begins to extract semantic information Sereno & Rayner, Brain and Cognition, 42, 78-81, (2000), Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 489-493, (2003). While the word frequency effect has been extensively studied in numerous eye-tracking and traditional EEG research using the RSVP paradigm, there is a lack of corresponding evidence in studies of natural reading. To find the neural correlates of the word frequency effect, we conducted a study of Chinese natural reading using EEG and eye-tracking coregistration to examine the time course of lexical processing. Our results reliably showed that the word frequency effect first appeared in the N200 time window and the bilateral occipitotemporal regions. Additionally, the word frequency effect was reflected in the N400 time window, spreading from the occipital region to the central parietal and frontal regions. Our current study provides the first neural correlates for word-frequency effect in natural Chinese reading so far, shedding new light on understanding lexical processing in natural reading and could serve as an important basis for further reading study when considering neural correlates in a realistic manner.

An early effect of the parafoveal preview on post-saccadic processing of English words

A key aspect of efficient visual processing is to use current and previous information to make predictions about what we will see next. In natural viewing, and when looking at words, there is typically an indication of forthcoming visual information from extrafoveal areas of the visual field before we make an eye movement to an object or word of interest. This "preview effect" has been studied for many years in the word reading literature and, more recently, in object perception. Here, we integrated methods from word recognition and object perception to investigate the timing of the preview on neural measures of word recognition. Through a combined use of EEG and eye-tracking, a group of multilingual participants took part in a gaze-contingent, single-shot saccade experiment in which words appeared in their parafoveal visual field. In valid preview trials, the same word was presented during the preview and after the saccade, while in the invalid condition, the saccade target was a number string that turned into a word during the saccade. As hypothesized, the valid preview greatly reduced the fixation-related evoked response. Interestingly, multivariate decoding analyses revealed much earlier preview effects than previously reported for words, and individual decoding performance correlated with participant reading scores. These results demonstrate that a parafoveal preview can influence relatively early aspects of post-saccadic word processing and help to resolve some discrepancies between the word and object literatures.

Parafoveal Processing of Orthography, Phonology, and Semantics during Chinese Reading: Effects of Foveal Load

The foveal load hypothesis assumes that the ease (or difficulty) of processing the currently fixated word in a sentence can influence processing of the upcoming word(s), such that parafoveal preview is reduced when foveal load is high. Recent investigations using pseudo-character previews reported an absence of foveal load effects in Chinese reading. Substantial Chinese studies to date provide some evidence to show that parafoveal words may be processed orthographically, phonologically, or semantically. However, it has not yet been established whether parafoveal processing is equivalent in terms of the type of parafoveal information extracted (orthographic, phonological, semantic) under different foveal load conditions. Accordingly, the present study investigated this issue with two experiments. Participants' eye movements were recorded as they read sentences in which foveal load was manipulated by placing a low- or high-frequency word N preceding a critical word. The preview validity of the upcoming word N + 1 was manipulated in Experiment 1, and word N + 2 in Experiment 2. The parafoveal preview was either identical to word N + 1(or word N + 2); orthographically related; phonologically related; semantically related; or an unrelated pseudo-character. The results showed robust main effects of frequency and preview type on both N + 1 and N + 2. Crucially, however, interactions between foveal load and preview type were absent, indicating that foveal load does not modulate the types of parafoveal information processed during Chinese reading.

Parafoveal Word Frequency Does Not Modulate the Effect of Foveal Load on Preview in Chinese Reading: Evidence from Eye Movements

The foveal load effect is one of the most fundamental effects in reading psychology, and also one of the most controversial issues in recent years. The foveal load effect refers to the phenomenon that the difficulty of foveal processing affects parafoveal preview. In Chinese reading, whether the foveal load effect exists, as well as whether this effect is modulated by parafoveal word frequency, remains unclear. In this study, the eye-tracking technique was used to track the eye movements of 48 subjects. Utilized the boundary paradigm with single-character words as parafoveal words, the present study manipulated foveal word frequency (high and low), parafoveal word frequency (high and low), and two types of preview (identical preview and pseudocharacter preview) to investigate these questions. The results revealed that the foveal word frequency does not influence preview, suggesting the absence of the foveal load effect when using single-character words as parafoveal words. Furthermore, parafoveal word frequency does not modulate the effect of the foveal load on the preview. This empirical evidence contributes to refining the understanding of the Chinese reading model.

Metacognitive prompts and numerical ordinality in solving word problems: An eye-tracking study

BACKGROUND

The ability to translate concrete manipulatives into abstract mathematical formulas can aid in the solving of mathematical word problems among students, and metacognitive prompts play a significant role in enhancing this process.

AIMS

Based on the concept of semantic congruence, we explored the effects of metacognitive prompts and numerical ordinality on information searching and cognitive processing, throughout the process of solving mathematical word problems among primary school students in China.

SAMPLE

Participants included 73 primary school students (38 boys and 35 girls) with normal or corrected visual acuity.

METHODS

This study was based on a 2 (prompt information: no-prompt, metacognitive-prompt) × 2 (number attribute: cardinal number, ordinal number) mixed experimental design. We analysed multiple eye-movement indices, such as fixation duration, saccadic amplitude, and pupil size, since they pertained to the areas of interest.

RESULTS

When solving both types of problems, pupil sizes were significantly smaller under the metacognitive-prompt condition compared with the no-prompt condition, and shorter dwell time for specific sentences, conditional on metacognitive prompts, indicated the optimization of the presented algorithm. Additionally, the levels of fixation durations and saccadic amplitudes were significantly higher when solving ordinal number word problems compared with solving ordinal number problems, indicating that primary school students were less efficient in reading and faced increased levels of difficulty when solving ordinal number problems.

CONCLUSIONS

The results indicate that for Chinese upper-grade primary school students, cognitive load was lower in the metacognitive prompting condition and when solving cardinal problems, and higher when solving ordinal problems.

Examining the extraction of parafoveal semantic information in Tibetan

This study conducted two experiments to investigate the extraction of semantic preview information from the parafovea in Tibetan reading. In Experiment 1, a single-factor (preview type: identical vs. semantically related vs. unrelated) within-subject experimental design was used to investigate whether there is a parafoveal semantic preview effect (SPE) in Tibetan reading. Experiment 2 used a 2 (contextual constraint: high vs. low) × 3 (preview type: identical vs. semantically related vs. unrelated) within-subject experimental design to investigate the influence of contextual constraint on the parafoveal semantic preview effect in Tibetan reading. Supporting the E-Z reader model, the experimental results showed that in Tibetan reading, readers could not obtain semantic preview information from the parafovea, and contextual constraint did not influence this process. However, comparing high- and low-constrained contexts, the latter might be more conducive to extracting semantic preview information from the parafovea.

Eye Movement Control in Tibetan Reading: The Roles of Word Length and Frequency

We investigated the effects of word length and frequency on eye movement control during Tibetan reading through two experiments. A preliminary experiment examined the predictive effect of word length and frequency on fixation duration and landing position using multiple linear regression analysis. In the formal experiment, we manipulated the length and frequency of target words simultaneously to investigate the effects of word length and frequency on fixation duration and landing position in Tibetan reading. In this study, we found that: (1) there were significant word-length and word-frequency effects affecting all lexical processing in Tibetan reading; (2) there are preferred viewing locations in Tibetan reading; specifically, for short words, it is the end, whereas for long words, it spans from the center to the beginning of the word; (3) word frequency does not affect preferred viewing location in Tibetan reading; (4) the preferred viewing position and the interaction of word length and viewing position found in this study supported the “strategy-tactics” approach.

Preview frequency effects in reading: evidence from Chinese

Studies about sentence reading have shown that visual and lexical information beyond the currently fixated word can be integrated across fixations. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm has been used widely to explore the extent to which parafoveal information can be processed before a word is fixated on. However, a critical review of the current literature suggests that unrelated mask previews are an unlikely baseline control with zero lexical activation, blurring the nature of experimental effects observed in the paradigm. The present study, therefore, aimed at shedding light on the effect of parafoveal mask properties through a manipulation of preview word frequency. Low-frequency preview words that are unrelated to target words elicited a larger interference than high-frequency preview words. We discuss implications of the preview frequency effect for computational models of eye-movement control in reading.

Flexible parafoveal encoding of character order supports word predictability effects in Chinese reading: Evidence from eye movements

Several eye-movement studies have revealed flexibility in the parafoveal processing of character-order information in Chinese reading. In particular, studies show that processing a two-character word in a sentence benefits more from parafoveal preview of a nonword created by transposing rather than replacing its two characters. One issue that has not been investigated is whether the contextual predictability of the target word influences this processing of character order information. However, such a finding would provide novel evidence for an early influence of context on lexical processing in Chinese reading. Accordingly, we investigated this issue in an eye-movement experiment using the boundary paradigm and sentences containing two-character target words with high or low contextual predictability. Prior to the reader's gaze crossing an invisible boundary, each target word was shown normally (i.e. a valid preview) or with its two characters either transposed or replaced by unrelated characters to create invalid nonword previews. These invalid previews reverted to the target word once the reader's gaze crossed the invisible boundary. The results showed larger preview benefits (i.e. a decrease in fixation times) for target words following transposed-character than substituted-character previews, revealing a transposed-character effect similar to that in previous research. In addition, a word predictability effect (shorter fixation times for words with high than low predictability) was observed following both valid and transposed-character previews, but not substituted-character previews. The findings therefore reveal that context can influence an early stage of lexical processing in Chinese reading during which character order is processed flexibly.

New Perspectives on Serialism and Parallelism in Oculomotor Control During Reading: The Multi-Constituent Unit Hypothesis

Currently there are several computational models of eye movement control that provide a good account of oculomotor behavior during reading of English and other alphabetic languages. I will provide an overview of two dominant models: E-Z Reader and SWIFT, as well as a recently proposed model: OB1-Reader. I will evaluate a critical issue of controversy among models, namely, whether words are lexically processed serially or in parallel. I will then consider reading in Chinese, a character-based, unspaced language with ambiguous word boundaries. Finally, I will evaluate the concepts of serialism and parallelism of process central to these models, and how these models might function in relation to lexical processing that is operationalized over parafoveal multi-constituent units.