Is the processing of words during eye fixations in reading strictly serial?

Parallel phonological processing of Chinese characters revealed by flankers tasks

An important and extensively researched question in the field of reading is whether readers can process multiple words in parallel. An unresolved issue regarding this question is whether the phonological information from foveal and parafoveal words can be processed in parallel, i.e., parallel phonological processing. The present study aims to investigate whether there is parallel phonological processing of Chinese characters. The original and the revised flankers tasks were applied. In both tasks, a foveal target character was presented in isolation in the no-flanker condition, flanked on both sides by a parafoveal homophone in the homophone-flanker condition, and by a non-homophonic character in the unrelated-flanker condition. Participants were instructed to fixate on the target characters and press two keys to indicate whether they knew the target characters (lexical vs. non-lexical). In the original flankers task, the stimuli were presented for 150 ms without a post-mask. In the revised flankers task, we set the stimulus exposure time (duration of the stimuli plus the blank interval between the stimuli and the post-mask) to each participant's lexical decision threshold to prevent participants from processing the target and flanker characters serially. In both tasks, reaction times to the lexical targets were significantly shorter in the homophone-flanker condition than in the unrelated-flanker condition, suggesting parallel phonological processing of Chinese characters. In the revised flankers task, accuracy rates to the lexical targets were significantly lower in the unrelated-flanker condition compared to the homophone-flanker condition, further supporting parallel phonological processing of Chinese characters. Moreover, reaction times to the lexical targets were the shortest in the no-flanker condition in both tasks, reflecting the attention distribution over both the target and flanker characters. The findings of this study provide valuable insights into the parallel processing mechanisms involved in reading.

Lexical competition in the flankers task revisited

We investigated the impact of flanking stimuli that are orthographic neighbors of central target words in the reading version of the flankers task. Experiment 1 provided a replication of the finding that flanking words that are orthographic neighbors of central target words (e.g., BLUE BLUR BLUE) facilitate lexical decisions relative to unrelated word flankers (e.g., STEP BLUR STEP). Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that this facilitatory effect might be due to the task that was used in Experiment 1 and in prior research-the lexical decision task. In Experiment 2 the task was perceptual identification, and here we observed that orthographic neighbor flankers interfered with target word identification. Experiment 2 also included a bigram flanker condition (e.g., BL BLUR UE), and here the related bigram flankers facilitated target word identification. We conclude that when the task requires identification of a specific word, effects of lexical competition emerge over and above the facilitatory effects driven by the sublexical spatial pooling of orthographic information across target and flankers, and that the inhibitory influence of lexical competition has an even stronger impact when flankers are whole words.

Lexico-Semantic Influence on Syntactic Processing: An Eye-Tracking Study with Spanish Relative Clauses

This paper investigates the interaction between lexicosemantic and syntactic information in sentence processing by examining the online comprehension of Spanish relative clauses (RCs) of both restrictive and non-restrictive types. A corpus study shows that, in Spanish, a RC may be introduced by different function words (called relativizers), which differ in lexical frequency, as well as semantic features. Based on these facts, an eye-tracking experiment was conducted with the aim of analyzing whether lexicosemantic information could influence sentence processing at the early stages. The results report an early influence of lexicosemantic information not only when activating a relativizer but also when integrating it within the syntactic structure. Additionally, the semantic role played by each RC type seems to constrain sentence processing at different regions. Our results favor an interactive view of language processing, according to which language comprehension is guided from the early stages by different kinds of linguistic information rather than syntactic information alone.

Orthographic relatedness and transposed-word effects in the grammatical decision task

In two on-line experiments (N = 386) we asked participants to make speeded grammatical decisions to a mixture of syntactically correct sentences and ungrammatical sequences of words. In Experiment 1, the ungrammatical sequences were formed by transposing two inner words in a correct sentence (e.g., the brave daunt the wind / the daunt brave the wind), and we manipulated the orthographic relatedness of the two transposed words (e.g., the brave brace the wind / the brace brave the wind). We found inhibitory effects of orthographic relatedness in decisions to both the correct sentences and the ungrammatical transposed-word sequences. In Experiment 2, we further investigated the impact of orthographic relatedness on transposed-word effects by including control ungrammatical sequences that were matched to the transposed-word sequences. We replicated the inhibitory effects of orthographic relatedness on both grammatical and ungrammatical decisions and found that transposed-word effects were not influenced by this factor. We conclude that orthographic relatedness across adjacent words impacts on processes involved in parallel word identification for sentence comprehension, but not on the association of word identities to positions in a sequence.

Review on Eye-Hand Span in Sight-Reading of Music

In a sight-reading task, the position of the eyes on the score is generally further ahead than the note being produced by the instrument. This anticipation allows musicians to identify the upcoming notes and possible difficulties and to plan their gestures accordingly. The eye-hand span (EHS) corresponds to this offset between the eye and the hand and measures the distance or latency between an eye fixation on the score and the production of the note on the instrument. While EHS is mostly quite short, the variation in its size can depend on multiple factors. EHS increases in line with the musician's expertise level, diminishes as a function of the complexity of the score and can vary depending on the context in which it is played. By summarizing the main factors that affect EHS and the methodologies used in this field of study, the present review of the literature highlights the fact that a) to ensure effective sight reading, the EHS must be adaptable and optimized in size (neither too long not too short), with the best sight readers exhibiting a high level of perceptual flexibility in adapting their span to the complexity of the score; b) it is important to interpret EHS in the light of the specificities of the score, given that it varies so much both within and between scores; and c) the flexibility of EHS can be a good indicator of the perceptual and cognitive capacities of musicians, showing that a musician's gaze can be attracted early by a complexity in a still distant part of the score. These various points are discussed in the light of the literature on music-reading expertise. Promising avenues of research using the eye tracking method are proposed in order to further our knowledge of the construction of an expertise that requires multisensory integration.

The Reading Signatures of Agreement Attraction

The comprehension of subject-verb agreement shows "attraction effects," which reveal that number computations can be derailed by nouns that are grammatically unlicensed to control agreement with a verb. However, previous results are mixed regarding whether attraction affects the processing of grammatical and ungrammatical sentences alike. In a large-sample eye-tracking replication of Lago et al. (2015), we support this "grammaticality asymmetry" by showing that the reading profiles associated with attraction depend on sentence grammaticality. In ungrammatical sentences, attraction affected both fixation durations and regressive eye-movements at the critical disagreeing verb. Meanwhile, both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences showed effects of the attractor noun number prior to the verb, in the first- and second-pass reading of the subject phrase. This contrast suggests that attraction effects in comprehension have at least two different sources: the first reflects verb-triggered processes that operate mainly in ungrammatical sentences. The second source reflects difficulties in the encoding of the subject phrase, which disturb comprehension in both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences.

Neural evidence for lexical parafoveal processing

In spite of the reduced visual acuity, parafoveal information plays an important role in natural reading. However, competing models on reading disagree on whether words are previewed parafoveally at the lexical level. We find neural evidence for lexical parafoveal processing by combining a rapid invisible frequency tagging (RIFT) approach with magnetoencephalography (MEG) and eye-tracking. In a silent reading task, target words are tagged (flickered) subliminally at 60 Hz. The tagging responses measured when fixating on the pre-target word reflect parafoveal processing of the target word. We observe stronger tagging responses during pre-target fixations when followed by low compared with high lexical frequency targets. Moreover, this lexical parafoveal processing is associated with individual reading speed. Our findings suggest that reading unfolds in the fovea and parafovea simultaneously to support fluent reading.

Parafoveal-on-foveal repetition effects in sentence reading: A co-registered eye-tracking and electroencephalogram study

When reading, can the next word in the sentence (word n + 1) influence how you read the word you are currently looking at (word n)? Serial models of sentence reading state that this generally should not be the case, whereas parallel models predict that this should be the case. Here we focus on perhaps the simplest and the strongest Parafoveal‐on‐Foveal (PoF) manipulation: word n + 1 is either the same as word n or a different word. Participants read sentences for comprehension and when their eyes left word n, the repeated or unrelated word at position n + 1 was swapped for a word that provided a syntactically correct continuation of the sentence. We recorded electroencephalogram and eye‐movements, and time‐locked the analysis of fixation‐related potentials (FRPs) to fixation of word n. We found robust PoF repetition effects on gaze durations on word n, and also on the initial landing position on word n. Most important is that we also observed significant effects in FRPs, reaching significance at 260 ms post‐fixation of word n. Repetition of the target word n at position n + 1 caused a widely distributed reduced negativity in the FRPs. Given the timing of this effect, we argue that it is driven by orthographic processing of word n + 1, while readers were still looking at word n, plus the spatial integration of orthographic information extracted from these two words in parallel.

A hotly debated issue in reading research concerns the serial versus parallel nature of word identification processes. Evidence in favor of parallel processing has been criticized because it has often been obtained with artificial reading paradigms. Here we show that fixation‐related potentials elicited by a target word embedded in a normal sentence are impacted by the nature of the word immediately to the right of the fixated target word (n), and that this impact became significant 260 ms after fixation of word n. This is in line with parallel orthographic processing across adjacent words during sentence reading.

Reading skill modulates the effect of parafoveal distractors on foveal lexical decision in deaf students

In low-level perceptual tasks and reading tasks, deaf individuals show a redistribution of spatial visual attention toward the parafoveal and peripheral visual fields. In the present study, the experiment adopted the modified flanker paradigm and utilized a lexical decision task to investigate how these unique visual skills may influence foveal lexical access in deaf individuals. It was predicted that irrelevant linguistic stimuli presented in parafoveal vision, during a lexical decision task, would produce a larger interference effect for deaf college student readers if the stimuli acted as distractors during the task. The results showed there was a larger interference effect in deaf college student readers compared to the interference effect observed in participants with typical levels of hearing. Furthermore, deaf college student readers with low-skilled reading levels showed a larger interference effect than those with high-skilled reading levels. The current study demonstrates that the redistribution of spatial visual attention toward the parafoveal visual regions in deaf students impacts foveal lexical processing, and this effect is modulated by reading skill. The findings are discussed in relation to the potential effect that enhanced parafoveal attention may have on everyday reading for deaf individuals.

Parafoveal previews and lexical frequency in natural reading: Evidence from eye movements and fixation-related potentials

Participants' eye movements and electroencephalogram (EEG) signal were recorded as they read sentences displayed according to the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm. Two target words in each sentence were manipulated for lexical frequency (high vs. low frequency) and parafoveal preview of each target word (identical vs. string of random letters vs. string of Xs). Eye movement data revealed visual parafoveal-on-foveal (PoF) effects, as well as foveal visual and orthographic preview effects and word frequency effects. Fixation-related potentials (FRPs) showed visual and orthographic PoF effects as well as foveal visual and orthographic preview effects. Our results replicated the early preview positivity effect (Dimigen, Kliegl, & Sommer, 2012) in the X-string preview condition, and revealed different neural correlates associated with a preview comprised of a string of random letters relative to a string of Xs. The former effects seem likely to reflect difficulty associated with the integration of parafoveal and foveal information, as well as feature overlap, while the latter reflect inhibition, and potentially disruption, to processing underlying reading. Interestingly, and consistent with Kretzschmar, Schlesewsky, and Staub (2015), no frequency effect was reflected in the FRP measures. The findings provide insight into the neural correlates of parafoveal processing and written word recognition in reading and demonstrate the value of utilizing ecologically valid paradigms to study well established phenomena that occur as text is read naturally. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Stable preview difficulty effects in reading with an improved variant of the boundary paradigm

Using gaze-contingent display changes in the boundary paradigm during sentence reading, it has recently been shown that parafoveal word-processing difficulties affect fixations on words to the right of the boundary. Current interpretations of this post-boundary preview difficulty effect range from delayed parafoveal-on-foveal effects in parallel word-processing models to forced fixations in serial word-processing models. However, these findings are based on an experimental design that, while allowing to isolate preview difficulty effects, might have established a bias with respect to asymmetries in parafoveal preview benefit for high-frequent and low-frequent target words. Here, we present a revision of this paradigm varying the preview's lexical frequency and keeping the target word constant. We found substantial effects of the preview difficulty in fixation durations after the boundary confirming that preview processing affects the oculomotor decisions not only via trans-saccadic integration of preview and target word information. An additional time-course analysis showed that the preview difficulty effect was significant across the full fixation duration distribution on the target word without any evidence on the pretarget word before the boundary. We discuss implications of the accumulating evidence of post-boundary preview difficulty effects for models of eye movement control during reading.

Using eye movements to understand the leakage of information during Chinese reading

How is attention allocated during reading? The present eye-movement experiment used a paradigm developed by Liu and Reichle (Psychological Science, 29, 278-287, 2018) to examine object-based attention during reading: Participants were instructed to read one of two spatially overlapping sentences containing colocated target/distractor words of varying frequency. Although target-word frequency modulated fixation-duration measures on the target word, the distractor-word frequency also had a smaller, independent effect. Survival analyses indicate that the distractor-word effect occurred later than the target-word effect, suggesting that subtle orthographic cues were noticed either later or occasionally, thereby modulating decisions about when to move the eyes. The theoretical ramifications of this "leakage" of information are discussed with respect to the general question of attention allocation during reading and possible differences between the reading of Chinese versus English.

Early Attraction in Temporally Controlled Sight Reading of Music

A music reader has to “look ahead” from the notes currently being played—this has usually been called the Eye-Hand Span. Given the restrictions on processing time due to tempo and meter, the Early Attraction Hypothesis suggests that sight readers are likely to locally increase the span of looking ahead in the face of complex upcoming symbols (or symbol relationships). We argue that such stimulus-driven effects on looking ahead are best studied using a measure of Eye-Time Span (ETS) which redefines looking ahead as the metrical distance between the position of a fixation in the score and another position that corresponds to the point of metrical time at fixation onset. In two experiments of temporally controlled sight reading, musicians read simple stepwise melodies that were interspersed with larger intervallic skips, supposed to create points of higher melodic complexity (and visual salience) at the notes following the skips. The results support both Early Attraction (lengthening of looking ahead) and Distant Attraction (lengthening of incoming saccades) in the face of relative melodic complexity. Notably, such effects also occurred on the notes preceding the nominally complex ones. The results suggest that saccadic control in music reading depends on temporal restrictions as well as on local variations in stimulus complexity.

Parafoveal preview effects from word N + 1 and word N + 2 during reading: A critical review and Bayesian meta-analysis

The use of gaze-contingent display techniques to study reading has shown that readers attend not only the currently fixated word, but also the word to the right of the current fixation. However, a critical look at the literature shows that a number of questions cannot be readily answered from the available literature reviews on the topic. First, there is no consensus as to whether readers also attend the second word to the right of fixation. Second, it is not clear whether parafoveal processing is more efficient in languages such as Chinese. Third, it is not well understood whether the measured effects are confounded by the properties of the parafoveal mask. In the present study, we addressed these issues by performing a Bayesian meta-analysis of 93 experiments that used the boundary paradigm (Rayner, Cognitive Psychology, 7, 65-81. doi: 10.1016/0010-028590005-5 , 1975). We describe three main findings: (1) The advantage of previewing the second word to the right is modest in size and likely is not centered on zero; (2) Chinese readers do seem to make more efficient use of parafoveal processing, but this is mostly evident in gaze durations; and (3) there are interference effects associated with using different parafoveal masks that roughly increase when the mask is less word-like.

Linguistic and nonlinguistic influences on the eyes' landing positions during reading

Two eye tracking experiments show that, for near launch sites, the eyes land nearer to the beginning of words with orthographically irregular than with regular initial letter sequences. In addition, the characteristics of words, at least at the level of orthography, influence the direction and length of within-word saccades. Importantly, these effects hold both for lower case and for visually less distinctive upper case text. Furthermore, contrary to previous evidence (Tinker & Paterson, 1939), there is little effect of type case on reading times. Additional analyses of oculomotor behaviour suggest that there is an inverted optimal viewing position for single fixation durations on words. Both the supplementary analyses and the effects of orthography on fixation positions are relevant to current models of eye movements in reading.

Event-related brain potentials reveal age-related changes in parafoveal-foveal integration during sentence processing

Normative aging is associated with deficits in visual acuity and cognitive control that impact the allocation of visual attention, but little is known about how those changes affect information extraction and integration during visual language comprehension in older adulthood. In the current study, we used a visual hemi-field flanker RSVP paradigm with event-related brain potentials to study how older readers process fine-grained aspects of semantic expectancy in parafoveal and foveal vision. Stimuli consisted of high constraint sentences with expected, unexpected but plausible, or anomalous parafoveal target words, as well as low constraint sentences with neutral but expected target words. Older adults showed graded parafoveal N400 effects that were strikingly similar to younger readers, indicating intact parafoveal semantic processing. However, whereas young adults were able to use this parafoveal pre-processing to facilitate subsequent foveal viewing, resulting in a reduced foveal N400 effect, older adults were not able to. Instead, older adults re-processed the semantics of words in foveal vision, resulting in a larger foveal N400 effect relative to the young. Collectively, our findings suggest that although parafoveal semantic processing per se is preserved in aging, there exists an age-related deficit in the ability to rapidly integrate parafoveal and foveal visual semantic representations.

Out of the corner of my eye: Foveal semantic load modulates parafoveal processing in reading

In 2 experiments, we examined the impact of foveal semantic expectancy and congruity on parafoveal word processing during reading. Experiment 1 utilized an eye-tracking gaze-contingent display change paradigm, and Experiment 2 measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in a modified flanker rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm. Eye-tracking and ERP data converged to reveal graded effects of foveal load on parafoveal processing. In Experiment 1, when word n was highly expected, and thus foveal load was low, there was a large parafoveal preview benefit to word n + 1. When word n was unexpected but still plausible, preview benefits to n + 1 were reduced in magnitude, and when word n was semantically incongruent, the preview benefit to n + 1 was unreliable in early pass measures. In Experiment 2, ERPs indicated that when word n was expected, and thus foveal load was low, readers successfully discriminated between valid and orthographically invalid previews during parafoveal perception. However, when word n was unexpected, parafoveal processing of n + 1 was reduced, and it was eliminated when word n was semantically incongruent. Taken together, these findings suggest that sentential context modulates the allocation of attention in the parafovea, such that covert allocation of attention to parafoveal processing is disrupted when foveal words are inconsistent with expectations based on various contextual constraints. (PsycINFO Database Record

Dissociating parafoveal preview benefit and parafovea-on-fovea effects during reading: A combined eye tracking and EEG study

During reading, the parafoveal processing of an upcoming word n+1 can influence word recognition in two ways: It can affect fixation behavior during the preceding fixation on word n (parafovea-on-fovea effect, POF), and it can facilitate subsequent foveal processing once word n+1 is fixated (preview benefit). While preview benefits are established, evidence for POF effects is mixed. Recently, it has been suggested that POF effects exist, but have a delayed impact on saccade planning and thus coincide with preview benefits measured on word n+1. We combined eye movement and EEG recordings to investigate and separate neural correlates of POF and preview benefit effects. Participants read lists of nouns either in a boundary paradigm or the RSVP-with-flankers paradigm, while we recorded fixation- or event-related potentials (FRPs/ERPs), respectively. The validity and lexical frequency of the word shown as preview for the upcoming word n+1 were orthogonally manipulated. Analyses focused on the first fixation on word n+1. Preview validity (correct vs. incorrect preview) strongly modulated fixation times and electrophysiological N1 amplitudes, replicating previous findings. Importantly, gaze durations and FRPs measured on word n+1 were also affected by the frequency of the word shown as preview, with low-frequency previews eliciting a sustained, N400-like centroparietal negativity. Results support the idea that POF effects exist but affect word recognition with a delay. Lastly, once word n+1 was fixated, its frequency also modulated N1 amplitudes in ERPs and FRPs. Taken together, we separated immediate and delayed effects of parafoveal processing on brain correlates of word recognition.

Parafoveal preview effects from word N + 1 and word N + 2 during reading: A critical review and Bayesian meta-analysis

The use of gaze-contingent display techniques to study reading has shown that readers attend not only the currently fixated word, but also the word to the right of the current fixation. However, a critical look at the literature shows that a number of questions cannot be readily answered from the available literature reviews on the topic. First, there is no consensus as to whether readers also attend the second word to the right of fixation. Second, it is not clear whether parafoveal processing is more efficient in languages such as Chinese. Third, it is not well understood whether the measured effects are confounded by the properties of the parafoveal mask. In the present study, we addressed these issues by performing a Bayesian meta-analysis of 93 experiments that used the boundary paradigm (Rayner, Cognitive Psychology, 7, 65-81. doi: 10.1016/0010-028590005-5 , 1975). We describe three main findings: (1) The advantage of previewing the second word to the right is modest in size and likely is not centered on zero; (2) Chinese readers do seem to make more efficient use of parafoveal processing, but this is mostly evident in gaze durations; and (3) there are interference effects associated with using different parafoveal masks that roughly increase when the mask is less word-like.

Visual Binding of English and Chinese Word Parts is Limited to Low Temporal Frequencies

Some perceptual mechanisms manifest high temporal precision, allowing reports of visual information even when that information is restricted to windows smaller than 50 ms. Other visual judgments are limited to much coarser time scales. What about visual information extracted at late processing stages, for which we nonetheless have perceptual expertise, such as words? Here, the temporal limits on binding together visual word parts were investigated. In one trial, either the word ‘ball’ was alternated with ‘deck’, or ‘dell’ was alternated with ‘back’, with all stimuli presented at fixation. These stimuli restrict the time scale of the rod identities because the two sets of alternating words form the same image at high alternation frequencies. Observers made a forced choice between the two alternatives. Resulting 75% thresholds are restricted to 5 Hz or less for words and nonword letter strings. A similar result was obtained in an analogous experiment with Chinese participants viewing alternating Chinese characters. These results support the theory that explicit perceptual access to visual information extracted at late stages is limited to coarse time scales.

Readers extract character frequency information from nonfixated-target word at long pretarget fixations during Chinese reading

We performed 2 eye movement studies to explore whether readers can extract character or word frequency information from nonfixated-target words in Chinese reading. In Experiments 1A and 1B, we manipulated the character frequency of the first character in a 2-character target word and the word frequency of a 2-character target word, respectively. We found that fixation durations on the pretarget words were shorter when the first character of a 2-character target word was presented with high frequency. Such effects were not observed for word frequency manipulations of a 2-character target word. In particular, further analysis revealed that such effects only occurred for long pretarget fixations. These results for character and word frequency manipulations were replicated in a within-subjects design in Experiment 2. These findings are generally consistent with the notion that characters are processed in parallel during Chinese reading. However, we did not find evidence that words are processed in parallel during Chinese reading.

ICAT: a computational model for the adaptive control of fixation durations

Eye movements depend on cognitive processes related to visual information processing. Much has been learned about the spatial selection of fixation locations, while the principles governing the temporal control (fixation durations) are less clear. Here, we review current theories for the control of fixation durations in tasks like visual search, scanning, scene perception, and reading and propose a new model for the control of fixation durations. We distinguish two local principles from one global principle of control. First, an autonomous saccade timer initiates saccades after random time intervals (local-I). Second, foveal inhibition permits immediate prolongation of fixation durations by ongoing processing (local-II). Third, saccade timing is adaptive, so that the mean timer value depends on task requirements and fixation history (Global). We demonstrate by numerical simulations that our model qualitatively reproduces patterns of mean fixation durations and fixation duration distributions observed in typical experiments. When combined with assumptions of saccade target selection and oculomotor control, the model accounts for both temporal and spatial aspects of eye movement control in two versions of a visual search task. We conclude that the model provides a promising framework for the control of fixation durations in saccadic tasks.

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.

Word segmentation of overlapping ambiguous strings during Chinese reading

In 3 experiments, we tested 3 possible mechanisms for segmenting overlapping ambiguous strings in Chinese reading. The first 2 characters and the last 2 characters in a 3-character ambiguous string could both constitute a word in the reported studies. The left-priority hypothesis assumes that the word on the left has an advantage in the competition and the other word cannot be processed until the word on the left is recognized. The independent processing hypothesis assumes that words in different positions are processed simultaneously and independently, and the word segmentation ambiguity cannot be settled without the help of sentence context. The competition hypothesis assumes that all of the words compete for a single winner. The results support a competition account that the characters in the perceptual span activate all of the words they can constitute, and any word can win the competition if its activation is high enough.

Task relevance induces momentary changes in the functional visual field during reading

In the research reported here, we examined whether task demands can induce momentary tunnel vision during reading. More specifically, we examined whether the size of the functional visual field depends on task relevance. Forty participants read an expository text with a specific task in mind while their eye movements were recorded. A display-change paradigm with random-letter strings as preview masks was used to study the size of the functional visual field within sentences that contained task-relevant and task-irrelevant information. The results showed that orthographic parafoveal-on-foveal effects and preview benefits were observed for words within task-irrelevant but not task-relevant sentences. The results indicate that the size of the functional visual field is flexible and depends on the momentary processing demands of a reading task. The higher cognitive processing requirements experienced when reading task-relevant text rather than task-irrelevant text induce momentary tunnel vision, which narrows the functional visual field.

Reading is fundamentally similar across disparate writing systems: a systematic characterization of how words and characters influence eye movements in Chinese reading

While much previous work on reading in languages with alphabetic scripts has suggested that reading is word-based, reading in Chinese has been argued to be less reliant on words. This is primarily because in the Chinese writing system words are not spatially segmented, and characters are themselves complex visual objects. Here, we present a systematic characterization of the effects of a wide range of word and character properties on eye movements in Chinese reading, using a set of mixed-effects regression models. The results reveal a rich pattern of effects of the properties of the current, previous, and next words on a range of reading measures, which is strikingly similar to the pattern of effects of word properties reported in spaced alphabetic languages. This finding provides evidence that reading shares a word-based core and may be fundamentally similar across languages with highly dissimilar scripts. We show that these findings are robust to the inclusion of character properties in the regression models and are equally reliable when dependent measures are defined in terms of characters rather than words, providing strong evidence that word properties have effects in Chinese reading above and beyond characters. This systematic characterization of the effects of word and character properties in Chinese advances our knowledge of the processes underlying reading and informs the future development of models of reading. More generally, however, this work suggests that differences in script may not alter the fundamental nature of reading.

Serial and parallel processing in reading: Investigating the effects of parafoveal orthographic information on nonisolated word recognition

We present a novel lexical decision task and three boundary paradigm eye-tracking experiments that clarify the picture of parallel processing in word recognition in context. First, we show that lexical decision is facilitated by associated letter information to the left and right of the word, with no apparent hemispheric specificity. Second, we show that parafoveal preview of a repeat of word n at word n + 1 facilitates reading of word n relative to a control condition with an unrelated word at word n + 1. Third, using a version of the boundary paradigm that allowed for a regressive eye movement, we show no parafoveal “postview” effect on reading word n of repeating word n at word n – 1 . Fourth, we repeat the second experiment but compare the effects of parafoveal previews consisting of a repeated word n with a transposed central bigram (e.g., caot for coat) and a substituted central bigram (e.g., ceit for coat), showing the latter to have a deleterious effect on processing word n, thereby demonstrating that the parafoveal preview effect is at least orthographic and not purely visual.

The 35th Sir Frederick Bartlett Lecture: Eye movements and attention in reading, scene perception, and visual search

Eye movements are now widely used to investigate cognitive processes during reading, scene perception, and visual search. In this article, research on the following topics is reviewed with respect to reading: (a) the perceptual span (or span of effective vision), (b) preview benefit, (c) eye movement control, and (d) models of eye movements. Related issues with respect to eye movements during scene perception and visual search are also reviewed. It is argued that research on eye movements during reading has been somewhat advanced over research on eye movements in scene perception and visual search and that some of the paradigms developed to study reading should be more widely adopted in the study of scene perception and visual search. Research dealing with “real-world” tasks and research utilizing the visual-world paradigm are also briefly discussed.

Mislocated fixations can account for parafoveal-on-foveal effects in eye movements during reading

Contrasting predictions of serial and parallel views on the processing of foveal and parafoveal information during reading were tested. A high-frequency adjective (young) was followed by either a high-frequency word(n) (child) or a low-frequency word(n) (tenor), which in turn was followed by either a correct (performing) or an orthographic illegal word(n+1) (pxvforming) as a parafoveal preview. A limited parafoveal-on-foveal effect was observed: There were inflated fixation times on word(n) when the preview of word(n+1) was orthographically illegal. However, this parafoveal-on-foveal effect was (a) independent of the frequency of word(n), (b) restricted to those instances when the eyes were very close to word(n+1), and (c) associated with relatively long prior saccades. These observations are all compatible with a mislocated fixation account in which parafoveal-on-foveal effects result from saccadic undershoots of word(n+1) and with a serial model of eye movement control during reading.

Temporal overlap in the linguistic processing of successive words in reading: reply to Pollatsek, Reichle, and Rayner (2006a)

A. Pollatsek, E. D. Reichle, and K. Rayner argue that the critical findings in A. W. Inhoff, B. M. Eiter, and R. Radach are in general agreement with core assumptions of sequential attention shift models if additional assumptions and facts are considered. The current authors critically discuss the hypothesized time line of processing and indicate that the success of Pollatsek et al.'s simulation is predicated on a gross underestimation of the pretarget word's viewing duration in Inhoff et al. and that the actual data are difficult to reconcile with the strictly serial attention shift assumption. The authors also discuss attention shifting and saccade programming assumptions in the E-Z Reader model and conclude that these are not in harmony with research in related domains of study.

Tracking the mind during reading: the influence of past, present, and future words on fixation durations

Reading requires the orchestration of visual, attentional, language-related, and oculomotor processing constraints. This study replicates previous effects of frequency, predictability, and length of fixated words on fixation durations in natural reading and demonstrates new effects of these variables related to 144 sentences. Such evidence for distributed processing of words across fixation durations challenges psycholinguistic immediacy-of-processing and eye-mind assumptions. Most of the time the mind processes several words in parallel at different perceptual and cognitive levels. Eye movements can help to unravel these processes.

Using reinforcement learning to understand the emergence of "intelligent" eye-movement behavior during reading

The eye movements of skilled readers are typically very regular (K. Rayner, 1998). This regularity may arise as a result of the perceptual, cognitive, and motor limitations of the reader (e.g., limited visual acuity) and the inherent constraints of the task (e.g., identifying the words in their correct order). To examine this hypothesis, reinforcement learning was used to allow an artificial "agent" to learn to move its eyes to read as efficiently as possible. The resulting patterns of simulated eye movements resembled those of skilled readers and suggest that important aspects of eye-movement behavior might emerge as a consequence of satisfying the constraints that are imposed on readers. These results also suggest novel interpretations of some contentious empirical results, such as the fixation duration costs associated with word skipping (R. Kliegl & R. Engbert, 2005), and theoretical assumptions, for example the familiarity check in the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control (E. D. Reichle, A. Pollatsek, D. L. Fisher, & K. Rayner, 1998).

Eye movements and the identification of spatially ambiguous words during chinese sentence reading

Readers of Chinese must generally determine word units in the absence of visually distinct inter-word spaces. In the present study, we examined how a sequence of Chinese characters is parsed into words under these conditions. Eye movements were monitored while participants read sentences with a critical four-character (C1234) sequence. Three partially overlapping character groupings formed legal words in the ambiguous condition (C12, C23, and C34), two of which corresponded to context-consistent words (C12 and C34). Two nonoverlapping groupings corresponded to legal words in the control conditions (C12 and C34). In two experiments, readers spent more time viewing the critical character sequence and its two center characters (C23) in the ambiguous condition. These results argue against the strictly serial assignment of characters to words during the reading of Chinese text.

Time course of linguistic information extraction from consecutive words during eye fixations in reading

Sequential attention shift models of reading predict that an attended (typically fixated) word must be recognized before useful linguistic information can be obtained from the following (parafoveal) word. These models also predict that linguistic information is obtained from a parafoveal word immediately prior to a saccade toward it. To test these assumptions, sentences were constructed with a critical pretarget-target word sequence, and the temporal availability of the (parafoveal) target preview was manipulated while the pretarget word was fixated. Target viewing effects, examined as a function of prior target visibility, revealed that extraction of linguistic target information began 70-140 ms after the onset of pretarget viewing. Critically, acquisition of useful linguistic information from a target was not confined to the ending period of pretarget viewing. These results favor theoretical conceptions in which there is some temporal overlap in the linguistic processing of a fixated and parafoveally visible word during reading.

Eye movements and word skipping during reading revisited

The authors examined word skipping in reading in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, skipping rates were higher for a preview of a predictable word than for a visually similar nonword, indicating there is full recognition in parafoveal vision. In Experiment 2, foveal load was manipulated by varying the frequency of the word preceding either a 3-letter target word or a misspelled preview. There was again a higher skipping rate for a correct preview and a lower skipping rate when there was a high foveal load, but there was no interaction, and the pattern of effects in fixation times was the same as in the skipping data. Experiment 2 also showed significant skipping of nonwords similar to the target word, indicating skipping based on partial information.

Is emotional content obtained from parafoveal words during reading? An eye movement analysis

An eye-movement-contingent display change technique was employed to study whether adult readers extract semantic information from parafoveal words during reading. Three types of parafoveal preview conditions were contrasted: an emotional word, a neutral word, and an identical word condition. To have a maximally effective parafoveal manipulation, high-arousal emotional words (sex- and threat-related and curse words) were used as parafoveal previews. Readers' eye fixation patterns around the target word revealed no evidence for parafoveal semantic processing. Furthermore, the pupil size showed no signs for an emotional response triggered by an emotional word previewed parafoveally. These results are consistent with the view that, as a rule, only the fixated word is processed to a semantic level during reading.

Parafoveal-on-foveal effects on eye movements in text reading: Does an extra space make a difference?

Schiepers proposed that in text reading, the currently fixated word and the next word are processed in parallel but with a time delay of 90 ms per degree of eccentricity. In his model, the benefit of seeing the upcoming word is due to the fact that the parafoveal information from fixation n is combined with the foveal information from fixation n+1 to boost word recognition, at least when the fixation on word n is of an optimal duration (between 210 and 270 ms). We tested this assumption by adding an extra blank space between the foveal and the parafoveal word. According to the model, this should result in a 30 ms longer processing time for the foveal word. However, reading time was shorter for a word followed by a double space than for a word followed by a single space. An effect of parafoveal word length was also observed with a longer word in the parafoveal leading to shorter fixation times on the foveal word. Implications of these low-level parafoveal-on-foveal effects are discussed.

Eye-Fixation-Related Potentials: Insight into Parafoveal Processing

Abstract. This paper presents a new methodology for studying cognition, which combines eye movements (EM) and event-related potentials (ERP) to track the cognitive processes that occur during a single eye fixation. This technique, called eye-fixation-related potentials (EFRP), has the advantage of coupling accurate time measures from ERPs and the location of the eye on the stimulus, so it can be used to disentangle perceptual/attentional/cognitive factors affecting reading. We tested this new technique to describe the controversial parafoveal-on-foveal effects on reading, which concern the question of whether two consecutive words are processed in parallel or sequentially. The experiment directly addressed this question by looking at whether semantic relatedness on a target word in a reading-like situation might affect the processing of a prime word. Three pair-word conditions were tested: A semantically associated target word (horse-mare), a semantically nonassociated target word (horse-table) and a nonword (horse-twsui); EFRPs were compared for all conditions. The results revealed that early ERP components differentiated word and nonword processing within 119 ms postfixation (N1 component). Moreover, the amplitude of the right centrofrontal P140 varied as a function of word type, being larger in response to nonassociated words than to nonwords. This component might index a spatial attention shift to the target word and its visual categorization, being highly sensitive to orthographic regularity and “ill-formedness” of words. The P2 consecutive component (peaking at 215 ms) differentiated associated words and nonassociated words, which can account for the semantic parafoveal effect. The EFRP technique, therefore, appears to be fruitful for establishing a time-line of early cognitive processes during reading.

Are long compound words identified serially via their constituents? Evidence from an eyemovement-contingent display change study

The processing of two-constituent 12- to 18-letter Finnish compound nouns was studied by using an eye-movement-contingent display change technique. In the display change condition, all but the first 2 letters of the second constituent were replaced by visually similar letters until the eyes moved across an invisible boundary. When the eyes crossed the boundary, the second constituent was changed to its intended form. In the control condition, there was no display change. The frequency of the first constituent was also varied. The major findings were that (1) fixation time on the first constituent was strongly affected by the frequency of the first constituent but was not at all affected by whether the second constituent was visible, but (2) fixation time on the word subsequent to the first constituent's having been left was strongly affected by the display change. These results are most parsimoniously explained by the serial access of the two constituents for these long compound words.

Distinct subsystems for the parafoveal processing of spatial and linguistic information during eye fixations in reading

Two experiments examined readers' use of parafoveally obtained word length information for word recognition. Both experiments manipulated the length (number of constituent characters) of a parafoveally previewed target word so that it was either accurately or inaccurately specified. In Experiment 1, previews also either revealed or denied useful orthographic information. In Experiment 2, parafoveal targets were either high- or low-frequency words. Eye movement contingent display changes were used to show the intact target upon its fixation. Examination of target viewing duration showed completely additive effects of word length previews and of ortho-graphic previews in Experiment 1, viewing duration being shorter in the accurate-length and the orthographic preview conditions. Experiment 2 showed completely additive effects of word length and word frequency, target viewing being shorter in the accurate-length and the high-frequency conditions. Together these results indicate that functionally distinct subsystems control the use of parafoveally visible spatial and linguistic information in reading. Parafoveally visible spatial information appears to be used for two distinct extralinguistic computations: visual object selection and saccade specification.

A dynamical model of saccade generation in reading based on spatially distributed lexical processing

The understanding of the control of eye movements has greatly benefited from the analysis of mathematical models. Currently most comprehensive models include sequential shifts of visual attention. Here we propose an alternative model of eye movement control, which includes three new principles: spatially distributed lexical processing, a separation of saccade timing from saccade target selection, and autonomous (random) generation of saccades with foveal inhibition. These three features provide a common control mechanism for fixations, refixations, and regressions. Consequently, the model is called SWIFT (Saccade-generation with inhibition by foveal targets). Results from numerical simulations are in good agreement with effects of word frequency on single-fixation, first-fixation, and gaze durations as well as fixation and word skipping probabilities in first-pass analysis. The model inherently produces complex eye movement patterns including refixations and regressions due to its underlying dynamical principles.