130,420 research outputs found
Using E-Z reader to examine the consequences of fixation-location measurement error
No full textThere is an ongoing debate about whether fixation durations during reading are only influenced by the processing difficulty of the words being fixated (i.e., the serial-attention hypothesis) or whether they are also influenced by the processing difficulty of the previous and/or upcoming words (i.e., the attention- gradient hypothesis). This article reports the results of 3 simulations that examine how systematic and random errors in the measurement of fixation locations can generate 2 phenomena that support the attention-gradient hypothesis: parafoveal-on-foveal effects and large spillover effects. These simulations demonstrate how measurement error can produce these effects within the context of a computational model of eye-movement control during reading (E-Z Reader; Reichle, 2011) that instantiates strictly serial allocation of attention, thus demonstrating that these effects do not necessarily provide strong evidence against the serial-attention hypothesis.<br/
Lack of semantic parafoveal preview benefit in reading revisited
No full textIn contrast to earlier research, evidence for semantic preview benefit in reading has been reported by Hohenstein and Kliegl (Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40, 166–190, 2013) in an alphabetic writing system; they also implied that prior demonstrations of lack of a semantic preview benefit needed to be reexamined. In the present article, we report a rather direct replication of an experiment reported by Rayner, Balota, and Pollatsek (Canadian Journal of Psychology, 40, 473–483, 1986). Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm, subjects read sentences that contained a target word (razor), but different preview words were initially presented in the sentence. The preview was identical to the target word (i.e., razor), semantically related to the target word (i.e., blade), semantically unrelated to the target word (i.e., sweet), or a visually similar nonword (i.e., razar). When the reader’s eyes crossed an invisible boundary location just to the left of the target word location, the preview changed to the target word. Like Rayner et al. (Canadian Journal of Psychology, 40, 473–483, 1986), we found that fixations on the target word were significantly shorter in the identical condition than in the unrelated condition, which did not differ from the semantically related condition; when an orthographically similar preview had been initially present in the sentence, fixations were shorter than when a semantically unrelated preview had been present. Thus, the present experiment replicates the earlier data reported by Rayner et al. (Canadian Journal of Psychology, 40, 473–483, 1986), indicating evidence for an orthographic preview benefit but a lack of semantic preview benefit in reading English
Introducing a new entity into discourse: comprehension and production evidence for the status of dutch er ‘‘there” as a higher-level expectancy monitor
No full textThis paper reports on the ways in which new entities are introduced into discourse. First, we present the evidence in support of a model of indefinite reference processing based on three principles: the listener’s ability to make predictive inferences in order to decrease the unexpectedness of upcoming words, the availability to the speaker of grammatical constructions that customize predictive inferences, and the use of ‘‘expectancy monitors” to signal and facilitate the introduction of highly unpredictable entities. We provide evidence that one of these expectancy monitors in Dutch is the post-verbal variant of existential er (the equivalent of the unstressed existential ‘‘there” in English). In an eye-tracking experiment we demonstrate that the presence of er decreases the processing difficulties caused by low subject expectancy. A corpus-based regression analysis subsequently confirms that the production of er is determined almost exclusively by seven parameters of low subject expectancy. Together, the comprehension and production data suggest that while existential er functions as an expectancy monitor in much the same way as speech disfluencies (hesitations, pauses and filled pauses), er is a higher-level expectancy monitor because it is available in spoken and written discourse and because it is produced more systematically than any disfluency
How important are linguistic factors in word skipping during reading?
No full textThe probability of skipping a word is influenced by its processing ease. For instance, a word that is predictable from the preceding context is skipped more often than an unpredictable word. A meta-analysis of studies examining this predictability effect reported effect sizes ranging from 0 to 13%, with an average of 8%. One study does not fit within this picture and reported 23% more skipping of Dutch pronouns in sentences in which the pronoun had no disambiguating value (e.g. ‘Mary was envious of Helen because she never looked so good’) than in sentences where it did have a disambiguating value (e.g. ‘Mary was envious of Albert because she never looked so good’). We re-examined this ambiguity in Dutch using a task that more closely resembles normal reading and observed only a 9% difference in skipping of the pronoun, bringing this linguistic effect in line with the other findings
On measuring the impact of hyperlinks on reading
No full textWe increasingly spend a vast amount of time on the Web and much of that time is spent reading. One of the main differences between reading non-Web based text and reading on the Web is the presence of hyperlinks within the text, linking various related Web content and Web pages together. Some researchers and commentators have claimed that hyperlinks hinder reading because they are a distraction that may have a negative effect on the reader’s ability to process the text. However, very few controlled experiments have been conducted to verify these claims.In the experiments documented here we utilise eye tracking as a new methodology for examining how we read hyperlinked text. An eye tracker was used to observe participant’s behaviour while reading. The results showed that hyperlinked text did not generally have a negative impact upon reading behaviour. However, participants did show a tendency to re-read sentences that contained hyperlinked uncommon (low frequency) words. This suggests that hyperlinks highlight important information to the reader and the hyperlinks add additional content which for more difficult concepts, invites rereading of the preceding text
Skim reading: an adaptive strategy for reading on the web
No full textIt has been suggested that readers spend a great deal of time skim reading on the Web and that if readers skim read they reduce their comprehension of what they have read. There have been a number of studies exploring skim reading, but relatively little exists on the skim reading of hypertext and Webpages. In the experiment documented here, we utilised eye tracking methodology to explore how readers skim read hypertext and how hyperlinks affect reading behaviour. The results show that the readers read faster when they were skim reading and comprehension was reduced. However, the presence of hyperlinks seemed to assist the readers in picking out important information when skim reading. We suggest that readers engage in an adaptive information foraging strategy where they attempt to minimise comprehension loss while maintaining a high reading speed. Readers use hyperlinks as markers to suggest important information and use them to read through the text in an efficient and effective way. This suggests that skim reading may not be as damaging to comprehension when reading hypertext, but it does mean that the words we choose to hyperlink become very important to comprehension for those skim reading text on the Web
Please stop using word frequency data that are likely to be word length effects in disguise
No full textReichle et al. claim to successfully simulate a frequency effect of 60% on skipping rate in human data, whereas the original article reports an effect of only 4%. We suspect that the deviation is due to the length of the words in the different conditions, which implies that E-Z Reader is wrong in its conception of eye guidance between words
Parafoveal-on-foveal effects on eye movements in text reading: does an extra space make a difference?
No full textSchiepers (1980) 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 parafovea leading to shorter fixation times on the foveal word. Implications of these low-level parafoveal-on-foveal effects are discussed
The size of the cross-lingual masked phonological priming effect does not depend on second language proficiency
No full textUsing a masked phonological priming paradigm, Brysbaert, Van Dyck and Van de Poel (1999) showed that Dutch-French bilinguals perform better at identifying tachistoscopically presented L2 words (e.g. oui [yes]) when those words are primed by L1 words or nonwords that are homophonic to the L2 target word according to the L1 grapheme-phoneme conversion rules (e.g. wie [who]). They noted that this priming effect was smaller for balanced bilinguals than for less proficient bilinguals, although the interaction failed to reach significance. Findings of Gollan, Forster and Frost (1997) suggest that this could be attributed to a greater reliance on phonology in L2 reading, caused by a smaller proficiency in this language. However, in this study we show that the Dutch-French cross-lingual phonological priming effect is equally large for perfectly balanced and less proficient bilinguals. Our findings are in line with more recent work of Van Wijnendaele and Brysbaert (2002)
Word skipping: implications for theories of eye movement control in reading
No full textWhen healthy adults are reading English texts, about one third of the words are skipped. In this chapter, we review the different explanations that have been proposed. We also have an in-depth look at the variables that influence word skipping. These are: errors in the programming and execution of a saccade, the length of the upcoming word n+1 in parafoveal vision, the distance from word n+1 relative to the current fixation location (also known as the launch site), and the difficulty of word n+1 within the sentence. We provide evidence that the effects of word length and distance cannot be explained by assuming that word n+1 is skipped only when it has been identified in parafoveal vision. Rather, readers often seem to make an educated guess about where to send the next forward saccade on the basis of incomplete information. If this guess turns out to be incorrect (and a difficult word has been skipped inappropriately), an immediate correction follows. This is either a regression to the skipped word or a longer fixation duration. In that way, eye movements remain closely coupled to the ongoing language processing
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