Chapter 11 - On the Processing of Meaning from Parafoveal Vision During Eye Fixations in Reading

Abstract

This chapter reviews research on semantic processing in parafoveal vision during reading. Five arguments based on the data are reviewed in the chapter. The first argument is that reading on the basis of parafoveal information is quite difficult. The second argument is that word skipping is the evidence that readers can sometimes obtain the meaning of a word to the right of fixation; the view is that when a word is identified to the right of fixation, it will typically be skipped. The third argument is against the notion of semantic preprocessing wherein the eyes move further into the words that have informative endings. The fourth argument reviews the evidence that indicates that semantic codes are not the source of preview benefit effects in reading; the source of the preview benefit appears to be some type of abstract letter code and/or phonological code. The fifth argument suggests that it would be premature to assume that there are semantic parafoveal–on-foveal effects in reading. The chapter suggests that there may be problems with the generalizability of some of the studies purporting to show such effects and further suggests that in the context of reading, while there may be parafoveal–on-foveal effects because of unusual orthography at the beginning of the word to the right of fixation, there is not much convincing evidence for the effects being due to the meaning of the word to the right of fixation.