Chapter 12 - Bridging the Gap Between Old and New: Eye Movements and Vocabulary Acquisition in Reading

Abstract

This chapter describes the process of establishing the meaning of a new word from a single encounter. Reading is a process of acquiring a meaningful message from written text. Yet, readers frequently encounter unfamiliar words in the course of their day-to-day reading. Every language contains thousands of rarely used words. New words and their meanings are constantly being added, either by borrowing from other languages or creating new words in response to technological and cultural changes. Readers are able to selectively attend to contextual information that is relevant to establish a meaning for an unfamiliar word and they infer the meaning of that word on-line. In the experiment discussed in the chapter, the vocabulary test data obtained after the reading session was terminated, indicating that readers were successful at acquiring the intended meaning of the word and that this new knowledge persists beyond the reading episode. Analysis of the eye movement data as a function of the vocabulary test performance revealed a systematic relationship between reading patterns and memory for novel word meaning.