Eye Fixations In Reading Research Articles

Integrating information across eye fixations in reading: The role of letter and word units

Eye movements and eye fixations were recorded to study the integration of letter/word information across interword fixations in reading. Two hypotheses were examined. One hypothesis posits that readers obtain effective information from the beginning two or three letters of a parafoveal word. This information facilitates the recognition of the word when it is being fixated. The alternative posits that effective information is obtained from the complete parafoveal word. The results of the present study showed faster reading rates when parafoveal previews comprised complete words than when they comprised beginning letters alone. Furthermore, the usability of parafoveally available partial word information from beginning and ending letters was not affected by small variations in retinal eccentricity. Both findings were taken as evidence that readers gain useful information from all letters of the parafoveally available word and that whole word information, rather than specific letter information, is integrated across interword fixations in reading.

Lexical access during eye fixations in reading: Are word access codes used to integrate lexical information across interword fixations?

Eye fixation records during reading were obtained to test whether lexical access of a word is distributed across successive interword fixations. Specifically, prelexical analyses discerning the word access code could be performed during the parafoveal processing of a word and lexical access could be completed during the word's subsequent fixation. A series of sentences was read with each sentence containing either a 6-letter compound word (e.g., cowboy), a 6-letter pseudocompound word (e.g., carpet), or a 6-letter control word (e.g., mirror). Reading occurred under four parafoveal text preview conditions affording either no usable preview, preview of a word's beginning three letters, preview of a word's beginning four letters, or preview of a complete parafoveal word. Previews of three and four letters either corresponded to linguistically defined subword units (putative word access codes) or violated these units. The results showed that parafoveal preview benefits from 3- and 4-letter sequences were unaffected by the linguistic status of previewed letters, indicating that word access codes are not used to integrate lexical information across interword fixations. Parafoveal previews of whole words revealed, however, effects of linguistic status. Preview benefits were largest for pseudocompound words which comprised high frequency beginning and ending subword constituents and smallest for control words which did not contain subword constituents with lexical representations. These results support models of parafoveal word recognition which posit, first, that all letters of a parafoveal word contribute to the early phase of word identification and, second, that these letters form mutually reinforcing letter coalitions.

Parafoveal processing of words and saccade computation during eye fixations in reading.

Studied parafoveal word processing during eye fixations in reading to answer two questions: (a) Is the processing of parafoveally available words limited to the identification of beginning letters? (b) Does the parafoveal processing of words affect the following interword saccade? Reading afforded either no parafoveal preview, preview of beginning trigrams, preview of ending trigrams, or preview of the whole parafoveal word. Previews were controlled by replacing original letters either with X's or dissimilar letters. Preview benefits were larger for the whole word previews than for beginning or ending trigram previews. X-masks yielded preview benefits from intact beginning and ending trigrams but dissimilar letter masks yielded benefits from beginning trigrams only. Saccades were larger for whole word previews than for no previews. These results support Logogen-type models of word recognition and a model of saccade computation that posits a time-locked functional relation between the acquisition of parafoveal word information and the positioning of each fixation.

Parafoveal processing of words and saccade computation during eye fixations in reading.

Parafoveal processing of words and saccade computation during eye fixations in reading.

Sequential masking during eye fixations in reading

Letters in the center of vision were masked during readers’ eye fixations. Although Experiment 1 suggested that letters are processed sequentially, Experiment 2 demonstrated that the results were due to the fact that letters fixated on fixation n receive preliminary processing on fixation n-1 when they are in parafoveal vision. When no parafoveal information was available, the results indicated that letters are processed in parallel.

Against parafoveal semantic preprocessing during eye fixations in reading.

Les mouvements oculaires de sujets ont ete enregistres pendant la lecture de phrases et on a fait intervenir un changement dans la presentation avant qu'ils fixent un mot-cible critique. Lorsque le mouvement oculaire du lecteur traversait un endroit-limite invisible, le stimulus presente au debut etait remplace par le mot cible. Si un pretraitement semantique automatique de mots en parafoveal survenait pendant la lecture, la presence d'un mot semantiquement relie devrait faciliter le traitement du mot-cible

Parafoveal word processing during eye fixations in reading: effects of word frequency.

The present experiment measured eye fixations in reading to determine whether word frequency affects the processing of the fixated word and the processing of the word to the right of the fixated word (the parafoveal word). In the experiment, subjects read sentences that contained either a critical high- or low-frequency target word. High- and low-frequency targets were matched on word length and a number of other variables. In one condition, parafoveal visual information to the right of the fixated word was denied or distorted; in other conditions, information about the parafoveal word to the right of the fixated word was available. The main results showed shorter fixations on high-frequency than on low-frequency target words. Furthermore, readers gained more effective previews from high-frequency parafoveal target words than from low-frequency parafoveal target words.

Lexical access during eye fixations in reading: Effects of word-initial letter sequence.

Lexical access during eye fixations in reading: Effects of word-initial letter sequence.

The effect of factivity on lexical retrieval and postlexical processes during eye fixations in reading.

Subjects were required to read short passages of text while their eye movements were monitored. Each experimental passage contained a critical factive or nonfactive verb that was followed by a false complement. In half of the trials, subjects' reading was unimpaired; in the remainder of the trial, a central visual pattern mask, which moved in synchrony with the eyes, was applied. The results showed that (1) factive and nonfactive verbs did not receive different amounts of fixation time during the reading text. However, (2) false complements that followed nonfactive verbs. On the basis of this, it is concluded that individual word characteristics, such as factivity, are encoded automatically while sentence interpretation requires effort to be completed.

Lexical access during eye fixations in reading: effects of word-initial letter sequence.

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that lexical access in reading is initiated on the basis of word-initial letter information obtainable in the parafoveal region. Eye movements were monitored while college students read sentences containing target words whose initial trigram (Experiment 1) or bigram (Experiment 2) imposed either a high or a low degree of constraint in the lexicon. In contradiction to our hypothesis, high-constraint words (e.g., DWARF) received longer fixations than did low-constraint words (e.g., CLOWN), despite the fact that high-constraint words have an initial letter sequence shared by few other words in the lexicon. Moreover, a comparison of fixation times in viewing conditions with and without parafoveal letter information showed that the amount of decrease in target fixation time due to prior parafoveal availability was the same for high-constraint and low-constraint targets. We concluded that increased familiarity of word-initial letter sequence is beneficial to lexical access and that familiarity affects the efficiency of foveal but not parafoveal processing.

Masking of foveal and parafoveal vision during eye fixations in reading.

A window or visual mask as moved across text in synchrony with the reader's eye movements. The size of the window or mask was varied so that either information in foveal or parafoveal vision was masked on each fixation. In another experiment, the onset of the mask was delayed for a certain amount of time following the end of the saccade. The results of the experiments point out the relative importance of foveal and parafoveal vision for reading and further indicate that most of the visual information necessary for reading can be acquired during the first 50 msec that information is available during an eye fixation.

Masking of foveal and parafoveal vision during eye fixations in reading.

Masking of foveal and parafoveal vision during eye fixations in reading.