Semantic Preview Benefit Research Articles

Cross-language semantic parafoveal preview benefits in bilinguals.

The aim of this project was to identify factors contributing to cross-language semantic preview benefits. In Experiment 1, Russian-English bilinguals read English sentences with Russian words presented as parafoveal previews. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm was used to present sentences. Critical previews were cognate translations of the target word (CTAPT-START), noncognate translations (CPOK-TERM), or interlingual homograph translations (MOPE-SEA). A semantic preview benefit (i.e., shorter fixation durations for related than unrelated previews) was observed for cognate and interlingual homograph translations, but not for noncognate translations. In Experiment 2, English-French bilinguals read English sentences with French words used as parafoveal previews. Critical previews were interlingual homograph translations of the target word (PAIN-BREAD) or interlingual homograph translations with a diacritic added (PÁIN-BREAD). A robust semantic preview benefit was found only for interlingual homographs without diacritics, although both preview types produced a semantic preview benefit in the total fixation duration. Our findings suggest that semantically related previews need to have substantial orthographic overlap with words in the target language to produce cross-language semantic preview benefits in early eye fixation measures. In terms of the Bilingual Interactive Activation+ model, the preview word may need to activate the language node for the target language before its meaning is integrated with that of the target word. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Semantic plausibility preferentially affects the semantic preview benefit in Chinese reading: evidence from an eye-movement study.

Numerous studies have confirmed that skilled readers can benefit from a semantically related preview word (i.e., semantic preview benefit, SPB), suggesting that readers can extract semantic information from the parafovea to achieve efficient reading. It is still under debate whether the occurrence of this benefit is because of the semantic association between the preview and target words or because of the contextual fit of the preview word in the sentence context. Two independent factors, preview plausibility (preview plausible/implausible) and semantic relatedness (semantically related/unrelated), were manipulated, and we further strictly controlled for syntactic plausibility in the present study. The results showed that the first-pass reading times of the target words were significantly shorter in the plausible preview condition than in the implausible preview condition. However, the main effect of semantic relatedness was found only in the gaze duration measure. The pattern of results revealed that semantic plausibility affects the semantic preview benefit preferentially in Chinese reading, supporting the contextual fit account. Our findings have implications for a better understanding of parafoveal processing and provide empirical support for the eye-movement control model.

Semantic Preview Benefit of Tibetan-Chinese Bilinguals during Chinese Reading

ABSTRACT When reading Chinese, skilled native readers regularly gain a preview benefit (PB) when the parafoveal word is orthographically or semantically related to the target word. Evidence shows that non-native, beginning Chinese readers can obtain an orthographic PB during Chinese reading, which indicates the parafoveal processing of low-level visual information. However, whether non-native Chinese readers who are more proficient in Chinese can make use of high-level parafoveal information remains unknown. Therefore, this study examined parafoveal processing during Chinese reading among Tibetan-Chinese bilinguals with high Chinese proficiency and compared their PB effects with those from native Chinese readers. Tibetan-Chinese bilinguals demonstrated both orthographic and semantic PB but did not show phonological PB and only differed from native Chinese in the identical PB when preview characters were identical to the targets. These findings demonstrate that non-native Chinese readers can extract semantic information from parafoveal preview during Chinese reading and highlight the modulation of parafoveal processing efficiency by reading proficiency. The results are in line with the direct route to access the mental lexicon of visual Chinese characters among non-native Chinese speakers.

Cross-linguistic semantic preview benefit in Basque-Spanish bilingual readers: Evidence from fixation-related potentials

During reading, we can process and integrate information from words allocated in the parafoveal region. However, whether we extract and process the meaning of parafoveal words is still under debate. Here, we obtained Fixation-Related Potentials in a Basque-Spanish bilingual sample during a Spanish reading task. By using the boundary paradigm, we presented different parafoveal previews that could be either Basque non-cognate translations or unrelated Basque words. We prove for the first time cross-linguistic semantic preview benefit effects in alphabetic languages, providing novel evidence of modulations in the N400 component. Our findings suggest that the meaning of parafoveal words is processed and integrated during reading and that such meaning is activated and shared across languages in bilingual readers.

Semantic preview benefit and cost: Evidence from parafoveal fast-priming paradigm

How is semantic information in the mental lexicon accessed and selected during reading? Readers process information of both the foveal and parafoveal words. Recent eye-tracking studies hint at bi-phasic lexical activation dynamics, demonstrating that semantically related parafoveal previews can either facilitate, or interfere with lexical processing of target words in comparison to unrelated previews, with the size and direction of the effect depending on exposure time to parafoveal previews. However, evidence to date is only correlational, because exposure time was determined by participants' pre-target fixation durations. Here we experimentally controlled parafoveal preview exposure duration using a combination of the gaze-contingent fast-priming and boundary paradigms. We manipulated preview duration and examined the time course of parafoveal semantic activation during the oral reading of Chinese sentences in three experiments. Semantic previews led to faster lexical access of target words than unrelated previews only when the previews were presented briefly (80 ms in Experiments 1 and 3). Longer exposure time (100 ms or 150 ms) eliminated semantic preview effects, and full preview without duration limit resulted in preview cost, i.e., a reversal of preview benefit. Our results indicate that high-level semantic information can be obtained from parafoveal words and the size and direction of the parafoveal semantic effect depends on the level of lexical activation.

Readers extract semantic information from parafoveal two-character synonyms in Chinese reading

In Chinese reading, the possibility and mechanism of semantic parafoveal processing has been debated for a long time. To advance the topic, “semantic preview benefit” in Chinese reading was reexamined, with a specific focus on how it is affected by the semantic relatedness between preview and target words at the two-character word level. Eighty critical two-character words were selected as target words. Reading tasks with gaze-contingent boundary paradigms were used to study whether different semantic-relatedness preview conditions influenced parafoveal processing. The data showed that synonyms (the most closely related preview) produced significant preview benefit compared with the semantic-related (non-synonyms) condition, even when plausibility was controlled. This result indicates that the larger extent of semantic preview benefit is mainly caused by the larger semantic relatedness between preview and target words. Moreover, plausibility is not the only cause of semantic preview benefit in Chinese reading. These findings improve the current understanding of the mechanism of parafoveal processing in Chinese reading and the implications on modeling eye movement control are discussed.

Semantic parafoveal-on-foveal effects and preview benefits in reading: Evidence from Fixation Related Potentials

During reading parafoveal information can affect the processing of the word currently fixated (parafovea-on-fovea effect) and words perceived parafoveally can facilitate their subsequent processing when they are fixated on (preview effect). We investigated parafoveal processing by simultaneously recording eye movements and EEG measures. Participants read word pairs that could be semantically associated or not. Additionally, the boundary paradigm allowed us to carry out the same manipulation on parafoveal previews that were displayed until reader’s gaze moved to the target words. Event Related Potentials time-locked to the prime-preview presentation showed a parafoveal-on-foveal N400 effect. Fixation Related Potentials time locked to the saccade offset showed an N400 effect related to the prime-target relationship. Furthermore, this later effect interacted with the semantic manipulation of the previews, supporting a semantic preview benefit. These results demonstrate that at least under optimal conditions foveal and parafoveal information can be simultaneously processed and integrated.

Semantic preview benefit in English: Individual differences in the extraction and use of parafoveal semantic information.

Although there is robust evidence that skilled readers of English extract and use orthographic and phonological information from the parafovea to facilitate word identification, semantic preview benefits have been elusive. We sought to establish whether individual differences in the extraction and/or use of parafoveal semantic information could account for this discrepancy. Ninety-nine adult readers who were assessed on measures of reading and spelling ability read sentences while their eye movements were recorded. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm was used to manipulate the availability of relevant semantic and orthographic information in the parafovea. On average, readers showed a benefit from previews high in semantic feature overlap with the target. However, reading and spelling ability yielded opposite effects on semantic preview benefit. High reading ability was associated with a semantic preview benefit that was equivalent to an identical preview on first-pass reading. High spelling ability was associated with a reduced semantic preview benefit despite an overall higher rate of skipping. These results suggest that differences in the magnitude of semantic preview benefits in English reflect constraints on extracting semantic information from the parafovea and competition between the orthographic features of the preview and the target. (PsycINFO Database Record

Is semantic preview benefit due to relatedness or plausibility?

There is increasing evidence that skilled readers of English benefit from processing a parafoveal preview of a semantically related word. However, in previous investigations of semantic preview benefit using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm the semantic relatedness between the preview and target has been confounded with the plausibility of the preview word in the sentence. In the present study, preview relatedness and plausibility were independently manipulated in neutral sentences read by a large sample of skilled adult readers. Participants were assessed on measures of reading and spelling ability to identify possible sources of individual differences in preview effects. The results showed that readers benefited from a preview of a plausible word, regardless of the semantic relatedness of the preview and the target. However, there was limited evidence of a semantic relatedness benefit when the plausibility of the preview was controlled. The plausibility preview benefit was strongest for low proficiency readers, suggesting that poorer readers were more likely to program a forward saccade based on information extracted from the preview. High proficiency readers showed equivalent disruption from all nonidentical previews suggesting that they were more likely to suffer interference from the orthographic mismatch between preview and target. (PsycINFO Database Record

The effect of contextual constraint on parafoveal processing in reading.

Semantic preview benefit in reading is an elusive and controversial effect because empirical studies do not always (but sometimes) find evidence for it. Its presence seems to depend on (at least) the language being read, visual properties of the text (e.g., initial letter capitalization), the type of relationship between preview and target, and as shown here, semantic constraint generated by the prior sentence context. Schotter (2013) reported semantic preview benefit for synonyms, but not semantic associates when the preview/target was embedded in a neutral sentence context. In Experiment 1, we embedded those same previews/targets into constrained sentence contexts and in Experiment 2 we replicated the effects reported by Schotter (2013; in neutral sentence contexts) and Experiment 1 (in constrained contexts) in a within-subjects design. In both experiments, we found an early (i.e., first-pass) apparent preview benefit for semantically associated previews in constrained contexts that went away in late measures (e.g., total time). These data suggest that sentence constraint (at least as manipulated in the current study) does not operate by making a single word form expected, but rather generates expectations about what kinds of words are likely to appear. Furthermore, these data are compatible with the assumption of the E-Z Reader model that early oculomotor decisions reflect "hedged bets" that a word will be identifiable and, when wrong, lead the system to identify the wrong word, triggering regressions.

Lack of semantic parafoveal preview benefit in reading revisited.

In 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.

Rethinking parafoveal processing in reading: Serial-attention models can explain semantic preview benefit and N+2 preview effects

During reading, some information about the word to the right of fixation in the parafovea is typically acquired prior to that word being fixated. Although some degree parafoveal processing is uncontroversial, its precise nature and extent are unclear. For example, can it advance up to the level of semantic processing? Additionally, can it extend across more than two spatially adjacent words? Affirmative answers to either of these questions would seemingly be problematic for serial-attention models of eye-movement control in reading, which maintain that attention is allocated to only one word at a time (see Reichle, 2011). However, in this paper we report simulation results using one such model, E-Z Reader (Reichle, Pollatsek, Fisher, & Rayner, 1998), to examine the two preceding questions. These results suggest the existence of both semantic preview and N+2 preview effects, indicating that they are not incompatible with serial-attention models. We discuss the implications of these findings for models of eye-movement control in reading and provide a new theoretical framework for conceptualizing parafoveal processing during reading and its influence on eye movement behaviour.

Semantic preview benefit during reading.

Word features in parafoveal vision influence eye movements during reading. The question of whether readers extract semantic information from parafoveal words was studied in 3 experiments by using a gaze-contingent display change technique. Subjects read German sentences containing 1 of several preview words that were replaced by a target word during the saccade to the preview (boundary paradigm). In the 1st experiment the preview word was semantically related or unrelated to the target. Fixation durations on the target were shorter for semantically related than unrelated previews, consistent with a semantic preview benefit. In the 2nd experiment, half the sentences were presented following the rules of German spelling (i.e., previews and targets were printed with an initial capital letter), and the other half were presented completely in lowercase. A semantic preview benefit was obtained under both conditions. In the 3rd experiment, we introduced 2 further preview conditions, an identical word and a pronounceable nonword, while also manipulating the text contrast. Whereas the contrast had negligible effects, fixation durations on the target were reliably different for all 4 types of preview. Semantic preview benefits were greater for pretarget fixations closer to the boundary (large preview space) and, although not as consistently, for long pretarget fixation durations (long preview time). The results constrain theoretical proposals about eye movement control in reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

Semantic preview benefit in reading English: The effect of initial letter capitalization.

A major controversy in reading research is whether semantic information is obtained from the word to the right of the currently fixated word (word n + 1). Although most evidence has been negative in English, semantic preview benefit has been observed for readers of Chinese and German. In the present experiment, we investigated whether the discrepancy between English and German may be attributable to a difference in visual properties of the orthography: the first letter of a noun is always capitalized in German, but is only occasionally capitalized in English. This visually salient property may draw greater attention to the word during parafoveal preview and thus increase preview benefit generally (and lead to a greater opportunity for semantic preview benefit). We used English target nouns that can either be capitalized (e.g., We went to the critically acclaimed Ballet of Paris while on vacation.) or not (e.g., We went to the critically acclaimed ballet that was showing in Paris.) and manipulated the capitalization of the preview accordingly, to determine whether capitalization modulates preview benefit in English. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm was used with identical, semantically related, and unrelated previews. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found numerically larger preview benefits when the preview/target was capitalized than when it was lowercase. Crucially, semantic preview benefit was not observed when the preview/target word was not capitalized, but was observed when the preview/target word was capitalized.

Synonyms provide semantic preview benefit in English

While orthographic and phonological preview benefits in reading are uncontroversial (see Schotter, Angele, & Rayner, 2012 for a review), researchers have debated the existence of semantic preview benefit with positive evidence in Chinese and German, but no support in English. Two experiments, using the gazecontingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975), show that semantic preview benefit can be observed in English when the preview and target are synonyms (share the same or highly similar meaning, e.g., curlers-rollers). However, no semantic preview benefit was observed for semantic associates (e.g., curlers-styling). These different preview conditions represent different degrees to which the meaning of the sentence changes when the preview is replaced by the target. When this continuous variable (determined by a norming procedure) was used as the predictor in the analyses, there was a significant relationship between it and all reading time measures, suggesting that similarity in meaning between what is accessed parafoveally and what is processed foveally may be an important influence on the presence of semantic preview benefit. Why synonyms provide semantic preview benefit in reading English is discussed in relation to (1) previous failures to find semantic preview benefit in English and (2) the fact that semantic preview benefit is observed in other languages even for non-synonymous words. Semantic preview benefit is argued to depend on several factors-attentional resources, depth of orthography, and degree of similarity between preview and target.

A validation of parafoveal semantic information extraction in reading Chinese

Parafoveal semantic processing has recently been well documented in reading Chinese sentences, presumably because of language‐specific features. However, because of a large variation of fixation landing positions on pretarget words, some preview words actually were located in foveal vision when readers' eyes landed close to the end of the pretarget words. None of the previous studies has completely ruled out a possibility that the semantic preview effects might mainly arise from these foveally processed preview words. This case, whether previously observed positive evidence for parafoveal semantic processing can still hold, has been called into question. Using linear mixed models, we demonstrate in this study that semantic preview benefit from word N + 1 decreased if fixation on pretarget word N was close to the preview. We argue that parafoveal semantic processing is not a consequence of foveally processed preview words.

Orthographic consistency and parafoveal preview benefit: A resource-sharing account of language differences in processing of phonological and semantic codes

Parafoveal preview benefit (PB) is an implicit measure of lexical activation in reading. PB has been demonstrated for orthographic and phonological but not for semantically related information in English. In contrast, semantic PB is obtained in German and Chinese. We propose that these language differences reveal differential resource demands and timing of phonological and semantic decoding in different orthographic systems.

Semantic and plausibility effects on preview benefit during eye fixations in Chinese reading

The boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) was used to examine whether high level information affects preview benefit during Chinese reading. In two experiments, readers read sentences with a 1-character target word while their eye movements were monitored. In Experiment 1, the semantic relatedness between the target word and the preview word was manipulated so that there were semantically related and unrelated preview words, both of which were not plausible in the sentence context. No significant differences between these two preview conditions were found, indicating no effect of semantic preview. In Experiment 2, we further examined semantic preview effects with plausible preview words. There were four types of previews: identical, related & plausible, unrelated & plausible, and unrelated & implausible. The results revealed a significant effect of plausibility as single fixation and gaze duration on the target region were shorter in the two plausible conditions than in the implausible condition. Moreover, there was some evidence for a semantic preview benefit as single fixation duration on the target region was shorter in the related & plausible condition than the unrelated & plausible condition. Implications of these results for processing of high level information during Chinese reading are discussed.

Preview fixation duration modulates identical and semantic preview benefit in Chinese reading

Semantic preview benefit from parafoveal words is critical for proposals of distributed lexical processing during reading. Semantic preview benefit has been demonstrated for Chinese reading with the boundary paradigm in which unrelated or semantically related previews of a target word N + 1 are replaced by the target word once the eyes cross an invisible boundary located after word N (Yan et al., 2009); for the target word in position N + 2, only identical compared to unrelated-word preview led to shorter fixation times on the target word (Yan et al., in press). A reanalysis of these data reveals that identical and semantic preview benefits depend on preview duration (i.e., the fixation duration on the preboundary word). Identical preview benefit from word N + 1 increased with preview duration. The identical preview benefit was also significant for N + 2, but did not significantly interact with preview duration. The previously reported semantic preview benefit from word N + 1 was mainly due to single- or first-fixation durations following short previews. We discuss implications for notions of serial attention shifts and parallel distributed processing of words during reading.

Semantic preview benefit in eye movements during reading: A parafoveal fast-priming study.

Eye movements in reading are sensitive to foveal and parafoveal word features. Whereas the influence of orthographic or phonological parafoveal information on gaze control is undisputed, there has been no reliable evidence for early parafoveal extraction of semantic information in alphabetic script. Using a novel combination of the gaze-contingent fast-priming and boundary paradigms, we demonstrate semantic preview benefit when a semantically related parafoveal word was available during the initial 125 ms of a fixation on the pretarget word (Experiments 1 and 2). When the target location was made more salient, significant parafoveal semantic priming occurred only at 80 ms (Experiment 3). Finally, with short primes only (20, 40, 60 ms), effects were not significant but were numerically in the expected direction for 40 and 60 ms (Experiment 4). In all experiments, fixation durations on the target word increased with prime durations under all conditions. The evidence for extraction of semantic information from the parafoveal word favors an explanation in terms of parallel word processing in reading.