Readers can identify the meanings of words without looking at them: Evidence from regressive eye movements
- PDF / 315,125 Bytes
- 8 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 26 Downloads / 173 Views
BRIEF REPORT
Readers can identify the meanings of words without looking at them: Evidence from regressive eye movements Elizabeth R. Schotter 1 & Anna Marie Fennell 1
# The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2019
Abstract Previewing words prior to fixating them leads to faster reading, but does it lead to word identification (i.e., semantic encoding)? We tested this with a gaze-contingent display change study and a subsequent plausibility manipulation. Both the preview and the target words were plausible when encountered, and we manipulated the end of the sentence so that the different preview was rendered implausible (in critical sentences) or remained plausible (in neutral sentences). Regressive saccades from the end of the sentence increased when the preview was rendered implausible compared to when it was plausible, especially when the preview was high frequency. These data add to a growing body of research suggesting that linguistic information can be obtained during preview, to the point where word meaning is accessed. In addition, these findings suggest that the meaning of the fixated target does not always override the semantic information obtained during preview. Keywords Eye movements and reading . Reading . Word meaning . Word recognition
Introduction Readers move their eyes from word to word to take advantage of high visual acuity in central vision, but also obtain visual information from non-central vision (i.e., during parafoveal preview). Although research suggests that readers obtain enough information during preview to initiate eyemovement plans (see Schotter, 2018; Schotter, Angele, & Rayner, 2012), does the preview also influence what they understand from the text? If preview is used to identify words, it means the reading system is rather risky by performing word recognition based on low-quality visual information. Preview effects on fixation behavior Initial theories about parafoveal preview suggested that the preview was used for trans-saccadic integration (i.e., information from the preview Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-019-01662-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Elizabeth R. Schotter [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave. PCD 4118G, Tampa, FL 33620, USA
was merged or compared with information from the target once it was fixated; Pollatsek, Lesch, Morris, & Rayner, 1992; Rayner, 1975; see Cutter, Drieghe, & Liversedge, 2015). These theories were based on an eye-tracking paradigm (i.e., the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm; Rayner, 1975) that dissociates the preview from the directly fixated word by showing one stimulus during preview, which changes to a different word (i.e., the target) once the reader makes an eye movement to it. This paradigm yields two primary findings: (1) a preview validity effect whereby readers fixate for less time when the preview had been valid (e.g., identical or similar to the target) than invalid (
Data Loading...
