In two experiments, we explored how readers encode information that is linguistically focused. Subjects read sentences in which a word or phrase was focused by a syntactic manipulation (Experiment 1) or by a preceding context (Experiment 2) while their eye movements were monitored. Readers had longer reading times while reading a region of the sentence that was focused than when the same region was not focused. The results suggest that readers encode focused information more carefully, either upon first encountering it or during a second-pass reading of it. Weconclude that the enhanced memory representations for focused information found in previous studies may be due in part to differences in reading patterns for focused information.Researchers in language processing have explored how people access, remember, and use information during language comprehension. Given the limitations ofhuman information-processing capabilities, an important aspect of successful language comprehension involves selectivity in what is encoded and retained from sentence to sentence. Some information becomes more available for use in interpreting subsequent sentences, while other information becomes less available. Typically, selectivity in what is attended to and retained is based on salience: concepts that are perceived as important are attended to more closely than other information, since these concepts seem likely to be the ones that will be needed for understanding forthcoming information. One factor that affects perceived importance or salience of information within sentences is linguistic focus.The term "focus" has been used by researchers in artificial intelligence, linguistics, and psycholinguistics to describe a number of related phenomena. As used in this paper, the focus ofa sentence consists of the information that is newly asserted in a discourse, sometimes contrastive, and is most prominent or emphasized within the sentence (Chomsky, 1971;Halliday, 1967;Rochemont & Culicover, 1990). Focus is conveyed by such things as spoken accent (prosodic information) and nontypical sentence structures (syntactic information; see Rochemont & Culicover, 1990). For example, in the spoken sentence HILDY kissed Tom, Hildy is focused by being accented (capitalization denotes accenting).

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Four experiments investigated the effect of syntactic argument structure on the evaluation and comprehension of utterances with different patterns of pitch accents. Linguistic analyses of the relation between focus and prosody note that it is possible for certain accented constituents within a broadly focused phrase to project focus to the entire phrase. We manipulated focus requirements and accent in recorded question-answer pairs and asked listeners to make linguistic judgments of prosodic appropriateness (Experiments 1 and 3) or to make judgments based on meaningful comprehension (Experiments 2 and 4). Naive judgments of prosodic appropriateness were generally consistent with the linguistic analyses, showing preferences for utterances in which contextually new noun phrases received accent and old noun phrases did not, but suggested that an accented new argument NP was not fully effective in projecting broad focus to the entire VP. However, the comprehension experiments did demonstrate that comprehension of a sentence with broad VP focus was as efficient when only a lexical argument NP received accent as when both NP and verb received accent. Such focus projection did not occur when the argument NP was an "independent quantifier" such as nobody or everything. The results extend existing demonstrations that the ease of understanding spoken discourse depends on appropriate intonational marking of focus to cases where certain structurally-defined words can project focus-marking to an entire phrase.

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In seven experiments, we investigated whether compensated and uncompensated adults with dyslexia show different patterns of deficits in magnocellular visual processing and in language processing tasks. In four visual tasks, we failed to find evidence of magnocellular deficits in either group. However, both groups of adults with dyslexia showed deficits in component language skills, and the degree of reading impairment predicted the nature and extent of these deficits. Uncompensated readers showed deficits in orthographic and especially phonological coding and awareness and were slower on rapid naming. Compensated readers showed word and nonword performance below controls but better than the uncompensated readers. The compensated group was not significantly less accurate than controls on phonological awareness, nor significantly worse overall on rapid naming.