Distinct Subsystems for the Parafoveal Processing of Spatial and Linguistic Information during Eye Fixations in Reading

Inhoff, Albrecht W.; Radach, Ralph; Eiter, Brianna M.; Juhasz, Barbara J.

doi:10.1080/02724980244000639

Cited by 61 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…On the basis of our findings and those of Inhoff et al (2003), it seems to us that the most likely interpretation within the frame of the EOVP model is that word length information and linguistic information independently influence the skipping decision. Word length is used in the very beginning of the fixation to obtain a rough estimate of the chances of recognising the parafoveal word by the end of the fixation, and this estimate is used to decide whether or not to programme a saccade to this word.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…However, other recent evidence reported by Inhoff et al (2003) tempers the enthusiasm about this possibility. Inhoff et al manipulated the length information of parafoveal target words by either presenting the correct word or by replacing one middle letter of the word with a blank space so that it seemed as if there were two short words coming up in the parafovea (e.g., subject vs. sub ect).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

“…Such cross-talk between low-level visual information and high-level language information was first suggested by Hochberg (1975) and also features in Clark and O'Regan's (1999) ideas about parafoveal word recognition. Inhoff, Radach, Eiter, and Juhasz (2003) recently called this view that knowledge of word length assumes linguistic function in the word recognition process the word length constraint hypothesis.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Word skipping in reading: On the interplay of linguistic and visual factors

Drieghe

Brysbaert

Desmet

et al. 2004

European Journal of Cognitive Psychology

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An eye movement experiment is reported in which target words of two and four letters were presented in sentences that strongly raised the expectation of a particular word. There were three possible conditions: The expected word was present in the sentence, an unexpected word of the same length was present, or an unexpected word of a different length was present (all continuations were acceptable, but the latter two were difficult to predict). Our first purpose was to test one of the core assumptions of the Extended Optimal Viewing Position model of eye guidance in reading (Brysbaert & Vitu, 1998). This model states that word skipping is primarily a function of the length of the upcoming word. It leads to the prediction that an unpredicted two-letter word will be skipped more often than a predicted four-letter word, which is indeed what we observed. Our second aim was to determine if we could obtain an interaction between context predictability and parafoveal word length, by looking at what happens when the length of the parafoveal word does not agree with the length of the expected word. No such interaction was observed although the effects of both word length and predictability were substantial. These findings are interpreted as evidence for the hypothesis that visual and language-related factors independently affect word skipping.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Word skipping in reading: On the interplay of linguistic and visual factors

Drieghe

Brysbaert

Desmet

et al. 2004

European Journal of Cognitive Psychology

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“…Previous research has demonstrated that word length and word boundary information is used by the eye movement targeting system during reading Rayner, Fischer, & Pollatsek, 1998). Furthermore, studies have demonstrated that presenting inaccurate word length information or removing spaces between words in the parafovea leads to disruptions in normal reading behavior (Inhoff, Radach, Eiter, & Juhasz, 2003;Inhoff, Starr, Liu, & Wang, 1998;Juhasz, White, Liversedge, & Rayner, 2008;Morris, Rayner, & Pollatsek, 1990;Rayner et al, 1998;Spragins, Lefton, & Fisher, 1976). Prior research has also demonstrated that word length positively correlates with the number of fixations received during normal reading, leading to more fixations on long than on short words (Rayner & McConkie, 1976;Rayner, Sereno, & Raney, 1996).…”

mentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Previous studies have defined, operationalized, and manipulated orthographic familiarity, informativeness, legality, saliency, and regularity in a variety of ways in an attempt to highlight the possible role of orthographic characteristics as important driving factors behind the observed differences in initial fixation landing positions (Everatt & Underwood, 1992;Hyönä et al, 1989;Inhoff et al, 2003;Radach et al, 2004;Underwood et al, 1990;White, 2008;White & Liversedge 2004, 2006b). Across many experiments, areas of text containing difficult-toprocess or visually "salient" low-level linguistic information seem to be strongly correlated with deviations from predicted spatial saccade characteristics (i.e., deviation from the PVL).…”

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confidence: 99%

Effects of parafoveal word length and orthographic features on initial fixation landing positions in reading

Plummer

Rayner

2012

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Previous research has demonstrated that readers use word length and word boundary information in targeting saccades into upcoming words while reading. Previous studies have also revealed that the initial landing positions for fixations on words are affected by parafoveal processing. In the present study, we examined the effects of word length and orthographic legality on targeting saccades into parafoveal words. Long (8-9 letters) and short (4-5 letters) target words, which were matched on lexical frequency and initial letter trigram, were paired and embedded into identical sentence frames. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) was used to manipulate the parafoveal information available to the reader before direct fixation on the target word. The parafoveal preview was either identical to the target word or was a visually similar nonword. The nonword previews contained orthographically legal or orthographically illegal initial letters. The results showed that orthographic preprocessing of the word to the right of fixation affected eye movement targeting, regardless of word length. Additionally, the lexical status of an upcoming saccade target in the parafovea generally did not influence preprocessing.Keywords Eye movements . Reading . Orthography . Word perception For skilled readers, the act of extracting meaning from text seems simple, if not completely effortless. However, this impression belies the complexity of the necessary coordination of perception, attention, motor control, and language processing. A comprehensive understanding of eye movement behavior during reading has the potential to elucidate broad aspects of human cognition. Determining what factors influence when and where the eyes move is crucial for understanding written language processing. Despite over a century of research and several decades of investigation using extremely sophisticated instruments and measurements, there is still some contention about what influences the most basic temporal and spatial characteristics of eye movement behavior during reading. In the present study, we further investigated the factors that influence where the eyes go once the decision to move is made. Research on the spatial characteristics of eye movement behavior has the potential to further illuminate the nature of the eye movement targeting system and the constraints imposed on this system during normal reading.Readers acquire information during fixations, or periods when the eyes are relatively still (Rayner, 1998(Rayner, , 2009. It is important to note that high-spatial-frequency information, such as letters and words, is easily identified in the foveal region. In the region beyond the fovea, the parafovea, because of steep degradation of visual acuity, word and letter information can be extracted, but with greatly reduced efficiency (Schotter, Angele, & Rayner, 2012). Outside the parafovea, in the peripheral region of the visual field, only low-spatial-frequency information such as word boundary and length information can be ex...

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