Event‐related brain potentials reveal how multiple aspects of semantic processing unfold across parafoveal and foveal vision during sentence reading

Abstract

Recent event‐related brain potential (ERP) experiments have demonstrated parafoveal N400 expectancy and congruity effects, showing that semantic information can be accessed from words in parafoveal vision (a conclusion also supported by some eye‐tracking work). At the same time, it is unclear how higher‐order integrative aspects of language comprehension unfold across the visual field during reading. In the current study, we recorded ERPs in a parafoveal flanker paradigm, while readers were instructed to read passively for comprehension or to judge the plausibility of sentences in which target words varied in their semantic expectancy and congruity. We directly replicated prior work showing graded N400 effects for parafoveal viewing, which are then not duplicated when the target words are processed foveally. Critically, although N400 effects were not modulated by task goals, a posteriorly distributed late positive component thought to reflect semantic integration processes was observed to semantic incongruities only in the plausibility judgment task. However, this effect was observed at a considerable delay, appearing only after words had moved into foveal vision. Our findings thus suggest that semantic access can be initiated in parafoveal vision, whereas central foveal vision may be necessary to enact higher‐order (and task‐dependent) integrative processing.

Parafoveal words can modulate sentence meaning: Electrophysiological evidence from an RSVP-with-flanker task

“…We replicated the findings of previous experiments where the foveal word's congruency effect vanished if the same word had already been preprocessed in the parafovea (Barber et al 2010;Payne et al, 2019;Stites et al, 2017). By comparing the N400 in Condition 1 (preview congruent, foveal congruent, identical words), with Condition 4 (preview incongruent, foveal incongruent, identical words; see Table 1), we found the foveal word's congruency effect to be diminished after parafoveal preprocessing (Figure 3).…”

“…Previous RSVP-with-flanker studies have reported an N400 congruency effect following the presentation of the word already in the parafoveal position (Barber, et al, 2010;Barber, et al, 2013;Li, et al, 2015;Stites, et al, 2017;Payne, et al, 2019;Zhang, et al, 2015). Here, we aimed to replicate this effect by comparing all congruent parafoveal conditions (conditions 1,2 and 3) with all incongruent parafoveal conditions (conditions 4, 5 and 6) in the window between 300-500 ms after target onset in the parafovea.…”

“…Recent ERP studies using the RSVP-with-flankers paradigm (Barber, Doñamayor, Kutas, & Münte, 2010;Barber, van der Meij, & Kutas, 2013;Li, Niefind, Wang, Sommer & Dimigen, 2015;Payne, Stites, Federmeier, 2019;Stites, Payne, Federmeier, 2017;Zhang, Li, Wang, & Wang; have provided some evidence on the effect of preview congruency by manipulating the congruency of both the preview word and the foveal word. In this paradigm, sentences are presented as word triplets during steady fixation, with the preceding word in the sentence appearing to the left and the subsequent word appearing to the right of fixation.…”

A pipelining mechanism supporting previewing during visual exploration and reading

“…Key to the mechanism that we propose is that previewing speeds up the identification of objects in visual scenes as well as lexico-semantic retrieval during reading [42,74,75].…”

“…Key to the mechanism that we propose is that previewing speeds up the identification of objects in visual scenes as well as lexico-semantic retrieval during reading [42, 74, 75]. Several models suggest that object and lexical recognition relies on attractor type networks (e.g.…”