Independent effects of collocation strength and contextual predictability on eye movements in reading

Abstract

Collocations are commonly co-occurring word pairs, such as "black coffee". Previous research has demonstrated a processing advantage for collocations compared to novel phrases, suggesting that readers are sensitive to the frequency that words co-occur in phrases. However, a further question concerns whether this processing advantage for collocations occurs independently from effects of contextual predictability. We examined this issue in an eye movement experiment using adjectivenoun pairs that are strong collocations (e.g. "black coffee") or weak collocations (e.g. "bitter coffee"), based on co-occurrence statistics. These were presented in sentences where the shared concept they expressed (e.g. coffee) was predictable or unpredictable from the prior sentence context. We observed clear effects of collocation strength, with shorter reading times for strong compared to weak collocations. Moreover, these effects occurred independently of effects of contextual predictability. The findings therefore provide novel evidence that a processing advantage for collocations is not driven by contextual expectations.

Insights Into the Processing of Collocations During L2 English Reading: Evidence From Eye Movements

“…Their proficiency level and self-assessment scores indicated that participants were intermediate L2 learners. It was not possible to use an a priori power analysis to estimate the sample size given the lack of closely comparable studies (see Li et al, 2021 , for discussion). Accordingly, we used sensitivity analysis to estimate the smallest effect size that might be detected for interaction between collocation strength and context ( Lakens, 2021 ), employing software created by Westfall.…”

“…Stimuli were forty pairs of adjective-noun phrases obtained from the British National Corpus ( Burnage and Dunlop, 1992 ) used as stimuli in Li et al (2021) experiment. Each pair combined a different adjective with the same noun (e.g., black coffee and bitter coffee).…”

“…These phrases were presented to participants in two sentence contexts: a neutral context in which both phrases were unpredictable, and a predictable context in which information relevant to the collocation was anticipated. Contextual predictability was assessed by Li et al (2021) using a cloze task with native English readers. Participants were presented with sentences truncated immediately before the collocation and asked to provide a written continuation.…”

“…The indication, therefore, is that L2 readers can rapidly acquire knowledge about phrasal usage and use this to read more efficiently. We investigated this issue further in the present research using methods from a recent study by Li et al (2021) .…”

“…In this recent experiment, L1 participants read either strong collocations, such as “black coffee,” or weaker collocations, such as “bitter coffee,” in sentence contexts where the phrases were either highly predictable or unpredictable from the previous sentence context. This allowed Li et al (2021) to investigate the relative contribution of frequency of usage and contextual predictability to the processing of collocations. The key finding was that strong collocations were read faster than weak collocations, consistent with Sonbul (2015) and providing further evidence that readers are sensitive to collocation frequency.…”