Parafoveal‐on‐foveal repetition effects in sentence reading: A co‐registered eye‐tracking and electroencephalogram study

Abstract

When reading, can the next word in the sentence (word n + 1) influence how you read the word you are currently looking at (word n )? Serial models of sentence reading state that this generally should not be the case, whereas parallel models predict that this should be the case. Here we focus on perhaps the simplest and the strongest Parafoveal‐on‐Foveal (PoF) manipulation: word n + 1 is either the same as word n or a different word. Participants read sentences for comprehension and when their eyes left word n , the repeated or unrelated word at position n + 1 was swapped for a word that provided a syntactically correct continuation of the sentence. We recorded electroencephalogram and eye‐movements, and time‐locked the analysis of fixation‐related potentials (FRPs) to fixation of word n . We found robust PoF repetition effects on gaze durations on word n , and also on the initial landing position on word n . Most important is that we also observed significant effects in FRPs, reaching significance at 260 ms post‐fixation of word n . Repetition of the target word n at position n + 1 caused a widely distributed reduced negativity in the FRPs. Given the timing of this effect, we argue that it is driven by orthographic processing of word n + 1, while readers were still looking at word n , plus the spatial integration of orthographic information extracted from these two words in parallel.

Lexical parafoveal previewing predicts reading speed

“…However, the approach is limited, as changing the target word inevitably disrupts the integration of information across fixations and interferes with natural reading. This interference has been shown in many gaze-contingent studies in which reading performance is reduced when words are manipulated in the parafovea 17,[49][50][51] . Fixation or event-related potentials based on EEG is another method used in reading studies [52][53][54][55] , and have shown different brain activity patterns for different word presentation rates, addressing the importance of using natural reading paradigms 56 .…”

Orthographic and phonological contributions to flanker effects

“…That is, when reading the sentence 'The boy picked the rose from the garden', reading times of the target word 'rose' should not be influenced by the replacement of the parafoveal word 'from' with a pseudohomophone 'roze' prior to the eyes moving to that location. This predicted null effect could be contrasted with well-established orthographic parafoveal-on-foveal effects obtained during sentence reading (Angele, Tran, & Rayner, 2013;Dare & Shillcock, 2013;Mirault et al, 2020;Snell, Vitu, & Grainger, 2017). Such additional experimentation would further help connect the results obtained with the flankers task and those obtained in more natural reading situations (for a recent debate, see Snell & Grainger, 2019;and accompanying commentaries, Schotter & Payne, 2019;White, Boynton, & Yeatman, 2019).…”

Co-Registration of Eye Movements and Fixation—Related Potentials in Natural Reading: Practical Issues of Experimental Design and Data Analysis

“…In sentence reading tasks, typically, a one-line sentence (Degno et al, 2019a(Degno et al, , 2019bDimigen et al, 2011;Kretzschmar et al, 2009Kretzschmar et al, , 2015Loberg et al, 2018Loberg et al, , 2019Metzner et al, 2015Metzner et al, , 2017Mirault et al, 2020;Weiss et al, 2016), or longer passages of text (Henderson et al, 2013), is presented on the screen, and participants are required to read each sentence to then answer comprehension questions. By presenting grammatical text (minimally a single sentence, and potentially longer texts), readers can form a meaningful interpretation of the text beyond isolated word meaning, and all aspects of EM behaviour during reading (e.g., skipping), as well as the participant's task (i.e., reading for comprehension without a secondary task) are natural.…”

“…Thus, both pre-target and target words are considered regions of interest in the present pipeline. However, researchers might select only pre-target or only target words as regions of interest, if for example only parafoveal-on-foveal effects are examined (e.g., pre-target word only, Mirault et al, 2020), or only foveal processing is to be studied (e.g., target words only, Hutzler et al, 2007). In addition, which observations need to be retained or discarded will also vary depending on the research question at hand.…”

“…Both approaches have been used in the co-registration reading literature (SR Research automatic parsing, Degno et al, 2019aDegno et al, , 2019bHenderson et al, 2013;Hutzler et al, 2013;López-Peréz et al, 2016;Mirault et al, 2020;detection with Engbert et al's algorithm, Dimigen et al, 2011;Dimigen et al, 2012;Kornrumpf et al, 2016;Loberg et al, 2018, Loberg et al, 2019Metzner et al, 2015;Metzner et al, 2017;; detection with Stampe's (1993) algorithm, Baccino & Manunta, 2005; detection with Smeets & Hooge's (2003) algorithm, Simola et al, 2009; detection with Nyström & Holmqvist's (2010) algorithm, Weiss et al, 2016). Researchers might choose one approach over the other depending on the software they have available and on the flexibility that they need for EM parsing (e.g., if detection of very small saccades or computation of global velocity is needed).…”