The effect of clause wrap-up on eye movements during reading

Abstract

The effect of clause wrap-up on eye movements in reading was examined. Readers read passages in which a target category noun referred to either a high typical or a low typical antecedent. In addition, the category noun was either clause final or non-clause final. There were four primary results: (1) Readers looked longer at a category noun when its antecedent was a low typical member of the category than when it was a high typical member; (2) readers looked longer at the category noun and at the post-category region when they were clause final than when they were not clause final; (3) readers regressed from a category noun or post-category region more frequently when it was clause final than when it was not clause final; and (4) readers made longer initial saccades when their eyes left the category noun or post-category region when this word was in clause final position than when it was not clause final. The last result suggests that sometimes higher order processes that are related to making a decision about when to move the eyes impinge on lower level decisions that are typically associated with deciding where to move the eyes.

The return of the repressed: Abandoned parses facilitate syntactic reanalysis☆

“…However, readers made regressive eye movements from this region more frequently when it ended with a comma (12.2% vs. 7.3%; 95% confidence interval of the difference from 1.1% to 8.7%). As noted above, this is consistent with previous findings of increased regressions before a clause-final comma (Hirotani et al, 2006;Rayner et al, 2000). There was no effect of either on regressions, and the interaction of the two factors was marginal by items but did not approach significance in the participants analysis.…”

“…The same studies that have found increased regressive eye movements before a clause-final comma (Hirotani et al, 2006;Rayner et al, 2000) have also found that the saccade that crosses a clause boundary tends to be longer when a comma is present at the boundary than when a comma is absent. As a result, the eyes tend to land further into the next region in the presence of a comma.…”

“…On the next region (mopped(,)), referred to as the verb region, clause wrap-up effects (Hirotani et al, 2006, Rayner et al, 2000 were expected in the comma conditions, in the form of increased regressions and longer go-past times. On the next region (the floor), which will be referred to as the ambiguous region, no specific predictions were made, though a possible landing position effect was anticipated, with an earlier initial landing position in this region in the no comma conditions (Hirotani et al, 2006, Rayner et al, 2000. The hypothesized reanalysis on this region in the coordination no comma condition was assumed to be very minor.…”

“…On the second region (the skis(,)), which will be referred to as the direct object region, the only expected effect was a possible increase in reading times and/or regressive eye movements when the comma was present, due to clause wrap-up effects (Hirotani, Frazier, & Rayner, 2006;Rayner, Kambe, & Duffy, 2000).…”

Examining the cognitive costs of counterfactual language comprehension: Evidence from ERPs

“…The authors suggest that these differences might simply be due to the complex semantics of counterfactuals, since the end of a sentence is thought to hold a special status for 'wrap-up' processing (e.g. Just & Carpenter, 1980;Rayner, Kambe, & Duffy, 2000).…”