The effect of contextual plausibility on word skipping during reading

Abstract

Recent eye-movement evidence suggests readers are more likely to skip a high-frequency word than a low-frequency word independently of the semantic or syntactic acceptability of the word in the sentence. This has been interpreted as strong support for a serial processing mechanism in which the decision to skip a word is based on the completion of a preliminary stage of lexical processing prior to any assessment of contextual fit. The present large-scale study was designed to reconcile these findings with the plausibility preview effect: higher skipping and reduced firstpass reading times for words that are previewed by contextually plausible, compared to implausible, sentence continuations that are unrelated to the target word. Participants' eye movements were recorded as they read sentences containing a short (3-4 letters) or long ( 6letters) target word. The boundary paradigm was used to present parafoveal previews which were either higher or lower frequency than the target, and either plausible or implausible in the sentence context. The results revealed strong, independent effects of all three factors on target skipping and early measures of target fixation duration, while frequency and plausibility interacted on later measures of target fixation duration. Simulations using the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control in reading demonstrated that plausibility effects on skipping are potentially consistent with the assumption that higher-level contextual information only affects post-lexical integration processes. However, no current model of eye movements in reading provides an explicit account of the information or processes that allow readers to rapidly detect an integration failure.

What is the most plausible account of the role of parafoveal processing in reading?

“…However, more recent simulations of stimuli selected to factorially manipulate target length, frequency, and plausibility revealed that E‐Z Reader 10 successfully simulated empirical effects of plausibility on skipping. This suggests that postlexical integration may be at least partially responsible for the preview plausibility effect (Veldre, Reichle, Wong, & Andrews, ).…”

“…The early disruptions to eye movements, including skipping, caused by plausibility violations in the parafovea and the distinct patterns of reanalysis observed in response to semantic and syntactic violations (Veldre & Andrews, ) implicate rapid, incremental, word‐by‐word integration of new input with the developing representation of the sentence (Altmann & Mirkovic, ). When an implausible preview is a short, easy to process word, rapid postlexical integration failure may directly trigger reanalysis processes that influence first‐pass reading, but the timecourse and information requirements of postlexical integration make it unlikely that this mechanism is the sole source of the plausibility preview effect (Veldre et al, ).…”

Parafoveal processing of orthographic, morphological, and semantic information during reading Arabic: A boundary paradigm investigation

“…Previous research showed a considerable effect of preview plausibility such that plausible previews resulted in processing benefit, regardless of their semantic links with the target (e.g., [ 83 , 84 ]), and independently of the orthographic relatedness between the preview and target [ 104 ], especially when the previews were not predictable from the immediate preceding context ([ 105 ] also [ 106 ] for additional empirical evidence, and [ 107 ] for a review). In essence, when the upcoming word (in the parafovea) is plausible, the information extracted from it facilitates the incremental sentence processing, regardless of the relatedness between the target and the preview, hence plausible previews generate more skipping of the target (e.g., [ 106 ]), and shorter fixation duration on the target in early processing measures when it is fixated and not skipped (e.g., [ 83 ]). As we have not controlled for target and preview plausibility, the possible effects of plausibility on the reported results were not part of our a priori research question.…”

Words from the wizarding world: Fictional words, context, and domain knowledge.

“…Rayner, Warren, Juhasz and Liversedge (2004) found words which were implausible in a given context led to greater processing difficulty in later fixation measures. More recently, implausible words have been shown to affect earlier fixation measures (Staub, Rayner, Pollatsek, Hyönä, & Majewski, 2007) however, evidence suggests that whilst the effects of plausibility may be detectable in early fixation measures, the influence of plausibility on reading may be post-lexical (Abbott & Stuab, 2015;Veldre, Reichle, Wong & Andrews, 2020). When testing our target words for plausibility (see Supplemental Material D for full details of this process and results) we found that each target word was rated most-plausible within its own supportive context.…”

“…Indeed, Abbott and Staub (2015) found that their LF plausible words were rated as significantly less plausible than their HF counterparts; they noted that such a difference should be expected and presented evidence that plausibility ratings of LF plausible words correlated with log frequency of LF words, whereas no such correlation was found for other word types. Further, in eye movement analysis, previous research (Rayner et al, 2004;Staub et al, 2007;Abbott & Staub 2015;Veldre et al, 2020) generally treats plausibility as a binary factor where a threshold is applied during norming to determine implausible targets. Whilst some of our target words may be less plausible in certain context frames, ratings for non-HP targets (i.e., HF and LF targets) do not suggest these words were implausible.…”