The influence of focus on eye movements during reading

Filik, Ruth; Paterson, Kevin B.; Sauermann, Antje

doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199539789.013.0051

Cited by 49 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Our findings demonstrate that pragmatic processing (specifically contrastive focus) occurs rapidly during discourse comprehension, and sufficiently so to influence semantic processes underlying inter-sentence integration. Such findings add to other evidence that contrastive focus can rapidly influence online processing (e.g., Filik et al, 2011). Crucially, however, where previous studies examined focus effects within sentences, the present findings reveal an influence on the integration of information across sentences.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

“…Online resolution of this pragmatic information has also been shown to influence syntactic and semantic processing (for a review, see Filik, Paterson, & Sauermann, 2011). For instance, numerous studies reveal an influence on the syntactic analysis of garden-path sentences (Filik, Paterson, & Liversedge, 2005; Liversedge, Paterson, & Clayes, 2002; Ni, Crain, & Shankweiler, 1996; Paterson, Liversedge, & Underwood, 1999; Sedivy, 2002).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our aim was to determine whether pragmatic processes associated with contrastive focus are processed sufficiently rapidly to influence the processing of inter-sentence integration. This is potentially important, as it will shed further light on the fundamental role played by pragmatic processes in discourse processing by revealing whether contrastive focus can influence online inter-sentence integration, just as it influences syntactic and semantic processes during sentence processing (see, for example, Filik et al, 2011). This was achieved in Experiments 1 and 2 by examining whether focus influences the connective facilitation effect.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Pragmatic influences on sentence integration: Evidence from eye movements

Chen

Paterson

et al. 2019

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To understand a discourse, readers must rapidly process semantic and syntactic information and extract the pragmatic information these sources imply. An important question concerns how this pragmatic information influences discourse processing in return. We address this issue in two eye movement experiments that investigate the influence of pragmatic inferences on the processing of inter-sentence integration. In Experiments 1a and 1b, participants read two-sentence discourses in Chinese in which the first sentence introduced an event and the second described its consequence, where the sentences were linked using either the causal connective “suoyi” (meaning “so” or “therefore”) or not. The second sentence included a target word that was unmarked or marked using the focus particle “zhiyou” (meaning “only”) in Experiment 1a or “shi” (equivalent to an it-cleft) in Experiment 1b. These particles have the pragmatic function of implying a contrast between a target element and its alternatives. The results showed that while the causal connective facilitated the processing of unmarked words in causal contexts (a connective facilitation effect), this effect was eliminated by the presence of the focus particle. This implies that contrastive information is inferred sufficiently rapidly during reading that it can influence semantic processes involved in sentence integration. Experiment 2 showed that disruption due to conflict between the processing requirements of focus and inter-sentence integration occurred only in causal and not adversative connective contexts, confirming that processing difficulty occurred when a contrastive relationship was not possible.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Pragmatic influences on sentence integration: Evidence from eye movements

Chen

Paterson

et al. 2019

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…If text is represented at a coarser level of granularity, then cider may be underspecified as a drink, so a change to beer may not be detected. Linguistic focus, however, causes the reader to represent word meaning to a finer grain of specification, leading to more detections when cider is changed to beer (see Sanford et al, 2006 for similar findings, andFilik, Paterson, &Sauermann, 2011, for a recent overview of the influence of focus on on-line language processing). Sanford et al (2005) utilised text change-detection to investigate whether sentential load influenced the detection of changes, specifically, whether semantic processing proceeds at a 'cruder' level under conditions of high compared to low load.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Perspective Effects During Reading: Evidence from Text Change-Detection

Bohan

Filik

2017

Discourse Processes

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We report two text change-detection studies in which we investigate the influence of reading perspective on text memory. In Experiment 1, participants read from the perspective of one of two characters in a series of short stories, and word changes were either semantically close or distant. Participants correctly reported more changes to perspective-relevant than -irrelevant words, and for distant than close changes.However, distance and perspective did not interact, suggesting that adopting a particular perspective did not lead to a more fine-grained analysis of perspectiverelevant information. In Experiment 2, participants read one long narrative from the perspective of either a burglar or house-buyer. Results showed that only participants with a low working memory span showed perspective effects, suggesting that individual differences in working memory capacity appear to influence processing of perspective-relevant information.

show abstract

“…Focus is an information structural primitive that determines which part of an utterance contributes to new or contrastive information (Filik, Paterson, & Sauermann, 2011;Halliday, 1967;Jackendoff, 1972;Kiss, 1998;Rooth, 1992). The focus of an utterance can be signaled prosodically (e.g., via changes in pitch, loudness, etc.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Who” should be focused? The influence of focus status on pronoun resolution

Zhou

2016

Psychophysiology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Focus is assumed to be able to enhance the salience of a focused constituent and thereby facilitate the interpretation of a pronoun that refers to a focused antecedent relative to an unfocused antecedent. To assess how discourse-based focus structure influences the interpretation of a pronoun and whether this process is modulated by the grammatical role of the antecedent, we conducted an ERP study in which the focus status of a pronoun's potential antecedents was manipulated by means of a wh-question-answer structure. We found that, relative to those in the focused position, pronouns referring to antecedents in the unfocused position evoked enhanced positive responses in both early (180-230 ms) and late time windows (400-800 ms). Moreover, while a larger positivity was evoked by object-referring pronouns compared to subject-referring pronouns in the 400-800 ms time window over the right hemisphere, there was no effect of grammatical role in the 180-230 ms time window. These findings indicate that, while the initial stage of pronoun resolution is modulated by focus information assigned via a wh-question structure, integration of the pronoun and its antecedent into a coherent discourse representation at the later stage could be constrained by various factors, including the focus status and possibly the grammatical role of the antecedent.

show abstract

The influence of focus on eye movements during reading

Cited by 49 publications

References 0 publications

Pragmatic influences on sentence integration: Evidence from eye movements

Pragmatic influences on sentence integration: Evidence from eye movements

Perspective Effects During Reading: Evidence from Text Change-Detection

“Who” should be focused? The influence of focus status on pronoun resolution

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About