Frequency drives lexical access in reading but not in speaking: the frequency-lag hypothesis

To contrast mechanisms of lexical access in production versus comprehension we compared the effects of word frequency (high, low), context (none, low constraint, high constraint), and level of English proficiency (monolingual, Spanish-English bilingual, Dutch-English bilingual) on picture naming, lexical decision, and eye fixation times. Semantic constraint effects were larger in production than in reading. Frequency effects were larger in production than in reading without constraining context but larger in reading than in production with constraining context. Bilingual disadvantages were modulated by frequency in production but not in eye fixation times, were not smaller in low-constraint contexts, and were reduced by high-constraint contexts only in production and only at the lowest level of English proficiency. These results challenge existing accounts of bilingual disadvantages and reveal fundamentally different processes during lexical access across modalities, entailing a primarily semantically driven search in production but a frequency-driven search in comprehension. The apparently more interactive process in production than comprehension could simply reflect a greater number of frequency-sensitive processing stages in production

Eye movements in code reading:relaxing the linear order

Abstract—Code reading is an important skill in programming. Inspired by the linearity that people exhibit while natural lan-guage text reading, we designed local and global gaze-based mea-sures to characterize linearity (left-to-right and top-to-bottom) in reading source code. Unlike natural language text, source code is executable and requires a specific reading approach. To validate these measures, we compared the eye movements of novice and expert programmers who were asked to read and comprehend short snippets of natural language text and Java programs. Our results show that novices read source code less linearly than natural language text. Moreover, experts read code less linearly than novices. These findings indicate that there are specific differences between reading natural language and source code, and suggest that non-linear reading skills increase with expertise. We discuss the implications for practitioners and educators. I

How strongly do word reading times and lexical decision times correlate? Combining data from eye movement corpora and megastudies

We assess the amount of shared variance between three measures of visual word recognition latencies: eye movement latencies, lexical decision times and naming times. After partialling out the effects of word frequency and word length, two well-documented predictors of word recognition latencies, we see that 7-44% of the variance is uniquely shared between lexical decision times and naming times, depending on the frequency range of the words used. A similar analysis of eye movement latencies shows that the percentage of variance they uniquely share either with lexical decision times or with naming times is much lower. It is 5 – 17% for gaze durations and lexical decision times in studies with target words presented in neutral sentences, but drops to .2% for corpus studies in which eye movements to all words are analysed. Correlations between gaze durations and naming latencies are lower still. These findings suggest that processing times in isolated word processing and continuous text reading are affected by specific task demands and presentation format, and that lexical decision times and naming times are not very informative in predicting eye movement latencies in text reading once the effect of word frequency and word length are taken into account. The difference between controlled experiments and natural reading suggests that reading strategies and stimulus materials may determine the degree to which the immediacy-of-processing assumption and the eye-mind assumption apply. Fixation times are more likely to exclusively reflect the lexical processing of the currently fixated word in controlled studies with unpredictable target words rather than in natural reading of sentences or texts

Testing the limits of contextual constraint: interactions with word frequency and parafoveal preview during fluent reading

Contextual constraint is a key factor affecting a word's fixation duration and its likelihood of being fixated during reading. Previous research has generally demonstrated additive effects of predictability and frequency in fixation times. Studies examining the role of parafoveal preview have shown that greater preview benefit is obtained from more predictable and higher frequency words versus less predictable and lower frequency words. In two experiments, we investigated effects of target word predictability, frequency, and parafoveal preview. A 3 (Predictability: low, medium, high) × 2 (Frequency: low, high) design was used with Preview (valid, invalid) manipulated between experiments. With valid previews, we found main effects of Predictability and Frequency in both fixation time and probability measures, including an interaction in early fixation measures. With invalid preview, we again found main effects of Predictability and Frequency in fixation times, but no evidence of an interaction. Fixation probability showed a weak Predictability effect and Predictability-Frequency interaction. Predictability interacted with Preview in early fixation time and probability measures. Our findings suggest that high levels of contextual constraint exert an early influence during lexical processing in reading. Results are discussed in terms of models of language processing and eye movement control

Visual world studies of conversational perspective taking: similar findings, diverging interpretations

Visual-world eyetracking greatly expanded the potential for insight into how listeners access and use common ground during situated language comprehension. Past reviews of visual world studies on perspective taking have largely taken the diverging findings of the various studies at face value, and attributed these apparently different findings to differences in the extent to which the paradigms used by different labs afford collaborative interaction. Researchers are asking questions about perspective taking of an increasingly nuanced and sophisticated nature, a clear indicator of progress. But this research has the potential not only to improve our understanding of conversational perspective taking. Grappling with problems of data interpretation in such a complex domain has the unique potential to drive visual world researchers to a deeper understanding of how to best map visual world data onto psycholinguistic theory. I will argue against this interactional affordances explanation, on two counts. First, it implies that interactivity affects the overall ability to form common ground, and thus provides no straightforward explanation of why, within a single noninteractive study, common ground can have very large effects on some aspects of processing (referential anticipation) while having negligible effects on others (lexical processing). Second, and more importantly, the explanation accepts the divergence in published findings at face value. However, a closer look at several key studies shows that the divergences are more likely to reflect inconsistent practices of analysis and interpretation that have been applied to an underlying body of data that is, in fact, surprisingly consistent. The diverging interpretations, I will argue, are the result of differences in the handling of anticipatory baseline effects (ABEs) in the analysis of visual world data. ABEs arise in perspective-taking studies because listeners have earlier access to constraining information about who knows what than they have to referential speech, and thus can already show biases in visual attention even before the processing of any referential speech has begun. To be sure, these ABEs clearly indicate early access to common ground; however, access does not imply integration, since it is possible that this information is not used later to modulate the processing of incoming speech. Failing to account for these biases using statistical or experimental controls leads to over-optimistic assessments of listeners’ ability to integrate this information with incoming speech. I will show that several key studies with varying degrees of interactional affordances all show similar temporal profiles of common ground use during the interpretive process: early anticipatory effects, followed by bottom-up effects of lexical processing that are not modulated by common ground, followed (optionally) by further late effects that are likely to be post-lexical. Furthermore, this temporal profile for common ground radically differs from the profile of contextual effects related to verb semantics. Together, these findings are consistent with the proposal that lexical processes are encapsulated from common ground, but cannot be straightforwardly accounted for by probabilistic constraint-based approaches