New Perspectives on Serialism and Parallelism in Oculomotor Control During Reading: The Multi-Constituent Unit Hypothesis

Currently there are several computational models of eye movement control that provide a good account of oculomotor behavior during reading of English and other alphabetic languages. I will provide an overview of two dominant models: E-Z Reader and SWIFT, as well as a recently proposed model: OB1-Reader. I will evaluate a critical issue of controversy among models, namely, whether words are lexically processed serially or in parallel. I will then consider reading in Chinese, a character-based, unspaced language with ambiguous word boundaries. Finally, I will evaluate the concepts of serialism and parallelism of process central to these models, and how these models might function in relation to lexical processing that is operationalized over parafoveal multi-constituent units

Investigating word length effects in Chinese reading

A word’s length in English is fundamental in determining whether readers fixate it, and how long they spend processing it during reading. Chinese is unspaced and most words are two characters long: Is word length an important cue to eye guidance in Chinese reading? Eye movements were recorded as participants read sentences containing a one-, two-, or three-character word matched for frequency. Results showed that longer words took longer to process (primarily driven by refixations). Furthermore, skips were fewer, incoming saccades longer and landing positions further to the right of long than short words. Additional analyses of a three-character region (matched stroke number) showed an incremental processing cost when character(s) belonged to different, rather than the same, word. These results demonstrate that word length affects both lexical identification and saccade target selection in Chinese reading

The influence of foveal lexical processing load on parafoveal preview and saccadic targeting during Chinese reading

Whether increased foveal load causes a reduction of parafoveal processing remains equivocal. The present study examined foveal load effects on parafoveal processing in natural Chinese reading. Parafoveal preview of a single-character parafoveal target word was manipulated by using the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975; pseudocharacter or identity previews) under high foveal load (low-frequency pretarget word) compared with low foveal load (high-frequency pretarget word) conditions. Despite an effective manipulation of foveal processing load, we obtained no evidence of any modulatory influence on parafoveal processing in first-pass reading times. However, our results clearly showed that saccadic targeting, in relation to forward saccade length from the pretarget word and in relation to target word skipping, was influenced by foveal load and this influence occurred independent of parafoveal preview. Given the optimal experimental conditions, these results provide very strong evidence that preview benefit is not modulated by foveal lexical load during Chinese reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved

Phonological Parafoveal Pre-processing in Children Reading English Sentences

Although previous research has shown that, in English, both adult and teenage readers parafoveally pre-process phonological information during silent reading, to date, no research has been conducted to investigate such processing in children. Here we used the boundary paradigm during silent sentence reading, to ascertain whether typically developing English children, like adults, parafoveally process words phonologically. Participants' eye movements (adults: n = 48; children: n = 48) were recorded as they read sentences which contained, in preview, correctly spelled words (e.g., cheese), pseudohomophones (e.g., cheeze), or spelling controls (e.g., cheene). The orthographic similarity of the target words available in preview was also manipulated to be similar (e.g., cheese/cheeze/cheene) or dissimilar (e.g., queen/kween/treen). The results indicate that orthographic similarity facilitated both adults' and children's pre-processing. Moreover, children parafoveally pre-processed words phonologically very early in processing. The children demonstrated a pseudohomophone advantage from preview that was broadly similar to the effect displayed by the adults, although the orthographic similarity of the pseudohomophone previews was more important for the children than the adults. Overall, these results provide strong evidence for phonological recoding during silent English sentence reading in 8–9-year-old children

Parafoveal Previews and Lexical Frequency in Natural Reading: Evidence from Eye Movements and Fixation-Related Potentials

Participants’ eye movements and EEG signal were recorded as they read sentences displayed according to the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm. Two target words in each sentence were manipulated for lexical frequency (high vs. low frequency) and parafoveal preview of each target word (identical vs. string of random letters vs. string of Xs). Eye movement data revealed visual parafoveal-on-foveal effects (POF), as well as foveal visual and orthographic preview effects and word frequency effects. Fixation-related potentials (FRPs) showed visual and orthographic PoF effects as well as foveal visual and orthographic preview effects. Our results replicated the early preview positivity effect (Dimigen et al., 2012) in the X-string preview condition, and revealed different neural correlates associated with a preview comprised of a string of random letters relative to a string of Xs. The former effects seem likely to reflect difficulty associated with the integration of parafoveal and foveal information, as well as feature overlap, while the latter reflect inhibition, and potentially disruption, to processing underlying reading. Interestingly, and consistent with Kretzschmar, Schlesewsky and Staub (2015), no frequency effect was reflected in the FRP measures. The findings provide insight into the neural correlates of parafoveal processing and written word recognition in reading and demonstrate the value of utilising ecologically valid paradigms to study well established phenomena that occur as text is read naturally

Word skipping in Chinese reading: The role of high-frequency preview and syntactic felicity

Two experiments are reported to investigate whether Chinese readers skip a high frequency preview word without taking the syntax of the sentence context into account. In Experiment 1, we manipulated target word syntactic category, frequency and preview using the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975). For high frequency verb targets, there were identity and pseudocharacter previews alongside a low frequency noun preview. For low frequency verb targets, there were identity and pseudocharacter previews alongside a high frequency noun preview. Results showed that for high frequency targets, skipping rates were higher for identical previews compared to the syntactically infelicitous alternative low frequency preview and pseudocharacter previews, however for low frequency targets, skipping rates were higher for high frequency previews (even when they were syntactically infelicitous) compared to the other two previews. Furthermore, readers were more likely to skip the target when they had a high frequency, syntactically felicitous preview compared to a high frequency, syntactically infelicitous preview. The pattern of felicity effects was statistically robust when readers launched saccades from near the target. In Experiment 2, we assessed whether display change awareness influenced the patterns of results in Experiment 1. Results showed that the overall patterns held in Experiment 2 regardless of some readers being more likely to be aware of the display change than others. These results suggest that decisions to skip a word in Chinese reading are primarily based on parafoveal word familiarity, though the syntactic felicity of a parafoveal word also exerts a robust influence for high frequency previews

Examining Semantic Parafoveal-on-Foveal Effects Using a Stroop Boundary Paradigm

The issue of whether lexical processing occurs serially or in parallel has been a central and contentious issue in respect of models of eye movement control in reading for well over a decade. A critical question in this regard concerns whether lexical parafoveal-on-foveal effects exist in reading. Because Chinese is an unspaced and densely packed language, readers may process parafoveal words to a greater extent than they do in spaced alphabetic languages. In two experiments using a novel Stroop boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975), participants read sentences containing a single-character color-word whose preview was manipulated (identity or pseudocharacter, printed in black [no-color], or in a color congruent or incongruent with the character meaning). Two boundaries were used, one positioned two characters before the target and one immediately to the left of the target. The previews changed from black to color and then back to black as the eyes crossed the first and then the second boundary respectively. In Experiment 1 four color-words (red, green, yellow and blue) were used and in Experiment 2 only red and green color-words were used as targets. Both experiments showed very similar patterns such that reading times were increased for colored compared to no-color previews indicating a parafoveal visual interference effect. Most importantly, however, there were no robust interactive effects. Preview effects were comparable for congruent and incongruent color previews at the pretarget region when the data were combined from both experiments. These results favour serial processing accounts and indicate that even under very favourable experimental conditions, lexical semantic parafoveal-on-foveal effects are minimal

The Influence of Culture on the Viewing of Western and East Asian Paintings

The influence of British and Chinese culture on the viewing of paintings from Western and East Asian traditions was explored in an old/new discrimination task. Accuracy data were considered alongside signal detection measures of sensitivity and bias. The results showed participant culture and painting tradition interacted but only with respect to response bias and not sensitivity. Eye movements were also recorded during encoding and discrimination. Paintings were split into regions of interest defined by faces, or the theme and context in order to analyse the eye movement data. With respect to the eye movement data, the results showed that a match between participant culture and painting tradition increased the viewing of faces in paintings at the expense of the viewing of other locations, an effect interpreted as a manifestation of the Other Race Effect on the viewing of paintings. There was, however, no evidence of broader influence of culture on the eye movements made to paintings as might be expected if culture influenced the allocation of attention more generally. Taken together, these findings suggest culture influences the viewing of paintings but only in response to challenges to the encoding of faces

The use of probabilistic lexicality cues for word segmentation in Chinese reading

In an eye-tracking experiment we examined whether Chinese readers were sensitive to information concerning how often a Chinese character appears as a single-character word versus the first character in a two-character word, and whether readers use this information to segment words and adjust the amount of parafoveal processing of subsequent characters during reading. Participants read sentences containing a two-character target word with its first character more or less likely to be a single-character word. The boundary paradigm was used. The boundary appeared between the first character and the second character of the target word, and we manipulated whether readers saw an identity or a pseudocharacter preview of the second character of the target. Linear mixed-effects models revealed reduced preview benefit from the second character when the first character was more likely to be a single-character word. This suggests that Chinese readers use probabilistic combinatorial information about the likelihood of a Chinese character being single-character word or a two-character word online to modulate the extent of parafoveal processing

Contrasting off-line segmentation decisions with on-line word segmentation during reading

In two experiments, we investigated the correspondences between off-line word segmentation and on-line segmentation processing during Chinese reading. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to read sentences which contained critical four-character strings, and then they were required to segment the same sentences into words in a later off-line word segmentation task. For each item, participants were split into 1-word segmenters (who segmented four-character strings as a single word) and 2-word segmenters (who segmented four-character strings as 2 two-character words). Thus, we split participants into two groups (1-word segmenters and 2-word segmenters) according to their off-line segmentation bias. The data analysis showed no reliable group effect on all the measures. In order to avoid the heterogeneity of participants and stimuli in Experiment 1, two groups of participants (1-word segmenters and 2-word segmenters) and three types of critical four-character string (1-word strings, ambiguous strings and 2-word strings) were identified in a norming study in Experiment 2. Participants were required to read sentences containing these critical strings. There was no reliable group effect in Experiment 2, as was the case in Experiment 1. However, in Experiment 2, participants spent less time and made fewer fixations on 1-word strings compared to ambiguous and 2-word strings. These results indicate that the off-line word segmentation preferences do not necessarily reflect on-line word segmentation processing during Chinese reading, and that Chinese readers exhibit flexibility such that word, or multiple constituent, segmentation commitments are made on-line