Word frequency in fast priming: Evidence for immediate cognitive control of eye movements during reading

Numerous studies have demonstrated effects of word frequency on eye movements during reading, but the precise timing of this influence has remained unclear. The fast priming paradigm (Sereno & Rayner, 1992) was previously used to study influences of related versus unrelated primes on the target word. Here, we used this procedure to investigate whether the frequency of the prime word has a direct influence on eye movements during reading when the prime-target relation is not manipulated. We found that with average prime intervals of 32 ms readers made longer single fixation durations on the target word in the low than in the high frequency prime condition. Distributional analyses demonstrated that the effect of prime frequency on single fixation durations occurred very early, supporting theories of immediate cognitive control of eye movements. Finding prime frequency effects only 207 ms after visibility of the prime and for prime durations of 32 ms yields new time constraints for cognitive processes controlling eye movements during reading. Our variant of the fast priming paradigm provides a new approach to test early influences of word processing on eye movement control during reading

The politics of international redistribution: Explaining public support for fiscal transfers in the EU

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via the DOI in this record.As a consequence of the Eurozone crisis and the creation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the prospect of a transfer union has become a particularly contested aspect of European integration. How should one understand the public backlash against fiscal transfers? And, what explains voter preferences for international transfers more generally? Using data from the 2014 European Elections Study (EES), this article describes the first cross-national analysis of voters’ preferences on international transfers. The analysis reveals a strong association between voters’ non-economic cultural orientations (i.e., their cosmopolitanism) and their position on transfers. At the same time, it is found that voters’ economic left-right orientations are crucial for a fuller understanding of the public conflict over transfers. This counters previous research that finds economic left-right orientations to be of little explanatory value. This study demonstrates that the association between economic left-right orientations and preferences for international transfers is conditional on a person's social class. Among citizens in a high-income class an economically left-leaning position is associated with support for transfers, whereas it is associated with opposition to transfers among citizens in a low-income class

Challenging assumptions of the enlargement literature : the impact of the EU on human and minority rights in Macedonia

This article argues that from the very start of the transition process in Macedonia, a fusion of concerns about security and democratisation locked local nationalist elites and international organisations intoa political dynamic that prioritised security over democratisation. This dynamic resulted in little progress in the implementation of human and minority rights until 2009, despite heavy EU involvement in Macedonia after the internal warfare of 2001. The effects of this informally institutionalised relationship have been overlooked by scholarship on EU enlargement towards Eastern Europe, which has made generalisations based on assumptions relevant to the democratisation of countries in Eastern Europe, but not the Western Balkans