Foveal load and parafoveal processing: The case of word skipping

Foveal load and parafoveal processing: The case of word skippin

Eye movement control during reading: Effects of word frequency and orthographic familiarity

Word frequency and orthographic familiarity were independently manipulated as readers' eye movements were recorded. Word frequency influenced fixation durations and the probability of word skipping when orthographic familiarity was controlled. These results indicate that lexical processing of words can influence saccade programming (as shown by fixation durations and which words are fixated). Orthographic familiarity, but not word frequency, influenced the duration of prior fixations. These results provide evidence for orthographic, but not lexical, parafoveal-on-foveal effects. Overall, the findings have a crucial implication for models of eye movement control in reading: There must be sufficient time for lexical factors to influence saccade programming before saccade metrics and timing are finalized. The conclusions are critical for the fundamental architecture of models of eye movement control in reading- namely, how to reconcile long saccade programming times and complex linguistic influences on saccades during reading

The influence of parafoveal word length and contextual constraint on fixation durations and word skipping in reading

The influence of parafoveal word length and contextual constraint on fixation durations and word skipping in readin

Serial programming for saccades: Does it all add up?

Serial programming for saccades: Does it all add up

Linguistic and nonlinguistic influences on the eyes' landing positions during reading

Two eye tracking experiments show that, for near launch sites, the eyes land nearer to the beginning of words with orthographically irregular than with regular initial letter sequences. In addition, the characteristics of words, at least at the level of orthography, influence the direction and length of within-word saccades. Importantly, these effects hold both for lower case and for visually less distinctive upper case text. Furthermore, contrary to previous evidence (Tinker & Paterson, 1939), there is little effect of type case on reading times. Additional analyses of oculomotor behaviour suggest that there is an inverted optimal viewing position for single fixation durations on words. Both the supplementary analyses and the effects of orthography on fixation positions are relevant to current models of eye movements in reading

Foveal processing difficulty does not modulate non-foveal orthographic influences on fixation positions

Two experiments show that eye fixations land nearer to the beginning of misspelled than correctly spelled beginning words during sentence reading. The effect holds regardless of whether the previous word is easy (high frequency) or difficult (low frequency) to process. In Experiment 1, the misspelled words were directly fixated. In Experiment 2, a saccade contingent change technique was used such that the words were always correctly spelled once they were fixated. The results show that non-foveal orthography influences where words are first fixated regardless of foveal processing load

Psycholinguistic processes affect fixation durations and orthographic information affects fixation locations: Can E-Z Reader cope?

Psycholinguistic processes affect fixation durations and orthographic information affects fixation locations: Can E-Z Reader cope

Eye movements and the modulation of parafoveal processing by foveal processing difficulty: A re-examination

Eye movements and the modulation of parafoveal processing by foveal processing difficulty: A re-examinatio

Raeding wrods with jubmled lettres: There is a cost

Two years ago, a widely circulated statement on the Internet claimed that resarceh at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy fuond that sentecnes in whcih lettres weer transpsoed (or jubmled up), as in the setnence you are now raeding, were easy to read and that letter position in words was not important to the ability to read successfully. In actuality, the statement was a hoax in that no such research had been conducted at the University of Cambridge (see http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/personal/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/). We report here results from a study showing that although some variations of sentences with transposed letters are relatively easy to read, other variations are not, and that there is generally always a cost associated with reading words with transposed letters

Ageing and the Misperception of Words: Evidence from Eye Movements during Reading.

Research with lexical neighbours (words that differ by a single letter while the number and order of letters is preserved) indicates that readers frequently misperceive a word as its higher frequency neighbour (HFN) even during normal reading (Slattery, 2009). But how this lexical influence on word identification changes across the adult lifespan is largely unknown, although slower lexical processing and reduced visual abilities in later adulthood may lead to an increased incidence of word misperception errors. In particular, older adults may be more likely than younger adults to misidentify a word as its HFN, especially when the HFN is congruent with prior sentence context, although this has not been investigated. Accordingly, to address this issue, young and older adults read sentences containing target words with and without an HFN, where the HFN was either congruent with prior sentence context or not. Consistent with previous findings for young adults, eye movements were disrupted more for words with than without an HFN, especially when the HFN was congruent with prior context. Crucially, however, there was no indication of an adult age difference in this word misperception effect. We discuss these findings in relation to the nature of misperception effects in older age