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The lexical database dlexDB supplies in form of an online database frequency-based norms of numerous process-related word properties for psychological and linguistic research. These values include well known variables such as printed frequency of word form and lemma as documented also in CELEX (Baayen, Piepenbrock und Gulikers, 1995). In addition, we compute new values like frequencies based on syllables, and morphemes as well as frequencies of character chains, and multiple word combinations. The statistics are based on the Kernkorpus des Digitalen Wrterbuchs der deutschen Sprache (DWDS) with over 100 million running words. We illustrate the validity of these norms with new results about fixation durations in sentence reading.
Semantic processing from parafoveal words is an elusive phenomenon in alphabetic languages, but it has been demonstrated only for a restricted set of noncompound Chinese characters. Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm, this experiment examined whether parafoveal lexical and sublexical semantic information was extracted from compound preview characters. Results generalized parafoveal semantic processing to this representative set of Chinese characters and extended the parafoveal processing to radical (sublexical) level semantic information extraction. Implications for notions of parafoveal information extraction during Chinese reading are discussed.
Parafoveal semantic processing has recently been well documented in reading Chinese sentences, presumably because of language-specific features. However, because of a large variation of fixation landing positions on pretarget words, some preview words actually were located in foveal vision when readers' eyes landed close to the end of the pretarget words. None of the previous studies has completely ruled out a possibility that the semantic preview effects might mainly arise from these foveally processed preview words. This case, whether previously observed positive evidence for parafoveal semantic processing can still hold, has been called into question. Using linear mixed models, we demonstrate in this study that semantic preview benefit from word N+1 decreased if fixation on pretarget word N was close to the preview. We argue that parafoveal semantic processing is not a consequence of foveally processed preview words.
Word features in parafoveal vision influence eye movements during reading. The question of whether readers extract semantic information from parafoveal words was studied in 3 experiments by using a gaze-contingent display change technique. Subjects read German sentences containing 1 of several preview words that were replaced by a target word during the saccade to the preview (boundary paradigm). In the 1st experiment the preview word was semantically related or unrelated to the target. Fixation durations on the target were shorter for semantically related than unrelated previews, consistent with a semantic preview benefit. In the 2nd experiment, half the sentences were presented following the rules of German spelling (i.e., previews and targets were printed with an initial capital letter), and the other half were presented completely in lowercase. A semantic preview benefit was obtained under both conditions. In the 3rd experiment, we introduced 2 further preview conditions, an identical word and a pronounceable nonword, while also manipulating the text contrast. Whereas the contrast had negligible effects, fixation durations on the target were reliably different for all 4 types of preview. Semantic preview benefits were greater for pretarget fixations closer to the boundary (large preview space) and, although not as consistently, for long pretarget fixation durations (long preview time). The results constrain theoretical proposals about eye movement control in reading.
Eye movements during reading proverbs and regular sentences: the incoming word predictability effect
(2014)
Despite the well-known influence of emotional meaning on cognition, relatively less is known about its effects on reading behavior. We investigated whether fixation behavior during the reading of Chinese sentences is influenced by emotional word meaning in the parafovea. Two-character target words embedded into the same sentence frames provided emotionally positive, negative, or neutral contents. Fixation durations on neutral pretarget words were prolonged for positive parafoveal words and for highly frequent negative parafoveal words. In addition, fixation durations on foveal emotional words were shorter than those on neutral words. We also found that the role of emotional words varied as a function of their valence during foveal and parafoveal processing. These findings suggest a processing advantage for emotional words relative to emotionally neutral stimuli in foveal and parafoveal vision. We discuss implications for the notion of attention attraction due to emotional content.
This is the first attempt at characterizing reading difficulty in Hindi using naturally occurring sentences. We created the Potsdam-Allahabad Hindi Eyetracking Corpus by recording eye-movement data from 30 participants at the University of Allahabad, India. The target stimuli were 153 sentences selected from the beta version of the Hindi-Urdu treebank. We find that word- or low-level predictors (syllable length, unigram and bigram frequency) affect first-pass reading times, regression path duration, total reading time, and outgoing saccade length. An increase in syllable length results in longer fixations, and an increase in word unigram and bigram frequency leads to shorter fixations. Longer syllable length and higher frequency lead to longer outgoing saccades. We also find that two predictors of sentence comprehension difficulty, integration and storage cost, have an effect on reading difficulty. Integration cost (Gibson, 2000) was approximated by calculating the distance (in words) between a dependent and head; and storage cost (Gibson, 2000), which measures difficulty of maintaining predictions, was estimated by counting the number of predicted heads at each point in the sentence. We find that integration cost mainly affects outgoing saccade length, and storage cost affects total reading times and outgoing saccade length. Thus, word-level predictors have an effect in both early and late measures of reading time, while predictors of sentence comprehension difficulty tend to affect later measures. This is, to our knowledge, the first demonstration using eye-tracking that both integration and storage cost influence reading difficulty.
A number of recent studies have investigated how syntactic and non-syntactic constraints combine to cue memory retrieval during anaphora resolution. In this paper we investigate how syntactic constraints and gender congruence interact to guide memory retrieval during the resolution of subject pronouns. Subject pronouns are always technically ambiguous, and the application of syntactic constraints on their interpretation depends on properties of the antecedent that is to be retrieved. While pronouns can freely corefer with non-quantified referential antecedents, linking a pronoun to a quantified antecedent is only possible in certain syntactic configurations via variable binding. We report the results from a judgment task and three online reading comprehension experiments investigating pronoun resolution with quantified and non-quantified antecedents. Results from both the judgment task and participants' eye movements during reading indicate that comprehenders freely allow pronouns to corefer with non-quantified antecedents, but that retrieval of quantified antecedents is restricted to specific syntactic environments. We interpret our findings as indicating that syntactic constraints constitute highly weighted cues to memory retrieval during anaphora resolution.
A number of recent studies have investigated how syntactic and non-syntactic constraints combine to cue memory retrieval during anaphora resolution. In this paper we investigate how syntactic constraints and gender congruence interact to guide memory retrieval during the resolution of subject pronouns. Subject pronouns are always technically ambiguous, and the application of syntactic constraints on their interpretation depends on properties of the antecedent that is to be retrieved. While pronouns can freely corefer with non-quantified referential antecedents, linking a pronoun to a quantified antecedent is only possible in certain syntactic configurations via variable binding. We report the results from a judgment task and three online reading comprehension experiments investigating pronoun resolution with quantified and non-quantified antecedents. Results from both the judgment task and participants' eye movements during reading indicate that comprehenders freely allow pronouns to corefer with non-quantified antecedents, but that retrieval of quantified antecedents is restricted to specific syntactic environments. We interpret our findings as indicating that syntactic constraints constitute highly weighted cues to memory retrieval during anaphora resolution.