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The development of theories and computational models of reading requires an understanding of processing constraints, in particular of timelines related to word recognition and oculomotor control. Timelines of word recognition are usually determined with event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded under conditions of serial visual presentation (SVP) of words; timelines of oculomotor control are derived from parameters of eye movements (EMs) during natural reading. We describe two strategies to integrate these approaches. One is to collect ERPs and EMs in separate SVP and natural reading experiments for the same experimental material (but different subjects). The other strategy is to co-register EMs and ERPs during natural reading from the same subjects. Both strategies yield data that allow us to determine how lexical properties influence ERPs (e.g., the N400 component) and EMs (e.g., fixation durations) across neighboring words. We review our recent research on the effects of frequency and predictability of words on both EM and ERP measures with reference to current models of eye-movement control during reading. Results are in support of the proposition that lexical access is distributed across several fixations and across brain-electric potentials measured on neighboring words.
Parameters of a formal working-memory model were estimated for verbal and spatial memory updating of children. The model proposes interference though feature overwriting and through confusion of whole elements as the primary cause of working-memory capacity limits. We tested 2 age groups each containing 1 group of normal intelligence and I deficit group. For young children the deficit was developmental dyslexia; for older children it was a general learning difficulty. The interference model predicts less interference through overwriting but more through confusion of whole elements for the dyslexic children than for their age-matched controls. Older children exhibited less interference through confusion of whole elements and a higher processing rate than young children, but general learning difficulty was associated with slower processing than in the age-matched control group. Furthermore, the difference between verbal and spatial updating mapped onto several meaningful dissociations of model parameters.
Preview fixation duration modulates identical and semantic preview benefit in Chinese reading
(2012)
Semantic preview benefit from parafoveal words is critical for proposals of distributed lexical processing during reading. Semantic preview benefit has been demonstrated for Chinese reading with the boundary paradigm in which unrelated or semantically related previews of a target word N + 1 are replaced by the target word once the eyes cross an invisible boundary located after word N (Yan et al., 2009); for the target word in position N + 2, only identical compared to unrelated-word preview led to shorter fixation times on the target word (Yan et al., in press). A reanalysis of these data reveals that identical and semantic preview benefits depend on preview duration (i.e., the fixation duration on the preboundary word). Identical preview benefit from word N + 1 increased with preview duration. The identical preview benefit was also significant for N + 2, but did not significantly interact with preview duration. The previously reported semantic preview benefit from word N + 1 was mainly due to single- or first-fixation durations following short previews. We discuss implications for notions of serial attention shifts and parallel distributed processing of words during 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.
Three ERP experiments examined the effect of word presentation rate (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA) on the time course of word frequency and predictability effects in sentence reading. In Experiments 1 and 2, sentences were presented word-by-word in the screen center at an SOA of 700 and 490 ms, respectively. While these rates are typical for psycholinguistic ERP research, natural reading happens at a considerably faster pace. Accordingly. Experiment 3 employed a near-normal SOA of 280 ms, which approximated the rate of normal reading. Main results can be summarized as follows: (1) The onset latency of early frequency effects decreases gradually with increasing presentation rates. (2) An early interaction between top-down and bottom-up processing is observed only under a near-normal SOA. (3) N400 predictability effects occur later and are smaller at a near-normal (i.e., high) presentation rate than at the lower rates commonly used in ERP experiments. (4) ERP morphology is different at the shortest compared to longer SOAs. Together, the results point to a special role of a near-normal presentation rate for visual word recognition and therefore suggest that SOA should be taken into account in research of natural reading.
During natural reading, a parafoveal preview of the upcoming word facilitates its subsequent recognition (e.g., shorter fixation durations compared to masked preview) but nothing is known about the neural correlates of this so-called preview benefit. Furthermore, while the evidence is strong that readers preprocess orthographic features of upcoming words, it is controversial whether word meaning can also be accessed parafoveally. We investigated the timing, scope, and electrophysiological correlates of parafoveal information use in reading by simultaneously recording eye movements and fixation-related brain potentials (FRPs) while participants read word lists fluently from left to right. For one word the target (e.g., "blade") parafoveal information was manipulated by showing an identical ("blade"), semantically related ("knife"), or unrelated ("sugar") word as preview. In boundary trials, the preview was shown parafoveally but changed to the correct target word during the incoming saccade. Replicating classic findings, target words were fixated shorter after identical previews. In the EEG, this benefit was reflected in an occipitotemporal preview positivity between 200 and 280 ms. In contrast, there was no facilitation from related previews. In parafoveal-on-foveal trials, preview and target were embedded at neighboring list positions without a display change. Consecutive fixation of two related words produced N400 priming effects, but only shortly (160 ms) after the second word was directly fixated. Results demonstrate that neural responses to words are substantially altered by parafoveal preprocessing under normal reading conditions. We found no evidence that word meaning contributes to these effects. Saccade-contingent display manipulations can be combined with EEG recordings to study extrafoveal perception in vision.
During reading information is acquired from word(s) beyond the word that is currently looked at. It is still an open question whether such parafoveal information can influence the current viewing of a word, and if so, whether such parafoveal-on-foveal effects are attributable to distributed processing or to mislocated fixations which occur when the eyes are directed at a parafoveal word but land on another word instead. In two display-change experiments, we orthogonally manipulated the preview and target difficulty of word n+2 to investigate the role of mislocated fixations on the previous word n+1. When the eyes left word n, an easy or difficult word n+2 preview was replaced by an easy or difficult n+2 target word. In Experiment 1, n+2 processing difficulty was manipulated by means of word frequency (i.e., easy high-frequency vs. difficult low-frequency word n+2). In Experiment 2, we varied the visual familiarity of word n+2 (i.e., easy lower-case vs. difficult alternating-case writing). Fixations on the short word n+1, which were likely to be mislocated, were nevertheless not influenced by the difficulty of the adjacent word n+2, the hypothesized target of the mislocated fixation. Instead word n+1 was influenced by the preview difficulty of word n+2, representing a delayed parafoveal-on-foveal effect. The results challenge the mislocated-fixation hypothesis as an explanation of parafoveal-on-foveal effects and provide new insight into the complex spatial and temporal effect structure of processing inside the perceptual span during reading.
Semantic information extraction from the parafovea has been reported only in simplified Chinese for a special subset of characters and its generalizability has been questioned. This study uses traditional Chinese, which differs from simplified Chinese in visual complexity and in mapping semantic forms, to demonstrate access to parafoveal semantic information during reading of this script. Preview duration modulates various types (identical, phonological, and unrelated) of parafoveal information extraction. Parafoveal semantic extraction is more elusive in English; therefore, we conclude that such effects in Chinese are presumably caused by substantial cross-language differences from alphabetic scripts. The property of Chinese characters carrying rich lexical information in a small region provides the possibility of semantic extraction in the parafovea.