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We examined how the frequency of the fixated word influences the spatiotemporal distribution of covert attention during reading. Participants discriminated gaze-contingent probes that occurred with different spatial and temporal offsets from randomly chosen fixation points during reading. We found that attention was initially focused at fixation and that subsequent defocusing was slower when the fixated word was lower in frequency. Later in a fixation, attention oriented more towards the next saccadic target for high- than for low-frequency words. These results constitute the first report of the time course of the effect of load on attentional engagement and orienting in reading. They are discussed in the context of serial and parallel models of reading.
Even before formal schooling, children map numbers onto space in a directional manner. The origin of this preliterate spatial–numerical association is still debated. We investigated the role of enculturation for shaping the directionality of the association between numbers and space, focusing on counting behavior in 3- to 5-year-old preliterate children. Two studies provide evidence that, after observing reading from storybooks (left-to-right or right-to-left reading) children change their counting direction in line with the direction of observed reading. Just observing visuospatial directional movements had no such effect on counting direction. Complementarily, we document that book illustrations, prevalent in children’s cultures, exhibit directionality that conforms to the direction of a culture’s written language. We propose that shared book reading activates spatiotemporal representations of order in young children, which in turn affect their spatial representation of numbers.
Serial and parallel processes in eye movement control - current controversies and future directions
(2013)
In this editorial for the Special Issue on Serial and Parallel Processing in Reading we explore the background to the current debate concerning whether the word recognition processes in reading are strictly serialsequential or take place in an overlapping parallel fashion. We consider the history of the controversy and some of the underlying assumptions, together with an analysis of the types of evidence and arguments that have been adduced to both sides of the debate, concluding that both accounts necessarily presuppose some weakening of, or elasticity in, the eyemind assumption. We then consider future directions, both for reading research and for scene viewing, and wrap up the editorial with a brief overview of the following articles and their conclusions.