Alan Kennedy

Reading as a perceptual process

Section and selected chapter headings: Visual Word Processing. Traces of print along the visual pathway (T.A. Nazir). Processing of Finnish compound words in reading (J. Hyona, A. Pollatsek). Attention, Information Processing and Eye Movement Control. Relations between spatial and temporal aspects of eye movement control (R. Radach, D. Heller). Eye guidance and the saliency of word beginnings in reading text (W. Vonk et al.). Phonology in Reading. The assembly of phonology in Italian and English: consonants and vowels (L. Colombo). Do readers use phonological codes to activate word meanings? Evidence from eye movements (M. Daneman, E.M. Reingold). Syntax and Discourse Processing. Decoupling syntactic parsing from visual inspection: the case of relative clause attachment in French (J. Pynte, S. Colonna). Unrestricted race: a new model of syntactic ambiguity resolution (R.P.G. van Gompel et al.). Models and Simulations. Eye fixation durations in reading: models of frequency distributions (G.W. McConkie, B.P. Dyre). Subject index.

Parafoveal-on-foveal effects in normal reading

A corpus of eye movement data derived from 10 English and 10 French participants, each reading about 50,000 words, was examined for evidence that properties of a word in parafoveal vision have an immediate effect on foveal inspection time. When inspecting a short word, there is evidence that the lexical frequency of an adjacent word affects processing time. When inspecting a long word, there are small effects of lexical frequency, but larger effects of initial-letter constraint and orthographic familiarity. Interactions of this kind are incompatible with models of reading which appeal to the operation of a serial attention switch.

Theoretical perspectives on eye movements in reading: Past controversies, current issues, and an agenda for future research

The study of eye movements has become a well established and widely used methodology in experimental reading research. This Introduction provides a survey of some key methodological issues, followed by a discussion of major trends in the development of theories and models of eye movement control in fluent reading. Among the issues to be considered in future research are problems of methodology, a stronger grounding in basic research, integration with the neighbouring area of research on single word recognition, more systematic approaches to model evaluation and comparison, and more work on individual variation and effects of task demands in reading.

Parafoveal Processing in Word Recognition

Two experiments investigated the degree to which properties of a word presented in the parafovea influenced the time to process a word undergoing concurrent foveal inspection. In Experiment 1, subjects viewed a set of five-letter words at a fixed point, with words in parafoveal vision varying in length, word frequency, and both the type and token frequency of occurrence of their initial three letters. The results showed that the frequency of the target and the type frequency of its initial letters influenced foveal fixation time. In Experiment 2, subjects executed a sequence of saccades before initial fixation on the experimental items. Under these circumstances, fixation time was shorter overall. Lexical properties of parafoveal words had no effect on foveal processing, but the length and the type frequency of their initial letters exerted a strong influence. Parafoveal-on-foveal effects of this form are incompatible with models of reading in which attention is allocated sequentially to successive words. The data are more consistent with the proposition that foveal and parafoveal processing occurs in parallel, with processing distributed over a region larger than a single word. Subsidiary analyses showed little influence of any of the manipulated variables on saccade extent.

The influence of parafoveal words on foveal inspection time: Evidence for a processing trade-off.

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the influence of parafoveal words on foveal inspection time. It examines the way foveal and parafoveal information combine and interact to determine the timing of eye movements on successive words in text. A crucial question,when fixating a particular word, what information is available from words not yet fixated, is asked and answered. By manipulating the difficulty of the foveal word in different experiments, either by changing word frequency or local syntactic load, it was observed that word frequency or syntactic difficulty manipulations produced similar results. The linguistic properties of the word, or words, being processed, determine from moment to moment the “when and where” of eye movement control. The dynamics of eye movement control in reading are complex and present a major source of variability in measured processing time. The analysis of eye movement measures derived from the unconstrained inspection of text is particularly problematic when trying to interpret experimentally induced variation in fixation duration or saccade extent. Short fixation duration on a words initial letters reflects, successful prior parafoveal processing. In contrast, short fixation duration on a words final letters reflects unsuccessful parafoveal processing of the succeeding word.

Spatial Coding in the Processing of Anaphor by Good and Poor Readers: Evidence from Eye Movement Analyses:

An experiment that examined the way in which young readers deployed eye movements while reading sentences and while answering questions containing either a pronominal or noun anaphor is reported. To evaluate the possible causal role played by differences in inspection strategies between readers of above- and below-average reading skill, a third“age control” group of younger children was also tested. This group was matched on absolute reading ability with the less skilled group of older children, and on relative reading ability (i.e. reading quotient) with the more skilled group. Differences in inspection strategy were apparent between the groups of good and poor readers. Good readers launched more selective reinspections, whereas the poorer readers were more inclined to engage in“backtracking” and appeared to make less use of the displayed text. In every case there was a marked similarity in the behaviour of the good readers and the“age controls”. These results suggest that the ability to code the spatial location of words in a sentence, and, where necessary, to use this information to launch accurately targetted selective reinspections of previously read text, plays a crucial role in the development of skilled reading performance.

Parafoveal-on-foveal interactions in word recognition

An experiment is reported in which participants read sequences of five words, looking for items describing articles of clothing. The third and fourth words in critical sequences were defined as “foveal” and “parafoveal” words, respectively. The length and frequency of foveal words and the length, frequency, and initial-letter constraint of parafoveal words were manipulated. Gaze and refixation rate on the foveal word were measured as a function of properties of the parafoveal word. The results show that measured gaze on a given foveal word is systematically modulated by properties of an unfixated parafoveal word. It is suggested that apparent inconsistencies in previous studies of parafoveal-on-foveal effects relate to a failure to control for foveal word length and hence the visibility of parafoveal words. A serial-sequential attention-switching model of eye movement control cannot account for the pattern of obtained effects. The data are also incompatible with various forms of parallel-processing model. They are best accounted for by postulating a process-monitoring mechanism, sensitive to the simultaneous rate of acquisition of information from foveal and parafoveal sources.

Parsing complements: Comments on the generality of the principle of minimal attachment

Abstract Two experiments are described in this paper, which examine the processing of English sentences containing “complement” verbs, and which may be followed either by a nounphrase, as a direct object, or by a complement clause. It has been claimed by Frazier and Rayner (1982) that subjects are “garden-pathed” when reading reduced complements (lacking the overt complemetiser), and that this fact is strong evidence in support of the application of the principle of “Minimal Attachment” as a universal property of the human parser. Holmes, Kennedy, and Murray (1987) questioned this conclusion by providing evidence that full and reduced complements present equivalent problems, probably because of their greater structural complexity. Rayner and Frazier (1987) disputed this conclusion, ascribing it to an artefact resulting from the use of a self-paced reading task. The first experiment examines this controversy with a replication of the study by Holmes et al., measuring eye movements as the sentences are proc...

The influence of parafoveal typographical errors on eye movements in reading

Three experiments are reported, examining the effects of a typographical error in parafoveal vision on aspects of foveal inspection time and saccade targeting. All the experiments involved reading for comprehension. A contingent presentation procedure ensured that typographical errors were restored to their correct form before they were viewed in foveal vision: They were never available for foveal processing. In Experiment 1, the error was formed by replacing the first letter of the target word with a second occurrence of its second letter, producing an illegal nonword. This manipulation had no significant effect on foveal inspection time, but lowered the probability that a short word (“de” or “du”) prior to the target would be skipped. In Experiment 2 the familiarity of the targets initial letters was maintained constant across conditions. This manipulation removed the target 1 skipping effect, suggesting that the outcome of Experiment 1 was due to orthographic rather than lexical illegality, but revealed shorter foveal inspection times as a function of the presence of the error. Experiment 3 manipulated lexical and sublexical properties of the parafoveal typing error. Properties of the parafoveal error again influenced prior foveal inspection times. The pattern of results suggested that the determining properties were sublexical rather than lexical. The results as a whole are incompatible with a view of information processing in reading in which foveal processing remains immune from concurrent parafoveal influences.

Eye movements in reading: Some theoretical context

The study of eye movements has proven to be one of the most successful approaches in research on reading. In this overview, it is argued that a major reason for this success is that eye movement measurement is not just a methodology—the control of eye movements is actually part and parcel of the dynamics of information processing within the task of reading itself. Some major developments over the last decade are discussed with a focus on the issue of spatially distributed word processing and its relation to the development of reading models. The survey ends with a description of two newly emerging trends in the field: the study of continuous reading in non-Roman writing systems and the broadening of the scope of research to encompass individual differences and developmental issues.