Susan A. Duffy

Lexical complexity and fixation times in reading: effects of word frequency, verb complexity, and lexical ambiguity

Two experiments investigated whether lexical complexity increases a word’s processing time. Subjects read sentences, each containing a target word, while their eye movements were monitored. In experiment 1, mean fixation time on infrequent words was longer than on their more frequent controls, as was the first fixation after the Infrequent Target. Fixation Times on Causative, factive, and negative verbs and ambiguous nouns were no longer than on their controls. Further analyses on the ambiguous nouns, however, suggested that the likelihood of their various meanings affected fixation time. This factor was investigated in experiment 2. subjects spent a longer time fixating ambiguous words with two equally likely meanings than fixating ambiguous words with one highly likely meaning. The results suggest that verb complexity does not affect lexical access time, and that word frequency And the presence of two highly likely meanings may affect lexical access and/or postaccess integration.

Integrating Text and Pictorial Information: Eye Movements When Looking at Print Advertisements

Viewers looked at print advertisements as their eye movements were recorded. Half of them were told to pay special attention to car ads, and the other half were told to pay special attention to skin-care ads. Viewers tended to spend more time looking at the text than the picture part of the ad, though they did spend more time looking at the type of ad they were instructed to pay attention to. Fixation durations and saccade lengths were both longer on the picture part of the ad than the text, but more fixations were made on the text regions. Viewers did not alternate fixations between the text and picture part of the ad, but they tended to read the large print, then the smaller print, and then they looked at the picture (although some viewers did an initial cursory scan of the picture). Implications for (a) how viewers integrate pictorial and textual information and (b) applied research and advertisement development are discussed.

Degree of causal relatedness and memory

Abstract J. M. Keenan, S. D. Baillet, and P. Brown ((1984) Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior , 23 , 115–126) varied the causal relation between two sentences in passages read by their subjects. Subsequent recall of one sentence cued by the other improved, and then deteriorated as the causal relatedness of the two sentences increased. The present experiments extended this work and replicated the basic finding of a quadratic relation between recall and causal relatedness. Several explanations are considered to account for these results. The long reading times together with relatively poor recall at low levels of causal relatedness argue against a pure processing effort model. Variations in the integration and elaboration of the representation of the sentence pairs would seem to better account for the relation of recall and causal relatedness. Several issues raised by this explanation are then briefly considered.

The effect of clause wrap-up on eye movements during reading

The effect of clause wrap-up on eye movements in reading was examined. Readers read passages in which a target category noun referred to either a high typical or a low typical antecedent. In addition, the category noun was either clause final or non-clause final. There were four primary results: (1) Readers looked longer at a category noun when its antecedent was a low typical member of the category than when it was a high typical member; (2)readers looked longer at the category noun and at the post-category region when they were clause final than when they were not clause final; (3) readers regressed from a category noun or post-category region more frequently when it was clause final than when it was not clause final; and (4) readers made longer initial saccades when their eyes left the category noun or post-category region when this word was in clause final position than when it was not clause final. The last result suggests that sometimes higher order processes that are related to making a decision about when to move the eyes impinge on lower level decisions that are typically associated with deciding where to move the eyes.

Semantic facilitation of lexical access during sentence processing

In three experiments we investigated the effect of a sentence context on naming time for a target word. Contexts were presented by using a rapid serial visual presentation; subjects named the last word of the sentence. In the first two experiments, facilitation was observed for a fully congruent context containing a subject and verb that were weakly related to the target word. No facilitation was observed when either the subject or verb was replaced with a more neutral word. In the third experiment, the fully congruent contexts were modified either to preserve or to disrupt the original relation between the subject and verb. Facilitation was observed in both conditions. The full pattern of results suggests that a combination of lexical items can prime a target word in the absence of priming by any of the lexical items individually. This combination priming is not dependent upon the overall meaning of the sentence.

Comprehension of synthetic speech produced by rule: a review and theoretical interpretation.

In this paper, we review research on the perception and comprehension of synthetic speech produced by rule. We discuss the difficulties that synthetic speech causes for the listener and the evidence that the immediate result of those difficulties is a delay in the point at which words are recognized. We then argue that this delay in processing affects not only lexical access but also comprehension processes. We consider the mechanisms by which the comprehension system adjusts to this delay, the resulting costs to higher level comprehension processes, and the changes that occur in the language processing system as its familiarity with synthetic speech increases. Based on the framework we have developed, we suggest several directions for future research on the comprehension of synthetic speech.

Anaphoric inference during reading.

Three experiments provide evidence that an anaphoric noun phrase reinstates its antecedent in the course of comprehension. Subjects read a series of texts each containing a target item. Immediately after the last line of each text, the item was probed using a recognition task in Experiment 1 and a naming task in Experiment 2. Subjects were faster to respond to the item when the last line contained an anaphoric reference to it than when the last line referred to a different item from the text. Additional control conditions ensured that the effect was not due to semantic priming and that the probed item was not in working memory when the last line was encountered. A third experiment suggested that previous evidence for reinstatement reflected interference from a change of topic in the last line rather than facilitation due to reinstatement of the probed item.

Eye movements and anaphor resolution: effects of antecedent typicality and distance.

The coordination of the eye movement control system with comprehension processes was studied. Eye movements were monitored while subjects read paragraphs containing an anaphoric noun phrase. in Experiment 1, fixations on the anaphoric noun were shorter when its antecedent was close and typical of the noun category than when it was distant and/or atypical. Subjects took longer reading the words following the anaphoric noun when the antecedent was atypical than when it was typical. in Experiment 2, distance of antecedent affected anaphor fixation times for category name anaphors but not for general noun anaphors (e.g., “object”). The results suggest that the eyes do not wait for the completion of anaphor resolution processes. Rather, these processes are completed after the eyes have left the anaphoric noun. The different patterns of effects on the anaphors themselves and the post-anaphor region were interpreted to reflect two different stages in anaphor resolution.

Violating stereotypes: Eye movements and comprehension processes when text conflicts with world knowledge

We investigated the effect of discourse context on the access of word meaning during reading. Target words were role names (e.g.,electrician) for which there was a gender stereotype (e.g., electricians are stereotypically male). Target sentences contained a reflexive pronoun that referred to the role name (e.g.,The electrician taught herself . . .). Participants read these target sentences with or without paragraph context while their eye movements were monitored. In the absence of discourse context and in neutral discourse contexts, fixation times on the reflexive pronoun and immediately following the pronoun were inflated when the pronoun specified a gender that mismatched the stereotype, indicating that the gender stereotype was activated upon encountering the role name. When prior discourse context indicated the gender of the role-named character, this mismatch effect was eliminated. The mismatch effect indicates that gender stereotypes are automatically activated in the absence of disambiguating information. The lack of an effect when gender has previously been specified is consistent with the lexical reinterpretation model proposed by Hess, Foss, and Carroll (1995).

Risk attitude reversals in drivers' route choice when range of travel time information is provided

Automobile drivers were recently found to be risk averse when choosing among routes that had an average travel time shorter than the certain travel time of a route considered as a reference. Conversely, drivers were found to be risk seeking when choosing among routes that had an average travel time longer than the certain travel time of the reference route. In a driving simulation study in which the reference route had a range of travel times, this pattern was replicated when the reference range was smaller than the ranges of the available routes. However, the pattern was reversed when the reference range was larger than the ranges of the available routes. We recently proposed a simple heuristic model that fit the relatively complex data quite well. Actual or potential applications of this research include the design of variable message signs and of route choice support systems.