Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： The ability to pre-process information from the parafovea, a hallmark component of skilled reading ( Blythe & Joseph, 2011), refers to the fact that readers visually and linguistically analyse upcoming words prior to their direct fixation. Previous findings regarding depth of pre-processing effects that are based on alphabetic language reading are mixed. One very important reason is that there is considerable variability in the length of target words in those studies conducted on alphabetic reading scripts. By contrast, it is possible to conduct such studies in Chinese to allow for parafoveal processing of text to be operationalized over characters without length variability. Chinese is a language with characteristics that are optimal for investigating parafoveal processing. The present project will take advantage of Chinese text characteristics to examine three aspects of parafoveal processing by using the eye tracking technique: (1) the first study aims at exploring how parafoveal load affects the spatial extent of pre-processing; (2) the second study attempts to examine whether and how foveal load influences the spatial extent and depth of pre-processing; on the basis of the first two studies, (3) the third study will investigate how reading skill modulates the spatial and depth effects of parafoveal processing, and also how reading efficiency interacts with spatial extent and depth of pre-processing. The findings of the current project will seek to illuminate currently controversial issues on parafoveal processing, and will be beneficial for examining and extending the current reading models of eye movement control (e.g., E-Z reader model, SWIFT model).
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： A controversial issue in eye movement research investigating reading concerns whether high-level information (e.g., syntactic category information) of parafoveal words can be obtained prior to fixation. Researchers have demonstrated that readers could stably extract syntactic category information from the parafoveal words during English reading, and such findings are in favor of parallel graded processing model (e.g., SWIFT model). Unlike English, Chinese are not rich in inflectional or derivational indicators to specify words’ syntactic properties. For example, there is no inflection with the verb 包装 (pack) no matter whether this action is going to happen or has already happened, nor whether this word is used as a verb or a noun. Therefore, parafoveal syntactic cues in Chinese may be limited relative to English, meaning that the extraction and use of such information when making syntactic commitments may be delayed. The present study was to explore whether parafoveal word class information could be extracted during Chinese reading. Using the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975), we manipulated the syntactic category (word class) of preview words to form three conditions: identical preview, preview with the same word class as the target word, preview with the different word class as the target word. 120 college students participated in the experiment. Eye movements were recorded using an Eyelink 1000 eye-tracker, and the recorded results (reading time and fixation probability) are the dependent variables. Participants were asked to read 45 sentences and answered a multiple-choice comprehension question if any (about 30%). Although participants were only exposed to each target word once, all sentences appeared in all preview conditions across three counterbalanced lists. The results showed that readers spent similar duration when they fixed the target word regardless of whether the word class of the preview word in the parafovea was same as the target word or not, and there was no significant difference in fixation probability between them. Supplementary Bayesian analysis supported the null hypothesis. Moreover, all fixation durations were significantly shorter for the identical condition than for the other two previews, skipping rate was higher for identical condition, and regression probabilities were lower for identical condition. The findings in the present study suggest that it is difficult for Chinese readers to extract high-level syntactic category information from parafoveal words. Our results provide support for the sequential attention shift model (e.g., E-Z reader model), which in favor of that high-level information processing occurs in the integration stage (I). The results provide evidence for improving computational models of eye movements about how to process lexical high-level information during reading.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： According to the lexical quality hypothesis, high proficient (fast) readers have well-specified lexical representations which enable automatic word identification and less context decoding, while low proficient (slow) readers rely on context for word identification during reading due to their imprecise lexical quality. In contrast, the predictive coding framework assumes that high proficient readers rely more on their reading experience to predict the upcoming context compared to low proficient readers. However, it is still unclear how skilled readers with different levels of reading proficiency rely on context information (e.g., predictability) for word processing during Chinese reading. In two experiments, the present study aimed to investigate individual differences in the use of predictability for word identification by using the eye-tracking technique. In Experiment 1, eye movements of fast and slow readers were recorded while they were reading sentences containing predictable or unpredictable target words, with the aim to investigate the differences in predictability effects between the two groups. Sixty pairs of predictable-unpredictable target words were selected, each of which was embedded into the same sentence frame. Fifteen fast and 15 slow readers, selected from a group of 66 participants based on their reading rates, participated in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, parafoveal previews of the 60 predictable target words (identical word, visually similar pseudocharacter, unpredictable word or visually dissimilar pseudocharacter) were manipulated by using the boundary paradigm to explore how parafoveal preview influences processing of predictability information in the fast and slow readers. The eye movements of 20 fast and 20 slow readers, selected from a group of 80 participants on the basis of their reading rates, were recorded while they were reading sentences containing predictable target words with different previews in Experiment 2. The results showed that fast readers fixated shorter and less on the target words and were more likely to skip the target words than slow readers. In Experiment 1, although reliable predictability effects with shorter fixations for predictable than unpredictable words were found, it did not interact with reading groups. However, results in Experiment 2 showed robust parafoveal preview effects on the target word which interacted with reading groups. In particular, the two groups had the same first-pass fixation times (i.e., FFD, SFD, GD) at the target words under the identical previews, while slow readers made longer fixations than fast readers at the targets with unpredictable previews or unrelated previews. In addition, fast readers skipped target words at a similar probability under both the identical preview and unpredictable preview conditions, while slow readers were less likely to skip target words with unpredictable previews than identical previews. The current findings indicate that fast and slow readers rely on context to a similar degree during their foveal lexical processing whereas the two groups show different utilization of previews of the predictable word during their parafoveal processing. To be specific, compared to fast readers, slow readers are inefficient in activating the predictable word with a visually similar preview; moreover, slow readers are disturbed more by the unpredictable preview or the visually dissimilar preview for their lexical processing, which suggests that slow readers are less effective in suppressing unrelated or inappropriate information during reading. Such findings provide evidence for the lexical quality hypothesis and are in support of the linguistic-pro?ciency hypothesis related to individual differences in the E-Z reader model.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Thematic role assignment refers to the on-line processing of assigning semantic roles, such as assigning agents or patients, to arguments (i.e., nouns) related to the verb. Linguistic information provided by arguments (e.g., word order, or case marking), as well as lexical argument representation of the verb is used for assigning thematic roles. The Extended Argument Dependency Model (eADM) suggests that argument cues utilized to assign semantic roles vary across languages. For rigid word-ordering languages (e.g., English) with case marking, readers adopt a position-based assignment, according to which the initial argument is usually analyzed as an agent. By contrast, thematic role assignment in unrestricted word-ordering languages (e.g., German, Italian, Japanese, and Turkish) with case marking exhibits a morphology-based strategy. The eADM model also predicts a reversal of thematic role assignment when the verb’s argument representation contradicts with the argument cues, which is based on verb information and induces additional processing costs. Considerable evidence has demonstrated the language-specific weight on argument cues. However, it is unknown whether word order strongly affects thematic role assignment in Chinese (a rigid-ordering language with case marking) reading. In addition, the reanalysis of thematic roles proposed by the eADM model has only been tentatively explored in Spanish. Whether such reanalysis processing exists in other languages, especially in non-alphabetic languages like Chinese, is still lack of evidence. The present study examined the reliance on word order information in the existence of case marking information and the reanalysis of thematic roles when argument representation of the verb was in contradiction with cues of arguments in Chinese. The sentence structure (centered or preposed) and the type of control verb (subject-control or object-control) were manipulated. Sentences in the centered structure provided information of word order and case marking, while sentences in the preposed structure only provided case marking information. Argument representation of object-control verbs incompatible with the information of arguments would lead to a re-assignment of semantic roles. The argument representation of subject-control verbs compatible with the argument cues would cause no reanalysis. Fifty-four pairs of control verbs were selected, each of which was embedded into a centered-structure sentence and a preposed-structure sentence. Eye movements of 24 native Chinese speakers were recorded by the Eyelink Ⅱ eye tracker. Each participant read 54 experimental sentences, followed by a comprehension question. The results showed that the preposed structure sentences caused longer second-pass reading time and more total incoming regressions in the first noun, longer first-pass reading time in the second noun, and longer regression path duration in the verb region than the centered-structure sentences, which suggested the strategy of position-based assignment for Chinese readers. There were robust main effects of the types of control verb, in that longer first pass reading time, regression path duration, and total incoming regressions were observed in the verb region, and longer second-pass reading time and total incoming (outgoing) regressions were found in the post-verb region in the object control verb condition than in the subject control verb condition. These results indicated that the mismatch of verb argument representation and argument cues contributed to an extra processing load. In addition, interactions between sentence structure and types of control verb were also observed, with longer second-pass reading time and total incoming regression in the second noun and longer second-pass reading time in the verb region in the centered-structure sentences containing object control verbs than those containing subject control verbs. There were longer first-pass reading time and regression path duration in the post-verb region in the preposed-structure sentences in the object-control verb condition than in the subject-control verb condition. In conclusion, these findings indicate that Chinese readers depend on word order information heavily to assign thematic roles even when there is case marking; also, the mismatch between cues of arguments and the argument representation of control verbs in Chinese reading causes reanalysis of thematic roles. Such findings are in line with the claim of the eADM model.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2022-06-27
Abstract： According to the lexical quality hypothesis, high proficient (fast) readers have well-specified lexical representations which enable automatic word identification and less context decoding (Andrews, 2015; Perfetti, 2007), while low proficient (slow) readers rely on context for word identification during reading due to their imprecise lexical quality. In contrast, the predictive coding framework assumes that high proficient readers rely more on their reading experience to predict the upcoming context compared to low proficient readers (Hawelka et al., 2015). However, it is still unclear how skilled readers with different levels of reading proficiency rely on context information (e.g., predictability) for word processing during Chinese reading. In two experiments, the present study aimed to investigate individual differences in the use of predictability for word identification by using the eye-tracking technique. In Experiment 1, eye movements of fast and slow readers were recorded while they were reading sentences containing predictable or unpredictable target words, with the aim to investigate the differences in predictability effects between the two groups. Sixty pairs of predictable-unpredictable target words were selected, each of which was embedded into the same sentence frame. Fifteen fast and 15 slow readers, selected from a group of 66 participants based on their reading rates, participated in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, parafoveal previews of the 60 predictable target words (identical word, visually similar pseudocharacter, unpredictable word or visually dissimilar pseudocharacter) were manipulated by using the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to explore how parafoveal preview influences processing of predictability information in the fast and slow readers. The eye movements of 20 fast and 20 slow readers, selected from a group of 80 participants on the basis of their reading rates, were recorded while they were reading sentences containing predictable target words with different previews in Experiment 2. The results showed that fast readers fixated shorter and less on the target words and were more likely to skip the target words than slow readers. In Experiment 1, although reliable predictability effects with shorter fixations for predictable than unpredictable words were found, it did not interact with reading groups. However, results in Experiment 2 showed robust parafoveal preview effects on the target word which interacted with reading groups. In particular, the two groups had the same first-pass fixation times (i.e., FFD, SFD, GD) at the target words under the identical previews, while slow readers made longer fixations than fast readers at the targets with unpredictable previews or unrelated previews. In addition, fast readers skipped target words at a similar probability under both the identical preview and unpredictable preview conditions, while slow readers were less likely to skip target words with unpredictable previews than identical previews. The current findings indicate that fast and slow readers rely on context to a similar degree during their foveal lexical processing whereas the two groups show different utilization of previews of the predictable word during their parafoveal processing. To be specific, compared to fast readers, slow readers are inefficient in activating the predictable word with a visually similar preview; moreover, slow readers are disturbed more by the unpredictable preview or the visually dissimilar preview for their lexical processing, which suggests that slow readers are less effective in suppressing unrelated or inappropriate information during reading. Such findings provide evidence for the lexical quality hypothesis (Perfetti, 2007) and are in support of the linguistic-pro?ciency hypothesis related to individual differences in the E-Z reader model (Reichle et al., 2013).
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2020-05-08
Abstract： The ability to pre-process information from the parafovea, a hallmark component of skilled reading (Blythe, & Joseph, 2011), refers to the fact that readers visually and linguistically analyse upcoming words prior to their direct fixation. Previous findings regarding depth of pre-processing effects that are based on alphabetic language reading are mixed. One very important reason is that there is considerable variability in the length of target words in those studies conducted on alphabetic reading scripts. By contrast it is possible to conduct such studies in Chinese to allow for parafoveal processing of text to be operationalized over characters without length variability. Chinese is a language with characteristics that are optimal for investigating parafoveal processing. The present project will take advantage of Chinese text characteristics to examine three aspects of parafoveal processing by using the eye tracking technique: (1) the first study aims at exploring how parafoveal load affects the spatial extent of pre-processing, (2) the second study attempts to examine whether and how foveal load influences the spatial extent and depth of pre-processing; On the basis of the first two studies, (3) the third study will investigate how reading skill modulates the spatial and depth effects of parafoveal processing, and also how reading efficiency interacts with spatial extent and depth of pre-processing. The findings of the current project will seek to illuminate currently controversial issues on parafoveal processing, and will be beneficial for examining and extending the current reading models of eye movement control (e.g., E-Z reader model, SWIFT model)." "
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2020-05-06
Abstract： Parafoveal pre-processing contributes to highly efficient reading for skilled readers (Ashby et al., 2012; Rayner, 2009). Research has demonstrated that high-skilled or fast readers extract more parafoveal information from a wider parafoveal region more efficiently compared to less-skilled or slow readers (e.g., Ashby et al., 2012; Chace et al., 2005; Rayner et al., 2010; Veldre & Andrews, 2015a). It is argued that individual differences in parafoveal preview are due to high-skilled or fast readers focusing less of their attention on foveal word processing than less-skilled or slow readers (Rayner, 1986; Veldre & Andrews, 2014). In other words, foveal processing difficulty might modulate an individual’s amount of parafoveal preview (Foveal Load Hypothesis, Henderson & Ferreira, 1990). However, few studies have provided evidence in support of this claim. Therefore, the present study aimed to explore whether and how foveal lexical processing load modulates parafoveal preview of readers with different reading speeds (a commonly used measurement of reading skill or reading proficiency). By using a three-minute reading comprehension task, 28 groups of fast and slow readers were selected from 300 participants (234 were valid) according to their reading speed in the current study. Participants were then asked to read sentences while their eye movements were recorded using an Eyelink 1000 eyetracker. Each experimental sentence contained a pre-target word that varied in lexical frequency to manipulate foveal processing load (low load: high frequency; high load: low frequency), and a target word manipulated for preview (identical or pseudo-character) within the boundary paradigm (Rayner 1975). Global analyses showed that, although fast readers had similar accuracy of reading comprehension to slow readers, they had shorter reading times, longer forward saccades, made less fixations and regressions, and had higher reading speeds compared to slow readers, indicating that our selection of fast and slow readers was highly effective. The pre-target word analyses showed that there was a main effect of word frequency on first-pass reading times, indicating an effective manipulation of foveal load. Additionally, there was an interactive effect between reading group and word frequency for first fixation and single fixation durations, showing that fast readers fixated high frequency pre-target words for less time than low frequency pre-target words, while slow readers made similar duration fixations on the high and low frequency pre-target words. However, the target word analyses did not show any three-way or two-way interactions for the first-pass reading times as well as for skipping probability. To be specific, the first-pass reading times were shorter at the target word with identical previews in relation to pseudocharacter previews (i.e. preview benefit effects); importantly, similar size effects occurred for both fast readers and slow readers. The findings in the present study suggest that lexical information from the currently fixated word can be extracted and can be used quickly for fast readers, while such information is used later for slow readers. This, however, does not result in more (or less) preview benefit for fast readers in relation to slow readers. In conclusion, foveal lexical processing does not modulate preview benefit for fast and slow readers, and the present results provide no support for the Foveal Load Hypothesis. Our findings of foveal load effects on parafoveal preview for fast and slow readers cannot be readily explained by current computational models (e.g., E-Z Reader model and SWIFT model).
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