Parafoveal preview benefits during silent and oral reading: Testing the parafoveal information extraction hypothesis

Abstract

The preview of a parafoveally visible word conveys benefits when it is subsequently fixated. The current study examined whether these benefits are determined by the effectiveness of parafoveal information extraction, as implied by current models of eye movement control during reading, or by the effectiveness with which extracted information is integrated when a previewed word is fixated. For this, the boundary technique was used to manipulate the extent to which parafoveal information could be extracted, and text was read silently or orally. Consistent with prior work, a parafoveal target word preview conveyed fewer benefits when less parafoveal information could be extracted, target viewing durations were longer during oral than during silent reading, and the two factors interacted in the target fixation data, with smaller preview benefits during oral than during silent reading. Survival analyses indicated that this occurred because parafoveal information use occurred at later point in time during oral reading. Diminished opportunity for parafoveal information extraction also diminished target skipping rate, and it resulted in smaller saccades to target words, but these effects were not influenced by reading mode. Parafoveally extracted information was thus used less effectively during oral reading only when it involved the integration of parafoveally extracted information during subsequent target viewing. The dissociation of extraction from integration challenges current models of eye movement control.

Keywords:

• Oral reading
• Silent reading
• Parafoveal preview benefit
• Visual attention

We would like to thank Matthew Solomon for his help with the programming of the experiment, Julie Gregg and Christian Vorstius for their help with the manuscript, and Sarah Risse, Jane Ashby, and Heather Sheridan, for helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

We would like to thank Matthew Solomon for his help with the programming of the experiment, Julie Gregg and Christian Vorstius for their help with the manuscript, and Sarah Risse, Jane Ashby, and Heather Sheridan, for helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Notes

¹ According to Henderson and Ferreira (1990), this occurs because readers establish saccade programming deadline.

² Reingold et al. (2012; Sheridan, Rayner, & Reingold, 2013; Sheridan & Reingold, 2012) used smaller 1 ms bins. A somewhat larger bin size was used in the current study for computational convenience, as the computation of statistical models was relatively time consuming.

³ Generalized additive models rather than Reingold et al.'s (2012; Sheridan et al., 2013; Sheridan & Reingold, 2012) survival analyses were used to estimate divergence points, as these models provided more stable estimates of error variance. Reingold et al. used bootstrapping to estimate error. However, with our data, their approach resulted in substantial changes in the divergence point, which shifted towards shorter values when the number of bootstrappings was increased. Yang and McConkie (2004) did not determine error variance for survival probabilities.