Visual salience accelerates lexical processing and subsequent integration: an eye-movement study

ABSTRACT

This study examined how visual salience affects the processing of salient information it highlights (here after called visually salient information), as well as its connection with associated content during online reading. Participants were asked to read descriptive concepts that contained a two-character key concept term with a short definition, and subsequently complete a memory test. The visual salience of the key concept terms was manipulated. The results show that visual salience shortened the reading times of key concept terms, as well as the go-past times of concept definition. In addition, improving the visual salience of the key concept terms helped subjects in the subsequent memory test to make quicker and more accurate judgments regarding incorrect concepts. These results indicate that visual salience accelerates the lexical processing of visually salient information and helps readers build faster and more elaborate connections between visually salient information and associated content in the subsequent integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Visual salience
• online reading
• lexical processing
• integration
• eye movement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, YW, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province under Grant (2018J05055); and the Fujian Social Science Planning Project under Grant (FJ2017C087).