Abstract
This study offers a glimpse of the moment-by-moment processes used by highly skilled and average readers during silent reading. The eye movements of adult readers were monitored while they silently read sentences. Fixation durations and the spatial–temporal patterns of eye movements were examined to see whether the two groups of readers exhibited differential effects of frequency and/or predictability. In Experiment 1, high- and low-frequency target words were embedded in nonconstraining sentence contexts. In Experiment 2, the same participants read high- and low-frequency target words that were either predictable or unpredictable, embedded in highly constraining sentence contexts. Results indicated that when target words appeared in highly constraining sentence contexts, the average readers showed different effects of frequency and predictability from those shown in the highly skilled readers. It appears that reading skill can interact with predictability to affect the word recognition processes used during silent reading.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by Grant HD26765 from the National Institutes of Health. The first author was also supported on Training Grant HD07327 and a Kirschstein National Research Service Award (HD 045056) from the National Institutes of Health. Thanks to Brett Miller and Gretchen Kambe for help preparing the materials for Experiment 2 and to Marc Brysbaert and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments in revising this manuscript.
Notes
The target frankreceived inflated fixation durations. Apparently, the highly frequent usage (Frank) interfered with the processing of the appropriate meaning in these sentences. To preserve counterbalancing, the other item in this pair (moral) also was excluded from the analyses.
Since there was no effect of reading group on the probability of fixating on the target word, we do not discuss skipping behaviour. The interaction of frequency and predictability predicted by models such as EZ-Reader did influence skipping rates, F 1(1, 42) = 7.05, p < .05; F 2(1, 30) = 6.85, p < .05, in which high-frequency predictable target words were skipped more than any of the other conditions. Skipping rates in the high- and low-frequency predictable conditions were 22% and 13%, respectively. Skipping rates in the high- and low-frequency unpredictable conditions were 14% and 17%, respectively.
The three-way interaction was statistically examined using simple effects tests, but these yielded marginal significance. We report them here for completeness. An analysis of simple effects in regression path-out for the average readers yielded a main effect of frequency, F 1(1, 21) = 4.85, p < .05, and F 2(1, 30) = 4.96, p < .05, significant in both analyses. A main effect of predictability was significant in the items analysis, F 2(1, 30) = 4.09, p < .05, but not significant by participants, F 1(1, 21) = 2.52, p < .15. The predictability by frequency interaction reached marginal significance in the participants analysis, F 1(1, 21) = 2.96, p < .10, but was not significant by items, F 2(1, 30) = 2.52, p < .15. In the simple effects analysis for the highly skilled readers, however, only the predictability by frequency interaction was significant by participants, F 1(1, 21) = 6.7, p < .05, and marginal by items F 2(1, 30) = 3.1, p < .09.