Contextual constraint and N + 2 preview effects in reading

Abstract

Extracting linguistic information from locations beyond the currently fixated word is a core component of skilled reading. Recent debate on this topic is focused on the question of whether useful linguistic information can be extracted from more than one (parafoveally visible) word to the right of a fixated word (N). The current study examined this issue through the use parafoveal previews with a short and high-frequency next (N + 1) word, as this should increase the opportunity for the extraction of useful information from the subsequent (N + 2) word. Pairs of N + 2 words were selected so that contextual constraint was either high or low. Using saccade contingent display manipulations, preview of a N + 2 target word during word N viewing consisted of either a visually dissimilar nonword or a word. The results revealed a substantial drop in fixation probability for word N + 1 when the N + 2 preview was masked with a nonword. Furthermore, the masking of word N + 2 influenced its viewing duration even when word N + 1 was fixated prior to word N + 2 viewing. These results provide compelling evidence for the view that the linguistic processing can encompass more than one word at a time.

Keywords:

• Eye movements
• Reading
• Parafoveal processing
• Contextual constraint
• Parafoveal-on-foveal effects

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Grant (R305B04074) from the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences and by a grant from the German Science Foundation (GZ: GU 1177/1-1). We are grateful to Ben Tatler, Ronan Reilly, and an anonymous reviewer for very helpful feedback on an earlier version of this paper and to Rita Stieber for help in completing the manuscript.

Notes

¹ The lmer function used to predict oculomotor measures included two fixed factors, N + 2 preview and predictability; the random effect structure included random intercepts (1|subjects) and (1|items) plus random intercepts for subjects (1|subjects:preview:predictability) and items (1|items:preview).