Eye movements are now widely used to investigate cognitive processes during reading, scene perception, and visual search. In this article, research on the following topics is reviewed with respect to reading: (a) the perceptual span (or span of effective vision), (b) preview benefit, (c) eye movement control, and (d) models of eye movements. Related issues with respect to eye movements during scene perception and visual search are also reviewed. It is argued that research on eye movements during reading has been somewhat advanced over research on eye movements in scene perception and visual search and that some of the paradigms developed to study reading should be more widely adopted in the study of scene perception and visual search. Research dealing with "real-world" tasks and research utilizing the visual-world paradigm are also briefly discussed.

https://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~bkbergen/cogs200/Rayner-Bartlett.pdf

Eye movements and attention in reading, scene perception, and visual search.

The present review summarizes research investigating how words are identified parafoveally (and foveally) in reading. Parafoveal and foveal processing are compared when no other concurrent task is required (e.g., in single-word recognition tasks) and when both are required simultaneously (e.g., during reading). We first review methodologies used to study parafoveal processing (e.g., corpus analyses and experimental manipulations, including gaze-contingent display change experiments such as the boundary, moving window, moving mask, and fast priming paradigms). We then turn to a discussion of the levels of representation at which words are processed (e.g., orthographic, phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, and semantic). Next, we review relevant research regarding parafoveal processing, summarizing the extent to which words are processed at each of those levels of representation. We then review some of the most controversial aspects of parafoveal processing, as they relate to reading: (1) word skipping, (2) parafoveal-on-foveal effects, and (3) n + 1 and n + 2 preview benefit effects. Finally, we summarize two of the most advanced models of eye movements during reading and how they address foveal and parafoveal processing.

/pdf/parafoveal-processing-in-reading-4yz98xio7e.pdf

Parafoveal processing in reading.

Given that an effect size of d = .4 is a good first estimate of the smallest effect size of interest in psychological research, we already need over 50 participants for a simple comparison of two within-participants conditions if we want to run a study with 80% power. This is more than current practice. In addition, as soon as a between-groups variable or an interaction is involved, numbers of 100, 200, and even more participants are needed. As long as we do not accept these facts, we will keep on running underpowered studies with unclear results. Addressing the issue requires a change in the way research is evaluated by supervisors, examiners, reviewers, and editors. The present paper describes reference numbers needed for the designs most often used by psychologists, including single-variable between-groups and repeated-measures designs with two and three levels, two-factor designs involving two repeated-measures variables or one between-groups variable and one repeated-measures variable (split-plot design). The numbers are given for the traditional, frequentist analysis with p 10. These numbers provide researchers with a standard to determine (and justify) the sample size of an upcoming study. The article also describes how researchers can improve the power of their study by including multiple observations per condition per participant.

/pdf/how-many-participants-do-we-have-to-include-in-properly-461vxpxwok.pdf

How Many Participants Do We Have to Include in Properly Powered Experiments? A Tutorial of Power Analysis with Reference Tables.

This chapter provides a meta-analysis of the factors that govern word skipping in reading. It is concluded that the primary predictor is the length of the word to be skipped. A much smaller effect is due to the processing ease of the word (e.g., the frequency of the word and its predictability in the sentence).

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/283495/file/598851.pdf

Word skipping: implications for theories of eye movement control in reading

The Acquisition of IT

False Positives and Other Statistical Errors in Standard Analyses of Eye Movements in Reading.

In the boundary change paradigm (Rayner, 1975), when a reader's eyes cross an invisible boundary location, a preview word is replaced by a target word. Readers are generally unaware of such changes due to saccadic suppression. However, some readers detect changes on a few trials and a small percentage of them detect many changes. Two experiments are reported in which we combined eye movement data with signal detection analyses to investigate display change detection. On each trial, readers had to indicate if they saw a display change in addition to reading for meaning. On half the trials the display change occurred during the saccade (immediate condition); on the other half, it was slowed by 15-25 ms (delay condition) to increase the likelihood that a change would be detected. Sentences were presented in an alternating case fashion allowing us to investigate the influence of both letter identity and case. In the immediate condition, change detection was higher when letters changed than when case changed corroborating findings that word processing utilizes abstract (case independent) letter identities. However, in the delay condition (where d' was much higher than the immediate condition), detection was equal for letter and case changes. The results of both experiments indicate that sensitivity to display changes was related to how close the eyes were to the invalid preview on the fixation prior to the display change, as well as the timing of the completion of this change relative to the start of the post-change fixation.

Eye movements and display change detection during reading.

The use of gaze-contingent display techniques to study reading has shown that readers attend not only the currently fixated word, but also the word to the right of the current fixation. However, a critical look at the literature shows that a number of questions cannot be readily answered from the available literature reviews on the topic. First, there is no consensus as to whether readers also attend the second word to the right of fixation. Second, it is not clear whether parafoveal processing is more efficient in languages such as Chinese. Third, it is not well understood whether the measured effects are confounded by the properties of the parafoveal mask. In the present study, we addressed these issues by performing a Bayesian meta-analysis of 93 experiments that used the boundary paradigm (Rayner, Cognitive Psychology, 7, 65-81. doi: 10.1016/0010-028590005-5 , 1975). We describe three main findings: (1) The advantage of previewing the second word to the right is modest in size and likely is not centered on zero; (2) Chinese readers do seem to make more efficient use of parafoveal processing, but this is mostly evident in gaze durations; and (3) there are interference effects associated with using different parafoveal masks that roughly increase when the mask is less word-like.

/pdf/parafoveal-preview-effects-from-word-n-1-and-word-n-2-during-24w3w5yc7z.pdf

Parafoveal preview effects from word N + 1 and word N + 2 during reading: A critical review and Bayesian meta-analysis

The boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) with a novel preview manipulation was used to examine the extent of parafoveal processing of words to the right of fixation. Words n + 1 and n + 2 had either correct or incorrect previews prior to fixation (prior to crossing the boundary location). In addition, the manipulation utilized either a high or low frequency word in word n + 1 location on the assumption that it would be more likely that n + 2 preview effects could be obtained when word n + 1 was high frequency. The primary findings were that there was no evidence for a preview benefit for word n + 2 and no evidence for parafoveal-on-foveal effects when word n + 1 is at least four letters long. We discuss implications for models of eye-movement control in reading.

/pdf/parafoveal-processing-in-reading-manipulating-n-1-and-n-2-1cuxlf9l74.pdf

Bernhard Angele

Papers

Parafoveal processing in reading.

False Positives and Other Statistical Errors in Standard Analyses of Eye Movements in Reading.

Eye movements and display change detection during reading.

Parafoveal preview effects from word N + 1 and word N + 2 during reading: A critical review and Bayesian meta-analysis

Parafoveal processing in reading: Manipulating n+1 and n+2 previews simultaneously