Distinct Sybsystems for the Parafoveal Processing of Spatial and Linguistic Information during Eye Fixations in Reading

• Published in: The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology Human experimental psychology, 2003-07, Vol.56 (5), p.803-827
• Main Authors: Inhoff, Albrecht W, Radach, Ralph, Eiter, Brianna M, Juhasz, Barbara
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0272-4987

Two experiments examined readers' use of parafoveally obtained word length information for word recognition. Both experiments manipulated the length (number of constituent characters) of a parafoveally previewed target word so that it was either accurately or inaccurately specified. In experiment 1, previews either revealed or denied useful orthographic information. In experiment 2, parafoveal targets were either high- or low-frequency words. Eye movement contingent display changes were used to show the intact target upon its fixation. Examination of target viewing duration showed completely additive effects of word length previews & of orthographic previews in experiment 1, viewing duration being shorter in the accurate-length & the orthographic preview conditions. Experiment 2 showed completely additive effects of word length & word frequency, target viewing being shorter in the accurate-length & the high-frequency conditions. Together, these results indicate that functionally distinct subsystems control the use of parafoveally visible spatial & linguistic information in reading. Parafoveally visible spatial information appears to be used for two distinct extralinguistic computations: visual object selection & saccade specification. 8 Tables, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix, 49 References. Adapted from the source document