Coordination of processing during reading Flashcards
What do theories of eye movement control during reading attempt to explain?
How different processing systems interact e.g. eye movement control systems, attentional control, visual and linguistic processing
Define oculomotor
Processes relating to eye movement
Define Visual and Linguistic processing
Visual information includes luminance, contours etc
Linguistic information includes levels from abstract orthography up to semantics and comprehension
What is meant by lexical and post-lexical?
Processing at the level of lexical access (word candidates) or beyond e.g. semantics and integration across words etc
What was O’Regan’s strategy-tactics theory?
Visual/oculomotor theory i.e. visual and oculomotor factors determining when and where the eyes move
GLOBAL STRATEGY is either careful or risky reading
LOCAL TACTICS refer to approach to words - initial fixation position determining when and where eyes move, duration of fixations, probability of re-fixation
Limited linguistic influence
Briefly describe the steps in such a visual/oculomotor approach
Pre-attentive visual processing i.e. saliency
Low-spatial frequency visual info aids in the programming and subsequent execution of saccades
High-spatial frequency information is subjected to an initial familiarity check, and once this is done the saccade moves the eyes to perform a familiarity check on the other area
Once the familiarity check is performed, lexical access can be completed
What 2 factors does O’Regan suggest influence where we fixate during reading?
Word length (shorter words have higher skipping probabilities) Launch site - saccades launched from far launch sites have lower skipping probabilities
What did Rayner, Sereno and Raney (1996) suggest which countered O’Regan’s theory?
Other factors can influence word skipping and landing positions, namely word frequency and contextual predictability - frequent words are more likely to be skipped
This illustrates LINGUISTIC processing of parafoveal words in determining whether to skip or not
English speakers who read left to right can take in 15 letters on the right and only 3 or 4 to the left of a fixation
What did Brysbaert and Vitu suggest and what can be concluded from this?
Word length and launch site most critical in determining word skipping
Word skipping probabilities determined largely by visual and oculomotor factors however O’Regan’s account cannot explain linguistic influences such as the word frequency effect
What were Rayner et al’s Disappearing Text Experiments?
Designed to test the oculomotor approach - can linguistic factors influence eye movement when visual factors are removed?
No differences were found between reading of normal sentences and the reading of the disappearing text sentences, however frequency effects of critical words still existed in both conditions
This supports cognitive-based models over the oculomotor models
What does the Serial Attention Shift account suggest?
Attention is allocated to one word at a time
Serial attention shifts are intuitive, and word ordering is key for meaning e.g. James punched John has a very different meaning when the names are swapped
What was Just and Carpenter’s “eye mind”/Immediacy assumption?
Eyes will move once the processing of fixated information is complete i.e. fixation durations reflect the duration of cognitive processing
This is a simplistic idea and predicts linguistic influences
What was Morrison’s theory (precursor to the E-Z reader model)?
Similar idea to the immediacy assumption, except suggested successful word recognition triggers the eye movement to the next word
Once the word is recognised, attention shifts to the next word, eye movement is programmed and then executed following this
What are the 5 basic assumptions of Reichle et al’s E-Z Reader model?
1) Serial attention shifts
2) Word recognition triggers eye movement programming
3) Sub-lexical and lexical processing influences on eye movement behaviour (linguistic)
4) Supports word frequency effects and word predictability
5) Computational model - used to generate predicted values which can then be compared with real data
What trade-off must we consider when comparing theories?
Oculomotor approaches are simple, and explain MOST characteristics of eye movement behaviour in reading
Cognitive models such as E-Z reader are able to make better predictions but the theory is far more complex
Which is more valuable?
