Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether words are processed differently when they are fixated during silent reading than when they are skipped. According to a serial processing model of eye movement control (e.g., EZ Reader) skipped words are fully processed (Reichle, Rayner, Pollatsek, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 26(04):445–476, 2003), whereas in a parallel processing model (e.g., SWIFT) skipped words do not need to be fully processed (Engbert, Nuthmann, Richter, Kliegl, Psychological Review, 112(4):777–813, 2005). Participants read 34 sentences with target words embedded in them while their eye movements were recorded. All target words were three-letter, low-frequency, and unpredictable nouns. After the reading session, participants completed a repetition priming lexical decision task with the target words from the reading session included as the repetition prime targets, with presentation of those same words during the reading task acting as the prime. When participants skipped a word during the reading session, their reaction times on the lexical decision task were significantly longer (M = 656.42 ms) than when they fixated the word (M = 614.43 ms). This result provides evidence that skipped words are sometimes not processed to the same degree as fixated words during reading.
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Notes
The control group and the experimental group did not have different baseline reaction times as revealed by an analysis comparing the reaction times on the filler words for each group, β = 10.23, SE = 52.21, t = 0.20, p = 0.88. The fact that there were no baseline differences allows us to directly attribute any differences in reaction times to exposure to the word (skip, fixate, or no exposure control).
Our cloze task norms revealed that no words (not just our target words) were predictable in the sentence contexts, with the highest cloze task probability at 15% for any one response.
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Eskenazi, M.A., Folk, J.R. Skipped words and fixated words are processed differently during reading. Psychon Bull Rev 22, 537–542 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0682-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0682-6