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Related Experiment Video

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Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects

Published on: November 30, 2018

Lexical processing during saccades in text comprehension.

Kiyomi Yatabe¹, Martin J Pickering, Scott A McDonald

¹National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Tokyo, Japan. yatabe@ncnp.go.jp

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

|January 16, 2009

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

People reading sentences process words during eye movements called saccades. Lexical processing, influenced by word frequency, occurs more during longer saccades, suggesting word processing happens during these rapid eye movements.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience
Linguistics

Background:

Previous research indicated word processing during saccades for isolated words.
The role of saccadic processing in continuous text reading remained unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether lexical processing occurs during saccades when reading sentences.
To determine if saccade length influences the extent of word processing during reading.

Main Methods:

Participants read sentences with target words of varying frequencies.
Participants made saccades of different lengths (10° vs. 40°) to subsequent text.
Lexical decision tasks or word recognition measures were employed.

Main Results:

A word frequency effect was observed on target words and words following saccades.
This frequency effect was more pronounced following shorter saccades compared to longer ones.
Lexical processing was more extensive during longer saccades.

Conclusions:

Lexical processing, including word frequency effects, occurs during saccadic eye movements in sentence reading.
Saccade length modulates the amount of lexical processing performed during these eye movements.
These findings contribute to understanding the dynamics of reading and visual attention.