Anticipating syntax during reading: Evidence from the boundary change paradigm
Trevor Brothers1, Matthew J Traxler1
1Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis.
Summary
Syntactic context influences reading by affecting word skipping rates. Readers are less likely to skip ungrammatical words, showing grammar guides parafoveal word recognition.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Grammatical constraints rapidly influence language comprehension, especially word categories.
- Conflicting evidence exists regarding the early impact of sentential fit on reading behavior.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the influence of syntactic congruity on parafoveal word recognition during reading.
- To determine if grammatical constraints affect word skipping rates in real-time.
Main Methods:
- Gaze-contingent boundary change paradigm used to manipulate syntactic validity of upcoming words.
- Three experiments conducted with 148 participants.
- Measurement of word skipping rates based on syntactic correctness of previews.
Main Results:
- Higher skipping rates observed for syntactically valid previews compared to violation previews.
- Readers were less likely to skip ungrammatical continuations, even with lexical repetition.
- Word-class constraints demonstrated precedence over lexical repetition effects.
Conclusions:
- Syntactic context influences parafoveal word recognition.
- Grammatical constraints can generate early syntactic expectations for upcoming words during reading.
- This provides the first evidence for syntactic influence during parafoveal processing.
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