Influences on and consequences of parafoveal preview in reading

During reading, information is extracted from upcoming words to the right of the currently fixated word, which facilitates recognition of those words when they are later fixated. According to the foveal load hypothesis (Henderson & Ferreira, 1990), this parafoveal preview benefit depends on how difficult the currently fixated word is to recognize. Furthermore, there is evidence that the influence of lexical variables (frequency and predictability) on word processing changes when no preview of that word is available. The present study reports two moving-window experiments in which the upcoming word to the right of fixation was either included in or excluded from the window. Through this manipulation, accurate parafoveal information was either available or not for each word in the paragraph. Two critical interactions between preview condition and lexical variables were observed. First, the word frequency at word N was found to be the primary influence on the amount of preview benefit obtained at word N+1, consistent with the foveal load hypothesis. Second, denial of preview eliminated the word predictability effect. These findings have implications for models of eye movement control in reading.