Lexical Processing Strongly Affects Reading Times But Not Skipping During Natural Reading

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Computational Linguistics
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Reading involves varying fixation durations and word skipping.
• Traditionally, oculomotor factors explained these variations, but modern theories emphasize lexical processing ease, including prediction and parafoveal preview.
• The relative importance of these factors in natural reading remains debated.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the contributions of linguistic prediction, parafoveal preview, and low-level oculomotor factors to word skipping and reading times in naturalistic reading.
• To challenge and refine existing models of eye movements during reading.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of three large naturalistic reading corpora (104 participants, 1.5 million words).
• Utilized deep neural networks and Bayesian ideal observers to model moment-to-moment linguistic prediction and parafoveal preview.
• Compared the explanatory power of oculomotor factors (fixation position, word length) against linguistic factors for word skipping and reading times.

Main Results:

• Oculomotor factors (fixation position, word length) explained the vast majority of variation in word skipping.
• Linguistic prediction and parafoveal preview were not significant predictors of word skipping.
• Both prediction and preview showed strong, independent contributions to reading times, comparable to findings from controlled experiments.

Conclusions:

• Word skipping in natural reading is largely autonomous from word identification and primarily determined by low-level oculomotor information.
• Reading times are influenced by both prediction and preview, supporting their role in lexical processing.
• Findings challenge dominant eye movement models, advocating for alternative models that decouple skipping from identification processes.