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Words with high orthographic relatedness are termed "word neighbors" (angle/angel; birch/birth). Activation-based models of word recognition assume that lateral inhibition occurs between words and their activated neighbors. However, studies of eye movements during reading have not found inhibitory effects in early measures assumed to reflect lexical access (e.g., gaze duration). Instead, inhibition in eye-movement studies has been found in later measures of processing (e.g., total time, regressions in). We conducted an eye-movement boundary change study (Rayner, Cognitive Psychology, 7(1), 65-81, 1975) that manipulated the parafoveal preview of the word following the neighbor word (word N+1). In this way, we explored whether the late inhibitory effects seen with transposed letter words and words with higher-frequency neighbors result from reduced parafoveal preview due to increased foveal load and/or interference during late stages of lexical processing (the L2 stage within the E-Z Reader framework). For word N+1, while there were clear preview effects, there was not an effect of the neighborhood status of word N, nor a significant interaction. This suggests that the late inhibitory effects of earlier eye-movement studies are driven by misidentification of neighbor words rather than being due to increased foveal load., (© 2024. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)

Previous research shows that processing times on emotion words (both negative and positive) are faster than on non-emotional neutral words. In the current study, we explored how personality traits (the Big Five and the trait emotional intelligence factors) may further influence the processing of emotion versus non-emotion words by conducting two experiments where participants silently read sentences while their eye movements were recorded. The results replicated the facilitative emotion effect and showed that those with higher agreeableness scores had stronger emotion effects on positive words and those with higher extraversion scores, higher openness scores, higher agreeableness scores, lower sociability scores, and higher emotionality scores had stronger emotion effects on negative words. Furthermore, some personality traits also led to different ways that readers approach text, for example, through more risky reading strategies., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

While recent research has explored the effect that positive and negative emotion words (e.g., happy or sad) have on the eye-movement record during reading, the current study examined the effect of positive and negative emotion-laden words (e.g., birthday or funeral) on eye movements. Emotion-laden words do not express a state of mind but have emotional associations and connotations. The current results indicated that both positive and negative emotion-laden words have a processing advantage over neutral words, although the relative time-course of processing differs between words of positive and negative valence. Specifically, positive emotion-laden words showed advantages in early, late, and post-target measures, while negative emotion-laden words showed effects only in late and post-target measures., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The most recent edition of the American Psychological Association (APA) Manual states that two spaces should follow the punctuation at the end of a sentence. This is in contrast to the one-space requirement from previous editions. However, to date, there has been no empirical support for either convention. In the current study, participants performed (1) a typing task to assess spacing usage and (2) an eye-tracking experiment to assess the effect that punctuation spacing has on reading performance. Although comprehension was not affected by punctuation spacing, the eye movement record suggested that initial processing of the text was facilitated when periods were followed by two spaces, supporting the change made to the APA Manual. Individuals' typing usage also influenced these effects such that those who use two spaces following a period showed the greatest overall facilitation from reading with two spaces.

The current study utilized the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to examine the effects of predictability and parafoveal preview on reading behavior of developing readers. Participants ranging in age from 6- to 12-years-old read target words placed in a predictable or neutral context. Target words were manipulated to give either a valid identity preview, a visually similar preview that provided partial letter identity information, or a visually dissimilar preview where all of the letters were substituted. Developing readers fixated for a shorter duration on words in a predictable context. Furthermore, they showed significant preview effects and gained the most preview benefit from a full valid preview of the target word, especially within a predictable context. More skilled readers received more parafoveal information and relied less on context than less skilled readers. Implications for models of eye-movement control are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).)

Recently, Scott, O'Donnell and Sereno reported that words of high valence and arousal are processed with greater ease than neutral words during sentence reading. However, this study unsystematically intermixed emotion (label a state of mind, e.g., terrified or happy) and emotion-laden words (refer to a concept that is associated with an emotional state, e.g., debt or marriage). We compared the eye-movement record while participants read sentences that contained a neutral target word (e.g., chair) or an emotion word (no emotion-laden words were included). Readers were able to process both positive (e.g., happy) and negative emotion words (e.g., distressed) faster than neutral words. This was true across a wide range of early (e.g., first fixation durations) and late (e.g., total times on the post-target region) measures. Additional analyses revealed that State Trait Anxiety Inventory scores interacted with the emotion effect and that the emotion effect was not due to arousal alone.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the flexibility of letter-position encoding in word identification during reading. In both experiments, two tasks were used. First, participants' eye movements were measured as they read sentences containing transposed letter (TL) strings. Second, participants were presented with the TL strings in isolation and were asked to discriminate them from nonwords. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the distance between transposed letters (ligament vs. liagment vs. limagent vs. lieamgnt). Reading/response times increased with the distance between TLs. In Experiment 2, we manipulated whether the TLs were consonants, vowels, or one of each (ssytem vs. faeture vs. fromat). Reading/response times showed that CV transpositions were the most disruptive. In both experiments, response accuracy was particularly poor for words presented in isolation when there was an intervening letter between TLs. These data show that processing across multiple fixations, and the presence of a meaningful sentence context, are important for flexible letter position encoding in lexical identification.

The current experiments explored the parafoveal processing of transposed-letter (TL) neighbors by using an eye-movement-contingent boundary change paradigm. In Experiment 1 readers received a parafoveal preview of a target word (e.g., calm) that was either (1) identical to the target word (calm), (2) a TL-neighbor (clam), or (3) a substituted-letter (SL) nonword (chem). In Experiment 2 a further set of parafoveal preview conditions was explored including (4) an SL-word condition (chum) and (5) a TL-nonword condition (caml). Across both experiments, readers' fixation durations on the target words were significantly longer when the previews were SL previews than when they were TL neighbors, suggesting that TL neighbors (when presented in the parafovea) facilitate processing rather than inhibit processing. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that this is in contrast to the inhibitory effects that are seen when TL neighbor previews appear in the fovea.

In responses time tasks, inhibitory neighborhood effects have been found for word pairs that differ in a transposition of two adjacent letters (e.g., clam/calm). Here, the author describes two eye-tracking experiments conducted to explore transposed-letter (TL) neighborhood effects within the context of normal silent reading. In Experiment 1, sentences contained a target word that either has a TL neighbor (e.g., angel, which has the TL neighbor angle) or does not (e.g., alien). In Experiment 2, the context was manipulated to examine whether semantic constraints attenuate neighborhood effects. Readers took longer to process words that have a TL neighbor than control words but only when either member of the TL pair was likely. Furthermore, this interference effect occurred very late in processing and was not affected by relative word frequency. These interference effects can be explained either by the spreading of activation from the target word to its TL neighbor or by the misidentification of target words for their TL neighbors. Implications for models of orthographic input coding and models of eye-movement control are discussed.

Participants' eye movements were recorded as they read sentences with words containing transposed adjacent letters. Transpositions were either external (e.g., problme, rpoblem) or internal (e.g., porblem, probelm) and at either the beginning (e.g., rpoblem, porblem) or end (e.g., problme, probelm) of words. The results showed disruption for words with transposed letters compared to the normal baseline condition, and the greatest disruption was observed for word-initial transpositions. In Experiment 1, transpositions within low frequency words led to longer reading times than when letters were transposed within high frequency words. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the position of word-initial letters is most critical even when parafoveal preview of words to the right of fixation is unavailable. The findings have important implications for the roles of different letter positions in word recognition and the effects of parafoveal preview on word recognition processes.

The eye movements of a patient with pure alexia, GJ, were recorded as he read sentences in order to explore the roles of top-down and bottom-up information during letter-by-letter reading. Specifically, the effects of word frequency and word predictability were examined. Additional analyses examined the interaction of these effects with the lower level influences of word length and letter confusability. The results indicate that GJ is sensitive to all four of these variables in sentence reading. These findings support an interactive account of reading where letter-by-letter readers use both bottom-up and top-down information to decode words. Due to the disrupted bottom-up processes caused by damage to the Visual Word Form Area or the input connections to it, pure alexic patients rely more heavily on intact top-down information in reading.

Three eye movement experiments were conducted to examine the role of letter identity and letter position during reading. Before fixating on a target word within each sentence, readers were provided with a parafoveal preview that differed in the amount of useful letter identity and letter position information it provided. In Experiments 1 and 2, previews fell into 1 of 5 conditions: (a) identical to the target word, (b) a transposition of 2 internal letters, (c) a substitution of 2 internal letters, (d) a transposition of the 2 final letters, or (e) a substitution of the 2 final letters. In Experiment 3, the authors used a further set of conditions to explore the importance of external letter positions. The findings extend previous work and demonstrate that transposed-letter effects exist in silent reading. These experiments also indicate that letter identity information can be extracted from the parafovea outside of absolute letter position from the first 5 letters of the word to the right of fixation. Finally, the results support the notion that exterior letters play important roles in visual word recognition.

New words enter the language through several word formation processes [see Simonini ("Engl J" 55:752-757, 1966)]. One such process, blending, occurs when two source words are combined to represent a new concept (e.g., SMOG, BRUNCH, BLOG, and INFOMERCIAL). While there have been examinations of the structure of blends [see Gries ("Linguistics" 42:639-667, 2004) and Lehrer ("Am Speech" 73:3-28, 1998)], relatively little attention has been given to how lexicalized blends are recognized and if this process differs from other types of words. In the present study, blend words were matched to non-blend control words on length, familiarity, and frequency. Two tasks were used to examine blend processing: lexical decision and sentence reading. The results demonstrated that blend words were processed differently than non-blend control words. However, the nature of the effect varied as a function of task demands. Blends were recognized slower than control words in the lexical decision task but received shorter fixation durations when embedded in sentences.

Printed words that have a transposed-letter (TL) neighbor (e.g., angel has the TL neighbor angle) have been shown to be more difficult to process, in a range of paradigms, than words that do not have a TL neighbor. However, eye movement evidence suggests that this processing difficulty may occur on only a subset of trials. To investigate this issue, here we fit the ex-Gaussian distribution to naming latencies. The presence of a TL neighbor affected the [tau] parameter of the distribution of latencies, but there was no effect on the [mu] parameter. Vincentile plots confirmed that only slow responses were affected by the presence of a TL neighbor. These results contrast with the distributional effects of other variables on naming latency and are interpreted as suggesting that the TL effect involves inhibition of an incorrect output rather than broader competition between lexical entries. (Contains 4 figures, 1 table and 2 footnotes.)

The field of consumer neuroscience allows researchers to account for an individual's explicit reported behaviors as well as their implicit behaviors that are reflected in the neural mechanisms that occur during the purchase decision phase of a consumer's online shopping experience. The purpose of the current study was to use eye‐tracking technology in conjunction with self‐report purchase intention data to observe the relative impact of star rating, price, discount, and time pressure on purchase decisions. The results suggest that purchase intention was most affected by star rating, price, and discount with higher purchase intentions on items with higher star ratings, lower prices, and greater discounts. The eye movement data revealed that these factors, as well as time pressure, influenced where consumers directed their attention in making their purchasing decisions. These findings have significant implications for future ecommerce marketing strategy, especially across efforts to increase purchase intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research exploring the processing of morphologically complex words, such as compound words, has found that they are decomposed into their constituent parts during processing. Although much is known about the processing of compound words, very little is known about the processing of lexicalised blend words, which are created from parts of two words, often with phoneme overlap (e.g., brunch). In the current study, blends were matched with non-blend words on a variety of lexical characteristics, and blend processing was examined using two tasks: a naming task and an eye-tracking task that recorded eye movements during reading. Results showed that blend words were processed more slowly than non-blend control words in both tasks. Blend words led to longer reaction times in naming and longer processing times on several eye movement measures compared to non-blend words. This was especially true for blends that were long, rated low in word familiarity, but were easily recognisable as blends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preferred viewing location (PVL) is a robust finding in research on reading that when fixating on a word during normal sentence reading, readers tend to land slightly to the left of the center of the word. This is in contrast to the optimal viewing location in single word recognition, which falls at the center of the word. This study outlines the history of the PVL in eye tracking since Rayner's 1979 original study, documenting the origins of the conflicting theoretical explanations. In addition, a new study is reported examining whether the PVL can be attributed solely to oculomotor error or a processing advantage by using an experimental manipulation that separates tracking direction (left-to-right reading) and landing position (left-to-right within a word). Sentences were presented to participants from the top to the bottom of a computer screen with one word per line while eye movements were recorded. In this presentation format, readers continued to land to the left of center, suggesting that the PVL in normal reading is not solely due to oculomotor error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pure alexia is an acquired reading disorder in which previously literate adults adopt a letter-by-letter processing strategy. Though these individuals display impaired reading, research shows that they are still able to use certain lexical information in order to facilitate visual word processing. The current experiment investigates the role that a word's age of acquisition (AoA) plays in the reading processes of an individual with pure alexia (G.J.) when other lexical variables have been controlled. Results from a sentence reading task in which eye movement patterns were recorded indicated that G.J. shows a strong effect of AoA, where late-acquired words are more difficult to process than early-acquired words. Furthermore, it was observed that the AoA effect is much greater for G.J. than for age-matched control participants. This indicates that patients with pure alexia rely heavily on intact top-down information, supporting the interactive activation model of reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]