The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Word skipping in reading: on the interplay of linguistic and visual factors

Word skipping in reading: on the interplay of linguistic and visual factors
Word skipping in reading: on the interplay of linguistic and visual factors
An eye movement experiment is reported in which target words of two and four letters were presented in sentences that strongly raised the expectation of a particular word. There were three possible conditions: The expected word was present in the sentence, an unexpected word of the same length was present, or an unexpected word of a different length was present (all continuations were acceptable, but the latter two were difficult to predict). Our first purpose was to test one of the core assumptions of the Extended Optimal Viewing Position model of eye guidance in reading (Brysbaert & Vitu, 1998). This model states that word skipping is primarily a function of the length of the upcoming word. It leads to the prediction that an unpredicted two-letter word will be skipped more often than a predicted four-letter word, which is indeed what we observed. Our second aim was to determine if we could obtain an interaction between context predictability and parafoveal word length, by looking at what happens when the length of the parafoveal word does not agree with the length of the expected word. No such interaction was observed although the effects of both word length and predictability were substantial. These findings are interpreted as evidence for the hypothesis that visual and language-related factors independently affect word skipping
0954-1446
79-103
Drieghe, Denis
dfe41922-1cea-47f4-904b-26d5c9fe85ce
Brysbaert, Marc
dfe6bf7d-27f6-4546-82ca-375769276ad5
Desmet, Timothy
f7e7058a-6fa4-4acb-9b70-2f7ef3c1b8af
De Baecke, Constantijn
a5e8ec99-d66c-4ff9-a5dd-635928d5920c
Drieghe, Denis
dfe41922-1cea-47f4-904b-26d5c9fe85ce
Brysbaert, Marc
dfe6bf7d-27f6-4546-82ca-375769276ad5
Desmet, Timothy
f7e7058a-6fa4-4acb-9b70-2f7ef3c1b8af
De Baecke, Constantijn
a5e8ec99-d66c-4ff9-a5dd-635928d5920c

Drieghe, Denis, Brysbaert, Marc, Desmet, Timothy and De Baecke, Constantijn (2004) Word skipping in reading: on the interplay of linguistic and visual factors. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 16 (1&2), 79-103. (doi:10.1080/09541440340000141).

Record type: Article

Abstract

An eye movement experiment is reported in which target words of two and four letters were presented in sentences that strongly raised the expectation of a particular word. There were three possible conditions: The expected word was present in the sentence, an unexpected word of the same length was present, or an unexpected word of a different length was present (all continuations were acceptable, but the latter two were difficult to predict). Our first purpose was to test one of the core assumptions of the Extended Optimal Viewing Position model of eye guidance in reading (Brysbaert & Vitu, 1998). This model states that word skipping is primarily a function of the length of the upcoming word. It leads to the prediction that an unpredicted two-letter word will be skipped more often than a predicted four-letter word, which is indeed what we observed. Our second aim was to determine if we could obtain an interaction between context predictability and parafoveal word length, by looking at what happens when the length of the parafoveal word does not agree with the length of the expected word. No such interaction was observed although the effects of both word length and predictability were substantial. These findings are interpreted as evidence for the hypothesis that visual and language-related factors independently affect word skipping

Text
Drieghe,_Brysbaert,_Desmet,_&_De_Baecke_(2004).pdf - Accepted Manuscript
Download (405kB)

More information

Published date: April 2004

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 145109
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/145109
ISSN: 0954-1446
PURE UUID: f89cfeba-687d-4c4f-ab5b-68cfd6b22356
ORCID for Denis Drieghe: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9630-8410

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 05 Jul 2010 08:50
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 02:55

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: Denis Drieghe ORCID iD
Author: Marc Brysbaert
Author: Timothy Desmet
Author: Constantijn De Baecke

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×