The effects of parafoveal word frequency and segmentation on saccade targeting during Chinese reading

Yanping Liu*, Lili Yu, Le Fu, Wenwen Li, Ziyi Duan, Erik D. Reichle

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    15 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Two eye-movement experiments are reported in which a boundary paradigm was used to manipulate the presence versus absence of boundaries for high-frequency and low-frequency target words in the parafovea. In Experiment 1, this was done by introducing a blank space after the target words, whereas in Experiment 2 this was done by rendering the target words in red. In both experiments, higher frequency targets engendered longer saccades, whereas the presence of parafoveal word boundaries engendered shorter saccades. This pattern suggests the operation of two countermanding saccade-targeting mechanisms: one that uses parafoveal processing difficulty to adjust saccade lengths and a second that uses word boundaries to direct the eyes toward specific saccade targets. The implications of these findings for models of eye-movement control during reading are discussed, as are suggestions for integrating dynamic-adjustment and default-targeting accounts.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1367–1376
    Number of pages10
    JournalPsychonomic Bulletin and Review
    Volume26
    Issue number4
    Early online date1 Mar 2019
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Aug 2019

    Keywords

    • Chinese reading
    • dynamic-adjustment model
    • eye-movement control
    • word segmentation

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