TY - JOUR
T1 - Eye movements of highly skilled and average readers
T2 - Differential effects of frequency and predictability
AU - Ashby, Jane
AU - Rayner, Keith
AU - Clifton, Charles
N1 - Funding Information:
Correspondence should be addressed to Jane Ashby, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA. Email: ashby@psych.umass.edu This research was supported by Grant HD26765 from the National Institutes of Health. The first author was also supported on Training Grant HD07327 and a Kirschstein National Research Service Award (HD 045056) from the National Institutes of Health. Thanks to Brett Miller and Gretchen Kambe for help preparing the materials for Experiment 2 and to Marc Brysbaert and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments in revising this manuscript.
PY - 2005/8
Y1 - 2005/8
N2 - This study offers a glimpse of the moment-by-moment processes used by highly skilled and average readers during silent reading. The eye movements of adult readers were monitored while they silently read sentences. Fixation durations and the spatial-temporal patterns of eye movements were examined to see whether the two groups of readers exhibited differential effects of frequency and/or predictability. In Experiment 1, high- and low-frequency target words were embedded in nonconstraining sentence contexts. In Experiment 2, the same participants read high- and low-frequency target words that were either predictable or unpredictable, embedded in highly constraining sentence contexts. Results indicated that when target words appeared in highly constraining sentence contexts, the average readers showed different effects of frequency and predictability from those shown in the highly skilled readers. It appears that reading skill can interact with predictability to affect the word recognition processes used during silent reading.
AB - This study offers a glimpse of the moment-by-moment processes used by highly skilled and average readers during silent reading. The eye movements of adult readers were monitored while they silently read sentences. Fixation durations and the spatial-temporal patterns of eye movements were examined to see whether the two groups of readers exhibited differential effects of frequency and/or predictability. In Experiment 1, high- and low-frequency target words were embedded in nonconstraining sentence contexts. In Experiment 2, the same participants read high- and low-frequency target words that were either predictable or unpredictable, embedded in highly constraining sentence contexts. Results indicated that when target words appeared in highly constraining sentence contexts, the average readers showed different effects of frequency and predictability from those shown in the highly skilled readers. It appears that reading skill can interact with predictability to affect the word recognition processes used during silent reading.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=23944524826&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/02724980443000476
DO - 10.1080/02724980443000476
M3 - Article
C2 - 16194948
AN - SCOPUS:23944524826
VL - 58
SP - 1065
EP - 1086
JO - Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology
JF - Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology
SN - 0272-4987
IS - 6
ER -