Parafoveal Processing of Vowel Contexts: Evidence from Eye Movements

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ashby_at_psych.umass.edu
Parafoveal Processing of Vowel Contexts Evidence
from Eye Movements Jane Ashby1, Rebecca Treiman2,
Brett Kessler2, Keith Rayner1
1University of Massachusetts at Amherst
2Washington University in St. Louis
Research Questions When and how do readers assign
vowel sounds during silent reading? Do consonant
codas provide a biasing context that facilitates
vowel identification during silent reading? Do
readers process that biasing context parafoveally?
Methods Materials 36 participants read silently
while their eye movements were monitored using a
Generation V Dual Purkinje eyetracker.
Results
Data Analyses Data were excluded from the
analyses if the fixation prior to landing in the
target region was more than 7 characters away
from the beginning of target word. Preview type
(match or mismatch) was treated as a within
factor in both the participants and items
analyses.
Materials 32 Target Words
(mean frequency 68 per million) Four Groups of
Previews ook / oon ort / omp
all/aff ead / ean Design Each target
was preceded by a nonword preview that either
matched or mismatched the vowel sound of the
prime. Targets were embedded in sentence contexts.
Previous Research Kessler Treiman
(2001) Statistical studies of written English
established that the pronunciation of some vowels
is conditioned by the following consonant. For
example, the pronunciation of the ambiguous vowel
(oo) is conditioned by the coda consonant, such
that -ook is usually pronounced as in cook while
-oon is pronounced as in spoon. Treiman
Kessler (2003) When reading nonwords aloud, adult
readers took advantage of certain vowel-coda
patterns. The coda consonants influenced the
pronunciation of the vowels in these cases.
Preview
Target Match
Mismatch scoon
scook scoop bomp
bort
bond raff
rall rack
squean squead
squeal
Summary of Results Main Effects of
Preview Effect Size t1
t2
First Fixation 13 ms 2.40
1.69 Gaze Duration
12 ms 1.88 . 2.06
Rayner (1975) A boundary change technique allows
experimenters to manipulate what the reader
perceives parafoveally, or before the eyes
actually land on the target word. When the
readers eyes make a saccade to the target word,
the eyes move across an invisible boundary and
trigger a display change to the target word.
Procedure

Match Condition

William would always squean when his sister
tickled him.


William would always
squeal when his sister tickled him. Mismatch
Condition
William
would always squead when his sister tickled him.
William
would always squeal when his sister tickled him.
Goal Predictions To investigate whether readers
use rime information available in the parafovea
to assign vowel sounds to orthographically
ambiguous vowels. Prediction If coda
information is used early in word recognition to
resolve vowel ambiguity, then words will be read
faster when preceded by a rime preview that
matches the vowel sound of the target word than
by a rime preview that does not match the vowel
sound.
Conclusions Coda information was processed
parafoveally, and it provided an orthographic
context that biased readers to assign a
particular vowel phoneme. Consonant and vowel
information appears to be integrated early in
word recognition. It is preserved during the
saccade to the target, and influences the
phonological representation that is constructed
during lexical access.
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