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Theories of reading posit that decisions about “where” and “when” to move the eyes are driven by visual and linguistic factors, extracted from the perceptual span and word identification span, respectively. We tested this hypothesized dissociation by masking, outside of a visible window, either the spaces between the words (to assess the perceptual span, Experiment 1) or the letters within the words (to assess the word identification span, Experiment 2). We also investigated whether deaf readers’ previously reported larger reading span was specifically linked to one of these spans. We analyzed reading rate to test overall reading efficiency, as well as average saccade length to test “where” decisions and average fixation duration to test “when” decisions. Both hearing and deaf readers’ perceptual spans extended between 10 and 14 characters, and their word identification spans extended to eight characters to the right of fixation. Despite similar sized rightward spans, deaf readers read more efficiently overall and showed a larger increase in reading rate when leftward text was available, suggesting they attend more to leftward information. Neither rightward span was specifically related to where or when decisions for either group. Our results challenge the assumed dissociation between type of reading span and type of saccade decision and indicate that reading efficiency requires access to both perceptual and linguistic information in the parafovea.
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A Rational Model of Word Skipping in Reading: Ideal Integration of Visual and Linguistic Information
Abstract Readers intentionally do not fixate some words, thought to be those they have already identified. In a rational model of reading, these word skipping decisions should be complex functions of the particular word, linguistic context, and visual information available. In contrast, heuristic models of reading only predict additive effects of word and context features. Here we test these predictions by implementing a rational model with Bayesian inference and predicting human skipping with the entropy of this model's posterior distribution. Results showed a significant effect of the entropy in predicting skipping above a strong baseline model including word and context features. This pattern held for entropy measures from rational models with a frequency prior but not from models with a 5‐gram prior. These results suggest complex interactions between visual input and linguistic knowledge as predicted by the rational model of reading, and a dominant role of frequency in making skipping decisions.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1734217
- PAR ID:
- 10127064
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Topics in Cognitive Science
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1756-8757
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 387-401
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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