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Keith Rayner - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Skilled Deaf Readers Have an Enhanced Perceptual Span in Reading
Psychological science, 2012Co-Authors: Nathalie N. Bélanger, Timothy J. Slattery, Rachel I. Mayberry, Keith RaynerAbstract:Recent evidence suggests that, compared with hearing people, deaf people have enhanced visual attention to simple stimuli viewed in the parafovea and periphery. Although a large part of reading involves processing the fixated words in foveal vision, readers also utilize information in parafoveal vision to preprocess upcoming words and decide where to look next. In the study reported here, we investigated whether auditory deprivation affects low-level visual processing during reading by comparing the Perceptual Span of deaf signers who were skilled and less-skilled readers with the Perceptual Span of skilled hearing readers. Compared with hearing readers, the two groups of deaf readers had a larger Perceptual Span than would be expected given their reading ability. These results provide the first evidence that deaf readers' enhanced attentional allocation to the parafovea is used during complex cognitive tasks, such as reading.
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Eye movements and the Perceptual Span in silent and oral reading
Attention Perception & Psychophysics, 2012Co-Authors: Jane Ashby, Jinmian Yang, Kris H. C. Evans, Keith RaynerAbstract:Previous research has examined parafoveal processing during silent reading, but little is known about the role of these processes in oral reading. Given that masking parafoveal information slows down silent reading, we asked whether a similar effect also occurs in oral reading. To investigate the role of parafoveal processing in silent and oral reading, we manipulated the parafoveal information available to readers by changing the size of a gaze-contingent moving window. Participants read silently and orally in a one-word window and a three-word window condition as we monitored their eye movements. The lack of parafoveal information slowed reading speed in both oral and silent reading. However, the effects of parafoveal information were larger in silent reading than in oral reading, because of different effects of preview information on both when the eyes move and how often. Parafoveal information benefitted silent reading for faster readers more than for slower readers.
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Directional processing within the Perceptual Span during visual target localization.
Vision Research, 2010Co-Authors: Harold H. Greene, Kathleen M. Masserang, Alexander Pollatsek, Keith RaynerAbstract:In order to understand how processing occurs within the effective field of vision (i.e. Perceptual Span) during visual target localization, a gaze-contingent moving mask procedure was used to disrupt parafoveal information pickup along the vertical and the horizontal visual fields. When the mask was present within the horizontal visual field, there was a relative increase in saccade probability along the nearby vertical field, but not along the opposite horizontal field. When the mask was present either above or below fixation, saccades downwards were reduced in magnitude. This pattern of data suggests that parafoveal information selection (indexed by probability of saccade direction) and the extent of spatial parafoveal processing in a given direction (indexed by saccade amplitude) may be controlled by somewhat different mechanisms.
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Eye movements, the Perceptual Span, and reading speed.
Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2010Co-Authors: Keith Rayner, Timothy J. Slattery, Nathalie N. BélangerAbstract:The Perceptual Span or region of effective vision during eye fixations in reading was examined as a function of reading speed (fast readers were compared with slow readers), font characteristics (fixed width vs. proportional width), and intraword spacing (normal or reduced). The main findings were that fast readers (reading at about 330 wpm) had a larger Perceptual Span than did slow readers (reading about 200 wpm) and that the Span was not affected by whether or not the text was fixed width or proportional width. In addition, there were interesting font and intraword spacing effects that have important implications for the optimal use of space in a line of text.
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Eye Movements and the Perceptual Span in Older and Younger Readers
Psychology and aging, 2009Co-Authors: Keith Rayner, Monica S. Castelhano, Jinmian YangAbstract:The size of the Perceptual Span (or the Span of effective vision) in older readers was examined with the moving window paradigm (G. W. McConkie & K. Rayner, 1975). Two experiments demonstrated that older readers have a smaller and more symmetric Span than that of younger readers. These 2 characteristics (smaller and more symmetric Span) of older readers may be a consequence of their less efficient processing of nonfoveal information, which results in a riskier reading strategy.
Nathalie N. Bélanger - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Young Skilled Deaf Readers Have an Enhanced Perceptual Span in Reading.
Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), 2017Co-Authors: Nathalie N. Bélanger, Michelle Lee, Elizabeth R. SchotterAbstract:Recently, Belanger, Slattery, Mayberry and Rayner (2012) showed, using the moving window paradigm, that profoundly deaf adults have a wider Perceptual Span during reading relative to hearing adults matched on reading level. This difference might be related to the fact that deaf adults allocate more visual attention to simple stimuli in the parafovea (Bavelier, Dye & Hauser, 2006). Importantly, this reorganization of visual attention in deaf individuals is already manifesting in deaf children (Dye, Hauser & Bavelier, 2009). This leads to questions about the time course of the emergence of an enhanced Perceptual Span (which is under attentional control; Rayner, 2014; Miellet, O'Donnell, & Sereno, 2009) in young deaf readers. The present research addressed this question by comparing the Perceptual Spans of young deaf readers (age 7-15) and young hearing children (age 7-15). Young deaf readers, like deaf adults, were found to have a wider Perceptual Span relative to their hearing peers matched on reading level, suggesting that strong and early reorganization of visual attention in deaf individuals goes beyond the processing of simple visual stimuli and emerges into more cognitively complex tasks, such as reading.
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Skilled Deaf Readers Have an Enhanced Perceptual Span in Reading
Psychological science, 2012Co-Authors: Nathalie N. Bélanger, Timothy J. Slattery, Rachel I. Mayberry, Keith RaynerAbstract:Recent evidence suggests that, compared with hearing people, deaf people have enhanced visual attention to simple stimuli viewed in the parafovea and periphery. Although a large part of reading involves processing the fixated words in foveal vision, readers also utilize information in parafoveal vision to preprocess upcoming words and decide where to look next. In the study reported here, we investigated whether auditory deprivation affects low-level visual processing during reading by comparing the Perceptual Span of deaf signers who were skilled and less-skilled readers with the Perceptual Span of skilled hearing readers. Compared with hearing readers, the two groups of deaf readers had a larger Perceptual Span than would be expected given their reading ability. These results provide the first evidence that deaf readers' enhanced attentional allocation to the parafovea is used during complex cognitive tasks, such as reading.
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Eye movements, the Perceptual Span, and reading speed.
Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2010Co-Authors: Keith Rayner, Timothy J. Slattery, Nathalie N. BélangerAbstract:The Perceptual Span or region of effective vision during eye fixations in reading was examined as a function of reading speed (fast readers were compared with slow readers), font characteristics (fixed width vs. proportional width), and intraword spacing (normal or reduced). The main findings were that fast readers (reading at about 330 wpm) had a larger Perceptual Span than did slow readers (reading about 200 wpm) and that the Span was not affected by whether or not the text was fixed width or proportional width. In addition, there were interesting font and intraword spacing effects that have important implications for the optimal use of space in a line of text.
Reinhold Kliegl - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Perceptual Span depends on font size during the reading of chinese sentences
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 2015Co-Authors: Ming Yan, Wei Zhou, Hua Shu, Reinhold KlieglAbstract:The present study explored the Perceptual Span (i.e., the physical extent of an area from which useful visual information is extracted during a single fixation) during the reading of Chinese sentences in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, we tested whether the rightward Span can go beyond 3 characters when visually similar masks were used. Results showed that Chinese readers needed at least 4 characters to the right of fixation to maintain a normal reading behavior when visually similar masks were used and when characters were displayed in small fonts, indicating that the Span is dynamically influenced by masking materials. In Experiments 2 and 3, we asked whether the Perceptual Span varies as a function of font size in spaced (German) and unspaced (Chinese) scripts. Results clearly suggest Perceptual Span depends on font size in Chinese, but we failed to find such evidence for German. We propose that the Perceptual Span in Chinese is flexible; it is strongly constrained by its language-specific properties such as high information density and lack of word spacing. Implications for saccade-target selection during the reading of Chinese sentences are discussed.
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A Theoretical Analysis of the Perceptual Span based on SWIFT Simulations of the n + 2 Boundary Paradigm
Visual cognition, 2014Co-Authors: Sarah Risse, Reinhold Kliegl, Sven Hohenstein, Ralf EngbertAbstract:Eye-movement experiments suggest that the Perceptual Span during reading is larger than the fixated word, asymmetric around the fixation position, and shrinks in size contingent on the foveal processing load. We used the SWIFT model of eye-movement control during reading to test these hypotheses and their implications under the assumption of graded parallel processing of all words inside the Perceptual Span. Specifically, we simulated reading in the boundary paradigm and analysed the effects of denying the model to have valid preview of a parafoveal word n + 2 two words to the right of fixation. Optimizing the model parameters for the valid preview condition only, we obtained Span parameters with remarkably realistic estimates conforming to the empirical findings on the size of the Perceptual Span. More importantly, the SWIFT model generated parafoveal processing up to word n + 2 without fitting the model to such preview effects. Our results suggest that asymmetry and dynamic modulation are plausible properties of the Perceptual Span in a parallel word-processing model such as SWIFT. Moreover, they seem to guide the flexible distribution of processing resources during reading between foveal and parafoveal words.
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A theoretical analysis of the Perceptual Span based on SWIFT simulations of the n+2 boundary paradigm
The Mind Research Repository, 2014Co-Authors: Sarah Risse, Reinhold Kliegl, Sven Hohenstein, Ralf EngbertAbstract:Eye-movement experiments suggest that the Perceptual Span during reading is larger than the fixated word, asymmetric around the fixation position, and shrinks in size contingent on the foveal processing load. We used the SWIFT model of eye-movement control during reading to test these hypotheses and their implications under the assumption of graded parallel processing of all words inside the Perceptual Span. Specifically, we simulated reading in the boundary paradigm and analyzed the effects of denying the model to have valid preview of a parafoveal word n+2 two words to the right of fixation. Optimizing the model parameters for the valid preview condition only, we obtained Span parameters with remarkably realistic estimates conforming to the empirical findings on the size of the Perceptual Span. More importantly, the SWIFT model generated parafoveal processing up to word n+2 without fitting the model to such preview effects. Our results suggest that asymmetry and dynamic modulation are plausible properties of the Perceptual Span in a parallel word-processing model such as SWIFT. Moreover, they seem to guide the flexible distribution of processing resources during reading between foveal and parafoveal words. Visual Cognition
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Parafoveal Processing Efficiency in Rapid Automatized Naming: A Comparison between Chinese Normal and Dyslexic Children
The Mind Research Repository, 2014Co-Authors: Ming Yan, Jochen Laubrock, Reinhold Kliegl, Jinger Pan, Hua ShuAbstract:Dyslexic children are known to be slower than normal readers in rapid automatized naming (RAN). This suggests that dyslexics encounter local processing difficulties, which presumably induce a narrower Perceptual Span. Consequently, dyslexics should suffer less than normal readers from removing parafoveal preview. Here we used a gaze-contingent moving-window paradigm in a RAN task to experimentally test this prediction. Results indicate that dyslexics extract less parafoveal information than control children. We propose that more attentional resources are recruited to the foveal processing because of dyslexics’ less automatized translation of visual symbols into phonological output, thereby causing a reduction of the Perceptual Span. This in turn leads to less efficient pre-activation of parafoveal information and hence more difficult in processing the next foveal item. DOI:10.1016/j.jecp.2013.01.007 Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
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Parafoveal processing efficiency in rapid automatized naming: a comparison between Chinese normal and dyslexic children.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2013Co-Authors: Jochen Laubrock, Reinhold KlieglAbstract:Dyslexic children are known to be slower than normal readers in rapid automatized naming (RAN). This suggests that dyslexics encounter local processing difficulties, which presumably induce a narrower Perceptual Span. Consequently, dyslexics should suffer less than normal readers from removing parafoveal preview. Here we used a gaze-contingent moving window paradigm in a RAN task to experimentally test this prediction. Results indicate that dyslexics extract less parafoveal information than control children. We propose that more attentional resources are recruited to the foveal processing because of dyslexics' less automatized translation of visual symbols into phonological output, thereby causing a reduction of the Perceptual Span. This in turn leads to less efficient preactivation of parafoveal information and, hence, more difficulty in processing the next foveal item.
Debra Titone - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Eye movements and the Perceptual Span during first- and second-language sentence reading in bilingual older adults.
Psychology and aging, 2016Co-Authors: Whitford, Debra TitoneAbstract:This study addressed a central yet previously unexplored issue in the psychological science of aging, namely, whether the advantages of healthy aging (e.g., greater lifelong experience with language) or disadvantages (e.g., decreases in cognitive and sensory processing) drive L1 and L2 reading performance in bilingual older adults. To this end, we used a gaze-contingent moving window paradigm to examine both global aspects of reading fluency (e.g., reading rates, number of regressions) and the Perceptual Span (i.e., allocation of visual attention into the parafovea) in bilingual older adults during L1 and L2 sentence reading, as a function of individual differences in current L2 experience. Across the L1 and L2, older adults exhibited reduced reading fluency (e.g., slower reading rates, more regressions), but a similar Perceptual Span compared with matched younger adults. Also similar to matched younger adults, older adults' reading fluency was lower for L2 reading than for L1 reading as a function of current L2 experience. Specifically, greater current L2 experience increased L2 reading fluency, but decreased L1 reading fluency (for global reading measures only). Taken together, the dissociation between intact Perceptual Span and impaired global reading measures suggests that older adults may prioritize parafoveal processing despite age-related encoding difficulties. Consistent with this interpretation, post hoc analyses revealed that older adults with higher versus lower executive control were more likely to adopt this strategy.
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Second-language experience modulates eye movements during first- and second-language sentence reading: evidence from a gaze-contingent moving window paradigm.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 2014Co-Authors: Veronica Whitford, Debra TitoneAbstract:Eye movement measures demonstrate differences in first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) paragraph-level reading as a function of individual differences in current L2 exposure among bilinguals (Whitford & Titone, 2012). Specifically, as current L2 exposure increases, the ease of L2 word processing increases, but the ease of L1 word processing decreases. Here, we investigate whether current L2 exposure also relates to more general aspects of reading performance, including global eye movement measures and how bilinguals use parafoveal information to the right of fixation during L1 and L2 sentence-level reading, through use of a gaze-contingent moving window paradigm (McConkie & Rayner, 1975). We found that bilinguals with high versus low current L2 exposure exhibited increased L2 reading fluency (faster reading rates, shorter forward fixation durations), but decreased L1 reading fluency (slower reading rates, longer forward fixation durations). We also found that bilinguals with high versus low current L2 exposure were more affected by reductions in window size during L2 reading (indicative of a larger L2 Perceptual Span), but were less affected by reductions in window size during L1 reading (indicative of a smaller L1 Perceptual Span). Taken together, these findings suggest that individual differences in current L2 exposure among bilinguals also modulate more general aspects of reading behavior, including global measures of reading difficulty and the allocation of visual attention into the parafovea during both L1 and L2 sentence-level reading.
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Reading impairments in schizophrenia relate to individual differences in phonological processing and oculomotor control: Evidence from a gaze-contingent moving window paradigm.
Journal of experimental psychology. General, 2012Co-Authors: Veronica Whitford, Gillian A. O'driscoll, Christopher C. Pack, Ridha Joober, Ashok Malla, Debra TitoneAbstract:Language and oculomotor disturbances are 2 of the best replicated findings in schizophrenia. However, few studies have examined skilled reading in schizophrenia (e.g., Arnott, Sali, Copland, 2011; Hayes & O'Grady, 2003; Revheim et al., 2006; E. O. Roberts et al., 2012), and none have examined the contribution of cognitive and motor processes that underlie reading performance. Thus, to evaluate the relationship of linguistic processes and oculomotor control to skilled reading in schizophrenia, 20 individuals with schizophrenia and 16 demographically matched controls were tested using a moving window paradigm (McConkie & Rayner, 1975). Linguistic skills supporting reading (phonological awareness) were assessed with the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (R. K. Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1999). Eye movements were assessed during reading tasks and during nonlinguistic tasks tapping basic oculomotor control (prosaccades, smooth pursuit) and executive functions (predictive saccades, antisaccades). Compared with controls, schizophrenia patients exhibited robust oculomotor markers of reading difficulty (e.g., reduced forward saccade amplitude) and were less affected by reductions in window size, indicative of reduced Perceptual Span. Reduced Perceptual Span in schizophrenia was associated with deficits in phonological processing and reduced saccade amplitudes. Executive functioning (antisaccade errors) was not related to Perceptual Span but was related to reading comprehension. These findings suggest that deficits in language, oculomotor control, and cognitive control contribute to skilled reading deficits in schizophrenia. Given that both language and oculomotor dysfunction precede illness onset, reading may provide a sensitive window onto cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia vulnerability and be an important target for cognitive remediation.
Kayleigh L. Warrington - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Perceptual Span is independent of font size for older and young readers: Evidence from Chinese.
Psychology and aging, 2020Co-Authors: Fang Xie, Jingxin Wang, Lisha Hao, Xue Zhang, Kayleigh L. WarringtonAbstract:Research suggests that visual acuity plays a more important role in parafoveal processing in Chinese reading than in spaced alphabetic languages, such that in Chinese, as the font size increases, the size of the Perceptual Span decreases. The lack of spaces and the complexity of written Chinese may make characters in eccentric positions particularly hard to process. Older adults generally have poorer visual capabilities than young adults, particularly in parafoveal vision, and so may find large characters in the parafovea particularly hard to process compared with smaller characters because of their greater eccentricity. Therefore, the effect of font size on the Perceptual Span may be larger for older readers. Crucially, this possibility has not previously been investigated; however, this may represent a unique source of age-related reading difficulty in logographic languages. Accordingly, to explore the relationship between font size and parafoveal processing for both older and young adult readers, we manipulated font size and the amount of parafoveal information available with different masking stimuli in 2 silent-reading experiments. The results show that decreasing the font size disrupted reading behavior more for older readers, such that reading times were longer for smaller characters, but crucially, the influence of font size on the Perceptual Span was absent for both age groups. These findings provide new insight into age-related reading difficulty in Chinese by revealing that older adults can successfully process substantial parafoveal information across a range of font sizes. This indicates that older adults' parafoveal processing may be more robust than previously considered. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
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Revealing similarities in the Perceptual Span of young and older Chinese readers.
Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), 2020Co-Authors: Fang Xie, Victoria A. Mcgowan, Kevin B. Paterson, Min Chang, Sarah J. White, Jingxin Wang, Kayleigh L. WarringtonAbstract:Older readers (aged 65+ years) of both alphabetic languages and character-based languages like Chinese read more slowly than their younger counterparts (aged 18–30 years). A possible explanation fo...
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Flexibility in the Perceptual Span during reading: Evidence from Mongolian.
Attention perception & psychophysics, 2020Co-Authors: Guoen Yin, Xuejun Bai, Guoli Yan, Stoyan Kurtev, Kayleigh L. Warrington, Victoria A. Mcgowan, Simon Paul Liversedge, Kevin B. PatersonAbstract:Readers can acquire useful information from only a narrow region of text around each fixation (the Perceptual Span), which extends asymmetrically in the direction of reading. Studies with bilingual readers have additionally shown that this asymmetry reverses with changes in horizontal reading direction. However, little is known about the Perceptual Span’s flexibility following orthogonal (vertical vs. horizontal) changes in reading direction, because of the scarcity of vertical writing systems and because changes in reading direction often are confounded with text orientation. Accordingly, we assessed effects in a language (Mongolian) that avoids this confound, in which text is conventionally read vertically but can also be read horizontally. Sentences were presented normally or in a gaze-contingent paradigm in which a restricted region of text was displayed normally around each fixation and other text was degraded. The Perceptual Span effects on reading rates were similar in both reading directions. These findings therefore provide a unique (nonconfounded) demonstration of Perceptual Span flexibility.
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Revealing similarities in the Perceptual Span of young and older Chinese readers.
2020Co-Authors: Fang Xie, Victoria A. Mcgowan, Kevin B. Paterson, Min Chang, Sarah J. White, Jingxin Wang, Kayleigh L. WarringtonAbstract:Older readers (aged 65+ years) of both alphabetic languages and character-based languages like Chinese read more slowly than their younger counterparts (aged 18–30 years). A possible explanation for this slowdown is that, due to age-related visual and cognitive declines, older readers have a smaller Perceptual Span and so acquire less information on each fixational pause. However, although aging effects on the Perceptual Span have been investigated for alphabetic languages, no such studies have been reported to date for character-based languages like Chinese. Accordingly, we investigated this issue in three experiments that used different gaze-contingent moving window paradigms to assess the Perceptual Span of young and older Chinese readers. In these experiments, text was shown either entirely as normal or normal only within a narrow region (window) comprising either the fixated word, the fixated word, and one word to its left, or the fixated word and either one or two words to its right. Characters outside these windows were replaced using a pattern mask (Experiment 1) or a visually similar character (Experiment 2), or blurred to render them unidentifiable (Experiment 3). Sentence reading times were overall longer for the older compared with the younger adults and differed systematically across display conditions. Crucially, however, the effects of display condition were essentially the same across the two age groups, indicating that the Perceptual Span for Chinese does not differ substantially for the older and young adults. We discuss these findings in relation to other evidence suggesting the Perceptual Span is preserved in older adulthood
