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Papers by Simon Liversedge
Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, Jan 7, 2015
Although previous research has shown that letter position information for the first letter of a p... more Although previous research has shown that letter position information for the first letter of a parafoveal word is encoded less flexibly than internal word beginning letters (Johnson, Perea & Rayner, 2007; White et al., 2008), it is not clear how positional encoding operates over the initial trigram in English. This experiment explored the preprocessing of letter identity and position information of a parafoveal word's initial trigram by adults and children using the boundary paradigm during normal sentence reading. Seven previews were generated: Identity (captain); transposed letter and substituted letter nonwords in Positions 1 and 2 (acptain-imptain); 1 and 3 (pactain-gartain), and 2 and 3 (cpatain-cgotain). Results showed a transposed letter effect (TLE) in Position 13 for gaze duration in the pretarget word; and TLE in Positions 12 and 23 but not in Position 13 in the target word for both adults and children. These findings suggest that children, similar to adults, extract ...
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2015
Research using alphabetic languages shows that, compared to young adults, older adults employ a r... more Research using alphabetic languages shows that, compared to young adults, older adults employ a risky reading strategy in which they are more likely to guess word identities and skip words to compensate for their slower processing of text. However, little is known about how ageing affects reading behaviour for naturally unspaced, logographic languages like Chinese. Accordingly, to assess the generality of age-related changes in reading strategy across different writing systems we undertook an eye movement investigation of adult age differences in Chinese reading. Participants read sentences containing a target word (a single Chinese character) that had a high or low frequency of usage and was constructed from either few or many character strokes, and so either visually simple or complex. Frequency and complexity produced similar patterns of influence for both age groups on skipping rates and fixation times for target words. Both groups therefore demonstrated sensitivity to these manipulations. But compared to the young adults, the older adults made more and longer fixations and more forward and backward eye movements overall. They also fixated the target words for longer, especially when these were visually complex. Crucially, the older adults skipped words less and made shorter progressive saccades. Therefore, in contrast with findings for alphabetic languages, older Chinese readers appear to use a careful reading strategy according to which they move their eyes cautiously along lines of text and skip words infrequently. We propose they use this more careful reading strategy to compensate for increased difficulty processing word boundaries in Chinese.
APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser c... more APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - alerts user that their session is about to expire - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My ...
Two eye tracking experiments show that, for near launch sites, the eyes land nearer to the beginn... more Two eye tracking experiments show that, for near launch sites, the eyes land nearer to the beginning of words with orthographically irregular than regular initial letter sequences. In addition, the characteristics of words, at least at the level of orthography, influence the direction and length of within word saccades. Importantly, these effects hold both for lower case and visually less distinctive upper case text.
Readers read sentences containing high or low frequency target words under normal reading conditi... more Readers read sentences containing high or low frequency target words under normal reading conditions or disappearing text conditions (in which the word that was fixated disappeared after 60 ms). Even though the fixated word had disappeared after 60 ms, there was still a robust frequency effect wherein readers fixated longer on low frequency words than on high frequency words. As such, the results are consistent with cognitive control models of eye movement control and inconsistent with visual/oculomotor control models.
Psychonomic bulletin & review, Jan 2, 2015
Previous research has shown that prior exposure to a word's substitution neighbor earlier in ... more Previous research has shown that prior exposure to a word's substitution neighbor earlier in the same sentence can disrupt processing of that word, indicating that interword lexical priming occurs naturally during reading, due to the competition between lexical candidates during word identification. Through the present research, we extended these findings by investigating the effects of prior exposure to a word's transposed-letter neighbor (TLN) earlier in a sentence. TLNs are constituted from the same letters, but in different orders. The findings revealed an inhibitory TLN effect, with longer total reading times for target words, and increased regressions to prime and target words, when the target followed a TLN rather than a control word. These findings indicate that prior exposure to a TLN can disrupt word identification during reading. We suggest that this is caused by a failure of word identification, due to the initial misidentification of the target word (potentially...
Rooth (1992) identified contrastive focus as an important aspect of language comprehension. Metho... more Rooth (1992) identified contrastive focus as an important aspect of language comprehension. Methods of placing sentential elements in focus include prosodic cues in spoken language (Selkirk, 1996), the use of syntactic constructions such as clefts in written ...
Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, Jan 7, 2015
Although previous research has shown that letter position information for the first letter of a p... more Although previous research has shown that letter position information for the first letter of a parafoveal word is encoded less flexibly than internal word beginning letters (Johnson, Perea & Rayner, 2007; White et al., 2008), it is not clear how positional encoding operates over the initial trigram in English. This experiment explored the preprocessing of letter identity and position information of a parafoveal word's initial trigram by adults and children using the boundary paradigm during normal sentence reading. Seven previews were generated: Identity (captain); transposed letter and substituted letter nonwords in Positions 1 and 2 (acptain-imptain); 1 and 3 (pactain-gartain), and 2 and 3 (cpatain-cgotain). Results showed a transposed letter effect (TLE) in Position 13 for gaze duration in the pretarget word; and TLE in Positions 12 and 23 but not in Position 13 in the target word for both adults and children. These findings suggest that children, similar to adults, extract ...
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2015
Research using alphabetic languages shows that, compared to young adults, older adults employ a r... more Research using alphabetic languages shows that, compared to young adults, older adults employ a risky reading strategy in which they are more likely to guess word identities and skip words to compensate for their slower processing of text. However, little is known about how ageing affects reading behaviour for naturally unspaced, logographic languages like Chinese. Accordingly, to assess the generality of age-related changes in reading strategy across different writing systems we undertook an eye movement investigation of adult age differences in Chinese reading. Participants read sentences containing a target word (a single Chinese character) that had a high or low frequency of usage and was constructed from either few or many character strokes, and so either visually simple or complex. Frequency and complexity produced similar patterns of influence for both age groups on skipping rates and fixation times for target words. Both groups therefore demonstrated sensitivity to these manipulations. But compared to the young adults, the older adults made more and longer fixations and more forward and backward eye movements overall. They also fixated the target words for longer, especially when these were visually complex. Crucially, the older adults skipped words less and made shorter progressive saccades. Therefore, in contrast with findings for alphabetic languages, older Chinese readers appear to use a careful reading strategy according to which they move their eyes cautiously along lines of text and skip words infrequently. We propose they use this more careful reading strategy to compensate for increased difficulty processing word boundaries in Chinese.
APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser c... more APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - alerts user that their session is about to expire - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My ...
Two eye tracking experiments show that, for near launch sites, the eyes land nearer to the beginn... more Two eye tracking experiments show that, for near launch sites, the eyes land nearer to the beginning of words with orthographically irregular than regular initial letter sequences. In addition, the characteristics of words, at least at the level of orthography, influence the direction and length of within word saccades. Importantly, these effects hold both for lower case and visually less distinctive upper case text.
Readers read sentences containing high or low frequency target words under normal reading conditi... more Readers read sentences containing high or low frequency target words under normal reading conditions or disappearing text conditions (in which the word that was fixated disappeared after 60 ms). Even though the fixated word had disappeared after 60 ms, there was still a robust frequency effect wherein readers fixated longer on low frequency words than on high frequency words. As such, the results are consistent with cognitive control models of eye movement control and inconsistent with visual/oculomotor control models.
Psychonomic bulletin & review, Jan 2, 2015
Previous research has shown that prior exposure to a word's substitution neighbor earlier in ... more Previous research has shown that prior exposure to a word's substitution neighbor earlier in the same sentence can disrupt processing of that word, indicating that interword lexical priming occurs naturally during reading, due to the competition between lexical candidates during word identification. Through the present research, we extended these findings by investigating the effects of prior exposure to a word's transposed-letter neighbor (TLN) earlier in a sentence. TLNs are constituted from the same letters, but in different orders. The findings revealed an inhibitory TLN effect, with longer total reading times for target words, and increased regressions to prime and target words, when the target followed a TLN rather than a control word. These findings indicate that prior exposure to a TLN can disrupt word identification during reading. We suggest that this is caused by a failure of word identification, due to the initial misidentification of the target word (potentially...
Rooth (1992) identified contrastive focus as an important aspect of language comprehension. Metho... more Rooth (1992) identified contrastive focus as an important aspect of language comprehension. Methods of placing sentential elements in focus include prosodic cues in spoken language (Selkirk, 1996), the use of syntactic constructions such as clefts in written ...