Lateralization of posterior alpha EEG reflects the distribution of spatial attention during saccadic reading

Abstract

Visuospatial attention is an important mechanism in reading that governs the uptake of information from foveal and parafoveal regions of the visual field. However, the spatiotemporal dynamics of how attention is allocated during eye fixations are not completely understood. The current study explored the use of EEG alpha-band oscillations to investigate the spatial distribution of attention during reading. We reanalyzed two data sets, focusing on the lateralization of alpha activity at posterior scalp sites. In each experiment, participants read short lists of German nouns in two paradigms: either by freely moving their eyes (saccadic reading) or by fixating the screen center while the text moved passively from right to left at the same average speed (RSVP paradigm). In both paradigms, upcoming words were either visible or masked, and foveal processing load was manipulated by varying the words' lexical frequencies. Posterior alpha lateralization revealed a sustained rightward bias of attention during saccadic reading, but not in the RSVP paradigm. Interestingly, alpha lateralization was not influenced by word frequency (foveal load) or preview during the preceding fixation. Hence, alpha did not reflect transient attention shifts within a given fixation. However, in both experiments, we found that in the saccadic reading condition a stronger alpha lateralization shortly before a saccade predicted shorter fixations on the subsequently fixated word. These results indicate that alpha lateralization can serve as a measure of attention deployment and its link to oculomotor behavior in reading.

EEG Source Localization and Attention Differences Between Children Exposed to Drugs in Utero and Those with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Pilot Study

“…The angular gyrus (BA 39) has broad implications associated with receptive language, perceptual, memory, and sensory processes as well as learning (Bonnici, Cheke, Green, FitzGerald, & Simons, 2018;Boylan, Trueswell, & Thompson-Schill, 2017;Bravo et al, 2017;Matchin, Liao, Gaston, & Lau, 2019;Thakral, Madore, & Schacter, 2017;van der Linden, Berkers, Morris, & Fernández, 2017;van Kemenade, Arikan, Kircher, & Straube, 2017). Studies have examined alpha EEG power in attentional, saccadic, and cognitive processes, although the higher band of alpha power is often described as having no association with the maintenance of attention (Babiloni et al, 2004;Dockree, Kelly, Foxe, Reilly, & Robertson, 2007;Jaime et al, 2016;Klimesch, Doppelmayr, Russegger, Pachinger, & Schwaiger, 1998;Kornrumpf, Dimigen, & Sommer, 2017;Sauseng et al, 2005) and therefore may play are more important role in encoding the stream of information being attended to (e.g., related to learning; Fell et al, 2011;Lenartowicz et al, 2016;Molle, Marshall, Fehm, & Born, 2002;Wang, Kamezawa, Watanabe, & Iramina, 2017), and associated language and working memory indices.…”

Eye Movements and Fixation-Related Potentials in Reading: A Review

“…Note that we include in Table 1 only co-registration experiments that have investigated reading through the analysis of EMs and FRP components, in which participants were allowed to make at least forward eye movements in each trial, and in which eye movements were recorded with an eye tracking system. Studies using co-registration but analysing oscillatory brain activity time-locked to fixation onsets on particular target words [101][102][103][104][105] will be discussed only in relation to future directions.…”

“…The only study which failed to find such an effect [115] involved a methodological difference such that linked mastoids were used as an offline reference (see [39] for discussion). The second neural correlate of identity preview benefit is observed between 360-400 ms, when valid previews elicit more positive amplitudes than invalid previews over central sites of the scalp [102,110,115], and between 300-500 ms, when valid previews elicit more negative amplitudes than invalid previews over occipital areas of the scalp [121]. This late preview effect on the N400 component was not observed in Degno et al [120], indicating that this might be related to naturalness of the reading task or to baseline choices.…”

Analyzing combined eye-tracking/EEG experiments with (non)linear deconvolution models

“…While most EEG recordings during free viewing have been analyzed in the time domain, it is also possible to study eye movement-related changes in oscillatory power and phase (Bodis-Wollner et al, 2002;Gaarder, Koresko, & Kropfl, 1966;Hutzler, Vignali, Hawelka, Himmelstoss, & Richlan, 2016;Kaiser, Brunner, Leeb, Neuper, & Pfurtscheller, 2009;Kornrumpf, Dimigen, & Sommer, 2017;Metzner, von der Malsburg, Vasishth, & Rösler, 2015;Nikolaev et al, 2016;Ossandon et al, 2010). Event-related responses in the frequency domain -such as induced changes in power -can last for several seconds and are likely biased by overlapping activity in much the same way as FRPs (Litvak et al, 2013;Ossandon et al, 2019).…”