Survival analyses reveal how early phonological processing affects eye movements during reading.

Abstract

Numerous studies have provided evidence that readers generate phonological codes while reading. However, a central question in much of this research has been how early these codes are generated. Answering this question has implications for the roles that phonological coding might play for skilled readers, especially whether phonological codes affect the identification of most words, which can only be the case if these codes are generated rapidly. To investigate the time course of phonological coding during silent reading, the present series of experiments examined survival analyses of first-fixation durations on phonologically related (homophones, pseudohomophones) and orthographic control (orthographically matched words and nonwords) stimuli that were either embedded in sentences in place of correct targets (Experiments 1 and 2) or presented as parafoveal previews for correct targets using the boundary paradigm (Experiments 3 and 4). Survival analyses revealed a discernible difference between processing the phonologically related versus the orthographic control items by as early as 160 ms from the start of fixation on average (160-173 ms across experiments). Because only approximately 18% of first fixation durations were shorter than these mean estimates and follow-up tests revealed that earlier divergence point estimates were associated with shorter gaze durations (e.g., more rapid word identification), results suggest that skilled readers rapidly generate phonological codes during normal, silent reading and that these codes may affect the identification of most words. (PsycINFO Database Record

Parafoveal degradation during reading reduces preview costs only when it is not perceptually distinct

“…Interestingly, while Experiment 1a found evidence for both invalid preview effects and orthographic preview effects, the phonological preview effect did not reach significance in any of the measures. While this is contrary to some studies showing the existence of the effect ( Blythe et al, 2018 ; Chace et al, 2005 ; Leinenger, 2019 ; Miellet & Sparrow, 2004 ; Pollatsek et al, 1992 ), the numerical difference was still in the expected direction, at least for GDs. This is consistent with a recent meta-analysis showing that the phonological preview effect in English is relatively small (approx.…”

“…There is also evidence for a phonological preview effect in English (Bélanger et al, 2013;Blythe et al, 2018;Chace et al, 2005;Leinenger, 2019;Pollatsek et al, 1992). However, measuring this effect is complicated by the overlap between orthography and phonology in English.…”

Do Readers Integrate Phonological Codes Across Saccades? A Bayesian Meta-Analysis and a Survey of the Unpublished Literature

“…The simulations were carried out using the “simr” R package v.1.0.5 (Green & Macleod, 2016). The variance-covariance matrix of the random effects and the residual variance were estimated using the data from Leinenger (2018), Experiment 4 for English and Yan et al (2009) for Chinese studies. Both datasets have a reasonable number of subjects and items; therefore, it was possible to simulate realistic data that can capture the by-subject and by-item variability that is present in the effect.…”

“…Jouravlev and Jared (2018) reported a significant phonological PB effect independent of orthography for both first fixation duration (20 ms) and gaze duration (43 ms). More recently, Leinenger (2018) also examined the phonological PB in English readers. She found significant evidence for phonological PB in English with pseudo-homophone previews (Experiment 4), but not with homophones previews (Experiment 3).…”

“…However, a closer look at the literature shows that this effect may be less consistent than what is sometimes believed. While some recent studies have replicated the effect (Blythe et al, 2018; Leinenger, 2018, Experiment 4), others have either not replicated it (Choi & Gordon, 2014; Leinenger, 2018, Experiment 3) or have found it only after data exclusions based on factors, such as the reading skill of participants (Chace et al, 2005) or the lexical frequency of the preview and the target word (Bélanger et al, 2013). While not explicitly stated, some of the modulation analyses could have been done post-hoc, as they were not always incorporated in the study design.…”