The Effect of Lexical Predictability on Eye Movements in Reading: Critical Review and Theoretical Interpretation

Abstract

A word's predictability in its context has a reliable influence on eye movements in reading. This article reviews the extensive literature that has investigated this influence, focusing on several specific empirical issues. These include assessment of cloze probability as the critical measure of predictability, the form of the relationship between predictability and reading time, the distributional effects of predictability, the interaction between predictability and word frequency, and the interaction between predictability and parafoveal preview. On the basis of this review, two theoretical conclusions are proposed. First, predictability effects in reading result from graded activation of potentially many words, as opposed to discrete prediction of a specific word. Second, this activation has the effect of facilitating either very early stages of lexical processing or pre‐lexical processing of visual features or letters.

Eye Movement Evidence for Context-Sensitive Derivation of Scalar Inferences

“…Therefore, our assumption that early processing measures like first pass time are likely to reflect processes like prediction, and that late measures are more likely to reflect integrative processes, is not uncontroversial. There is some evidence that some discourse-level processing may affect only late reading measures and not early reading measures (e.g., Boland & Blodgett, 2001), or that they may affect both late (including spillover) and early measures, whereas more lexical processing may be mostly limited to early measures (Clifton et al, 2007;Staub, 2015). There is substantial variability, however, in which measures are implicated across various studies, and many studies operationalize prediction, integration, lexical processing, discourse processing, etc., in different ways.…”

Language structure in the brain: A fixation-related fMRI study of syntactic surprisal in reading

“…Evidence has been accumulating that the brain should be viewed as a "prediction machine" (Clark, 2013) that anticipates what will happen next (Bar, 2009;Den Ouden et al, 2012;Friston, 2010;Lupyan and Clark, 2015;Rao and Ballard, 1999). This approach has been productively applied to the field of language processing, with recent findings indicating that the efficiency of language processing emerges in part from the use of prediction by adults and even children, and during both reading and listening (e.g., Altmann and Kamide, 1999;Kamide et al, 2003;Kutas et al, 2011;Mani and Huettig, 2012;Misyak et al, 2010;Garrod, 2004;Pickering and Garrod, 2013;Smith and Levy, 2013;Van Berkum et al, 2005;Wicha et al, 2003;see Kuperberg and Jaeger, 2016;Staub, 2015, for recent reviews). By conducting a whole-brain analysis of functional activation as a function of syntactic surprisal, the present study provided the opportunity to begin to study predictive processing for syntax using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the context of natural reading.…”

Predictability effects during reading in the absence of parafoveal preview

“…When we listen to a speaker or read a text, there is strong evidence that the predictability of upcoming words influences our speed and accuracy in identifying them (for reviews see Kuperberg & Jaeger, 2016;Staub, 2015). For instance, one important task during spoken language comprehension is understanding when to take your turn in a conversation, which has been shown to rely on prediction (Garrod & Pickering, 2015;Magyari & de Rutier, 2012).…”

“…We will return to this latter effect of synonym previews shortly. Based on this pattern of effects, Staub (2015) proposed that predictability may influence early processing of a word by pre-activating its visual features and letters. Therefore, in the absence of these visual features in the parafovea, no predictability effect should be observed.…”