UC San Diego

The current study investigated the influence of linguistic context on word recognition and sentence processing during reading. Using high temporal resolution eye-tracking methodologies, four experiments tested the effects of prior sentence context on the earliest stages of word identification: the processing of letter and sound information. The studies also examined contextual effects on word processing throughout the time course of the eye- movement behavioral record. The central goal of the work was to examine the extent to which skilled reader's expectations are expressed at various levels of lexical representation and the extent to which expectations exert an influence on the process of word recognition. Experiment 1 manipulated the information available about a target word. Prior to fixating the target word, subjects were presented with consistent or inconsistent information about the target word using the gaze-contingent invisible boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975). Experiments 2a and 2b performed a similar manipulation while examining the influence of lexical characteristics on word recognition difficulty. Experiment 3 investigated the influence of context on intrinsic properties of word processing difficulty. Findings reveal that skilled reader's expectations for upcoming material modulate the process of word recognition and eye movement control during reading. The results of the joint manipulation of word properties and sentence constraint were interpreted with regard to competing accounts of contextual influences on word recognition and comprehension