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Abstract:
Prior research has demonstrated that when a word ends a
clause, readers fixate on it longer than when it does not end a
clause. This increase in fixation duration is the result of a
"clause wrap-up" effect. We examined participants' eye movements as
they reached the end of a clause in order to determine the effect
of clause wrap-up on the decisions about when and where to move the
eyes while reading.
In the present study, participants' eye movements were monitored
as they read a series of sentence pairs containing a general
category noun anaphor
(weapon)
whose antecedent was either a high typical member of the category
(knife)
or a low typical member of the category
(hatchet).
The category noun was always followed by a 1 to 3 word
post-category region
(Sunday).
This region either ended the subordinate clause, or began a new
one. Thus, the category
(weapon)
and the post-category region
(Sunday)
traded off in clause-final (vs. non-final) position (see Table
1).
We have four primary results:
1) Readers looked longer at a category noun when its antecedent
was a low typical member of the category than when it was a high
typical member of the category.
2) Readers looked longer at the category noun and at the
post-category region when they were clause final than when they
were not clause final.
3) Readers regressed from a category noun or post-category region
more frequently when it was clause final than when it was not
clause final.
4) Readers made longer initial saccades when their eyes left the
category noun or the post-category region when this word was in
clause final position than when it was not clause final.
Previous research about when and where to move the eyes has
indicated that these decisions are influenced by different factors,
and are made somewhat independently of each other. The decision
about when to move the eyes is primarily influenced by cognitive
factors that determine the difficulty of processing a fixated word,
whereas the decision about where to move is primarily influenced by
low-level visual information in the text. Results 3 and 4 suggest
that sometimes cognitive processes related to making a decision
about when to move the eyes impinge on lower level decisions
typically associated with deciding where to move the eyes. This
interesting exception to the general rule will be discussed further
in the poster.
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