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J Eye Mov Res. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 May
18.

Published in final edited form as:

J Eye Mov Res. 2011 February 16; 4(1): 1–10.

PMCID:
PMC3097123

NIHMSID:
NIHMS273835

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Lexical and Post-Lexical Complexity Effects on Eye
Movements in Reading

Tessa Warren, Erik D. Reichle, and
Nikole D. Patson

University of Pittsburgh

Correspondence regarding this article should
be addressed to Tessa Warren, Department of Psychology, 607 LRDC, 3939
O'Hara St., Pittsburgh, PA 15260 (Email:
tessa/at/pitt.edu

).

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Abstract

Introduction

Methods

Results

Discussion

References

Abstract

The current study
investigated how a post-lexical complexity manipulation followed by a
lexical complexity manipulation affects eye movements during reading. Both
manipulations caused disruption in all measures on the manipulated words,
but the patterns of spill-over differed. Critically, the effects of the
two kinds of manipulations did not interact, and there was no evidence
that post-lexical processing difficulty delayed lexical processing on the
next word (c.f. Henderson & Ferreira, 1990). This suggests that
post-lexical processing of one word and lexical processing of the next can
proceed independently and likely in parallel. This finding is consistent
with the assumptions of the E-Z Reader model of eye movement control in
reading (Reichle, Warren, & McConnell, 2009).

Keywords: Reading, sentence complexity, eye movements, E-Z Reader,
word frequency

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Abstract

Introduction

Methods

Results

Discussion

References

Introduction

Researchers who are interested
in reading and lexical processing have gathered extensive evidence about
the influence of lexical variables on eye movements in reading.
Researchers who are interested in sentence processing have made frequent
use of experiments testing eye movements in reading to evaluate theories
of post-lexical processing. These literatures are for the most part
entirely distinct. Only a few recent reviews (Rayner, 1998; Clifton, Staub & Rayner, 2007) have attempted to look
closely at the similarities and differences between eye movements to
lexical manipulations versus syntactic or discourse manipulations, and
there are very few experiments that have concurrent manipulations at both
levels.

From the body of work investigating
lexical processing, it has become evident that lexical manipulations, like
word frequency, meaning ambiguity, and word familiarity have predictable
effects on eye movements. Lexical effects are typically observed in early
eye-movement measures, like first-fixation duration and gaze duration, and
are consistent across experiments (Rayner, 1998). Post-lexical manipulations, by which we mean
syntactic and/or certain kinds of context/discourse manipulations, seem to
be more variable. In some cases they affect measures as early as
first-fixation duration, but more often they appear in measures such as
regressions and re-reading. Sometimes similar manipulations lead to
slightly different patterns of eye movements (Clifton et al., 2007). Perhaps because there seems to be a
clearer link between lexical processing and eye movements, models of
eye-movement control in reading have tended to focus on accounting for the
ways in which lexical processing, attention, and oculomotor factors
combine to drive eye movements and have disregarded the influences of
post-lexical processing on eye movements (Engbert, Nuthmann, Richter, & Kliegl, 2005; McDonald, Carpenter, & Shillcock, 2005; Reichle, Pollatsek, Fisher, & Rayner, 1998; Reilly & Radach, 2006; for a review, see Reichle,
Rayner, & Pollatsek, 2003). Only recently has one model, E-Z Reader
(Reichle, Warren, & McConnell, 2009), begun to try to
explain how post-lexical processing might be coordinated with lexical
processing, attention, and oculomotor factors to account for patterns of
eye movements in reading. This endeavor is important not just for
improving our understanding of eye movement control during reading, but
also because it forces us as researchers to consider how lexical and
post-lexical processing are coordinated.

There is surprisingly little research that
simultaneously investigates lexical and post-lexical processing. This kind
of research is important, in that we know relatively little about how
lexical and post-lexical processing are coordinated across the entirety of
a sentence. Within the sentence processing literature, researchers
generally assume that readers identify upcoming words one at a time, and
when each word is identified it is incrementally integrated into whatever
syntactic representation has been built for the input thus far (e.g. Frazier, 1987; Grodner & Gibson, 2005; Lewis & Vasishth, 2005). In addition to a syntactic
representation, readers also must build semantic or discourse
representations of the propositions and referents referred to in the
sentence. For example, after a reader identifies the word kicked
in a cleft structure like It was Bill who John kicked, she must
engage in extensive post-lexical processing and build dependencies in both
a syntactic and a referential/semantic representation between
kicked and who or Bill, with the result that
Bill is interpreted as the entity being kicked. According to memory-based
theories of sentence processing (e.g. Gordon, Hendrick, & Johnson, 2001; Grodner & Gibson, 2005; Lewis & Vasishth, 2005), building the syntactic and
semantic structure at kicked above is difficult because it
requires re-accessing prior syntax and referents that are difficult to
remember because of memory interference or decay.

It is widely assumed that the
identification of a word must precede its integration into syntactic and
propositional representations, even though there is little work directly
testing this assumption (but cf. Staub, 2009 for evidence that is difficult to reconcile with
it). The current experiment continues to operate under this assumption,
but investigates the closely related and similarly understudied question
of how lexical and post-lexical processing on two consecutive words are
cascaded. Must a reader wait until post-lexical processing on word N is
complete before beginning lexical processing on word N+1? If so, it would
suggest that lexical and post-lexical processing are done in stages and
may be co-dependent on similar representations and resources. If not, it
would suggest that lexical and post-lexical processing can be done in
parallel to at least some degree and likely rely on separate
representations and resources. The current experiment begins to
investigate this question by looking at the eye movement ramifications of
following a manipulation of post-lexical complexity with an immediate
manipulation of lexical processing difficulty. It also aims to determine
whether there are differences or similarities in the long-term time course
of eye-movement disruption to lexical vs. structural manipulations.

Henderson and Ferreira (1990)'s foveal-load hypothesis is one
of the few sources of predictions about the way that post-lexical
processing on word N will be coordinated with lexical processing on word N
+ 1. This hypothesis predicts that manipulating the difficulty of
post-lexical processing on a word will influence the time course of
lexical processing of the subsequent word. Henderson and Ferriera used a
parafoveal preview manipulation to demonstrate that readers accomplish
less parafoveal processing on an upcoming word if the currently fixated
word is more difficult to process. Critically, in their second experiment,
the manipulation of the difficulty of the currently fixated word was
accomplished by making it a point in the sentence at which syntactic
revision was necessary or not. They found that in conditions in which
syntactic revision was required, fixations were longer on the
syntactically disambiguating word and readers did less parafoveal
processing on the following word. Their evidence for this was an
interaction between complexity and preview such that there was more
benefit to having a correct preview of an upcoming word if the currently
fixated word was syntactically easier to process. Additionally, although
they reported no influence of syntactic complexity on first fixation or
gaze durations on the following word, a closer look at Henderson and
Ferreira's data suggests that syntactic complexity inflated first fixation
durations by about 30 milliseconds in conditions in which the preview of
this word had been either correct or nearly correct. Both of these pieces
of evidence suggest that readers were slower to begin lexical processing
on the next word (given that lexical processing is often started
parafoveally) after a point of increased post-lexical processing. The
reason that inflated first-fixation durations on the word following the
syntactic manipulation can be interpreted as evidence of slowed lexical
processing is that many researchers make the assumption that what drives
the eyes to saccade after initially fixating a word is the completion of
an initial stage of lexical processing (e.g. Reichle et al., 1998). This means that a delay in starting
lexical processing on a word should result in longer first-fixation
durations on that word. The fact that increased post-lexical difficulty
delayed upcoming lexical processing suggests that either some of the same
resources or processes are devoted to both lexical and post-lexical
processing, or that there is some degree of seriality in the coordination
of lexical and post-lexical processing. Specifically, this evidence is
consistent with the hypothesis that lexical processing on an upcoming word
is delayed until post-lexical processing on the current word has either
progressed to some predetermined stage or has been completed.

Another prediction that Kliegl, Nuthmann, and Engbert (2006) have argued follows from
Henderson and Ferreira's (1990) foveal-load hypothesis is
that frequency effects on word N + 1 should be larger if there is a higher
processing load on word N. It is not clear to us why this hypothesis
should predict a larger frequency effect on N + 1 rather than simply
delayed lexical processing, but Kliegl et al. report such an interaction
in their data, with larger frequency effects on word N + 1 in cases in
which word N was low rather than high frequency. If, consistent with
Henderson and Ferreira, syntactic and lexical manipulations of foveal load
have similar effects on parafoveal preview, then Kleigl et al.'s finding
of an interaction might predict a similar interaction in the current
experiment, with larger lexical frequency effects after a point of high
syntactic complexity.

Another source of predictions about the
ways that adjacent lexical and post-lexical manipulations may or may not
interact to drive eye movements is the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement
control in reading (Reichle et al., 2009). Within all versions of the E-Z Reader
model, lexical processing is assumed to be the primary determinant of when
the eyes move forward in a text (see Reichle, 2011). Within the most recent version of the model,
post-lexical processing is assumed to primarily drive regressions. The
model hypothesizes that post-lexical and lexical processing generally
progress independently, with the completion of lexical processing on a
word driving the simultaneous start of post-lexical processing on that
word and lexical processing on the next. However, there are two ways in
which post-lexical processing can interrupt lexical processing and force
lexical reprocessing. First, if post-lexical processing on word N is still
not complete when lexical processing on word N+1 has finished, a
regression is programmed so that word N can be reprocessed (a situation
termed slow integration failure). Second, if post-lexical
processing of word N quickly fails, as for example might happen if it had
a syntactic category that could not be integrated into the structure built
for the sentence thus far, then a regression is programmed so the word N
can be reprocessed (termed rapid integration failure). Figure
1 presents a series of simulations investigating E-Z Reader's
predictions about the ramifications that manipulating the duration of
post-lexical processing on word N and the frequency of word N+1 would have
on first-fixation durations, gaze durations, and first-pass regressions
out. Intuitively, it seems that the model should predict that if the
duration of post-lexical processing on word N is parametrically increased
and the duration of lexical processing on word N+1 is parametrically
decreased, the proportion of regressions out of words N and N+1 should
increase. This is because E-Z Reader assumes that a regression will be
programmed if lexical processing on word N+1 finishes before post-lexical
processing on word N is complete. However, the simulations in Figure
1 indicate that this effect only holds for cases in which the
duration of post-lexical processing is extremely long. The simulations
also demonstrate that E-Z Reader predicts that a frequency manipulation on
word N+1 will affect eye-movement measures on word N+1 but not on word N.
Note that this is different from the prediction of eye-movement models
assuming distributed lexical processing. Such models should predict an
effect of the frequency of word N+1 on eye-movement measures on word N
(e.g., Engbert et al., 2005; Kliegl et al., 2006; Reilly & Radach, 2006).

Figure
1

Results of E-Z
Reader simulations varying the duration of post-lexical processing,
t(I), on word N and the frequency of word N+1.

The current experiment
manipulated syntactic complexity on a word and lexical frequency on the
following word in order to explore any potential interactions between the
two types of complexity and to determine the differences and similarities
between the long-term time courses of eye movement effects to these kinds
of manipulations. According to Henderson and Ferreira's (1990) foveal-load hypothesis, a
high syntactic processing load on word N should reduce the amount of
parafoveal processing that occurs on word N + 1, delaying lexical
processing. Kliegl et al. (2006)'s data, in combination with this
foveal-load hypothesis may also predict that there will be larger
frequency effects following a point of high syntactic complexity.
According to E-Z Reader, there should be more regressions from a
high-frequency word than a low-frequency word following a point of
extremely slow post-lexical processing. However, because previous E-Z
Reader simulations of datasets with strong post-lexical manipulations have
not found post-lexical processing times even close to the range necessary
to drive this effect (cf. Reichle et al, 2009; Warren, White, & Reichle, 2009), this prediction is
likely not testable.

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Sections▼

Abstract

Introduction

Methods

Results

Discussion

References

Methods

Participants

48 undergraduates at the
University of Pittsburgh participated for course credit. The data from two
additional participants was not included in analyses because they were
missing data (due to skips and blinks) on 50% or more of either of the
critical words during first-pass reading. All participants were native
English speakers with normal or corrected-to-normal (via contact lenses)
vision.

Apparatus

An Eyelink 1000
eye-tracker (SR Research) monitored the gaze location of participants'
right eyes during reading. The eye tracker has a spatial resolution better
than 30! arc and a 1000 Hz sample rate. Participants viewed the stimuli
binocularly on a monitor 63 cm from their eyes; approximately 3 characters
equaled 1° of visual angle.

Materials

The materials consisted of 24
items in a 2 × 2 design crossing syntactic complexity (simple vs. complex)
with word frequency (high, low). An example is provided in (1), with the
two critical words underlined:

Simple, Low Frequency

(1a) Joe and Lisa married hastily on a vacation to Las Vegas.

Simple, High Frequency

(1b) Joe and Lisa married quickly on a vacation to Las Vegas.

Complex, Low Frequency

(1c) It was Joe who Lisa married hastily on a vacation to Las Vegas.

Complex, High Frequency

(1d) It was Joe who Lisa married quickly on a vacation to Las
Vegas.

The first critical word (married
above) was always a verb. This verb was the locus of the syntactic
complexity manipulation. In the simple conditions, the verb followed a
conjoined NP and completed a syntactically simple unit. In the complex
conditions, the verb completed an object cleft structure. In this kind of
structure, the verb is a point of high post-lexical processing complexity
because the cleft object (Joe above) must be retrieved from
memory at the verb in order to build the syntactic and semantic
representations necessary to determine who did what to whom (Gordon et al., 2001; Warren & Gibson, 2005). One of the strengths of this
manipulation is that the three words preceding the verb are similar in
content and identical in length across conditions (e.g., Joe and
Lisa or Joe who Lisa), providing a relatively
well-controlled pre-target region. The second critical word was the adverb
immediately following the verb. In almost all cases this adverb modified
the preceding verb, however in a few cases (mostly in the high frequency
conditions) the adverb modified a later phrase. Adverbs were matched for
length within items. Low-frequency adverbs had a mean frequency of 7.5 per
million (Francis & Kucera, 1982), whereas high-frequency adverbs
had a mean frequency of 127 per million. Both critical words were a
minimum of five characters long to increase the likelihood that they would
be fixated. All content words except for the critical adverb whose
frequency was manipulated were the same for each item across conditions.
Because the items in another experiment run with this one had two
sentences, the experimental sentences were followed by a sentence on the
next line. This sentence was the same for every condition within an item;
for the example in (1), the sentence that followed was: “An Elvis was one
of the witnesses.” Eye movements on this second sentence were not
analyzed.

The 24 experimental items were
combined with 66 filler items and 28 items from an unrelated experiment.
Conditions were counterbalanced across four presentation lists using a
Latin square design. After approximately 60% of the sentences in the
experimental session, participants answered a yes/no comprehension
question using a button response. Half required a “yes”
response.

Procedure

The experiment lasted
40–55 minutes. A chinrest and forehead rest minimized head movements.
Participants were asked to read normally, for comprehension, and were told
that after some passages they would need to answer a comprehension
question. After the participant was seated at the eye tracker and had been
instructed as to the format of the experiment, the tracker was aligned and
calibrated. Calibration was checked between trials and the tracker was
recalibrated as necessary.

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Abstract

Introduction

Methods

Results

Discussion

References

Results

Eye movements across four
regions of the sentence were analyzed. Region 1 was the critical verb.
Region 2 was the critical adverb. Region 3 was the word following the
adverb, or if that word was less than five characters, it was the
following two words. Region 4 was the remainder of the sentence. All
fixations with durations less than 80 ms or over 1000 ms were eliminated
from analyses, as were trials in which there was a blink on either the
critical verb or adverb. After taking skips and eliminated fixations and
blinks into account, the critical verb and adverb were each fixated on an
average of 91% of trials. The amount of missing data was similar across
conditions (ranging from 6% to 12% for the critical verb and 8% to 10% for
the critical adverb).

Participants answered 94% of the
comprehension questions correctly (SD = 2.4%), indicating that
they were engaged in the task and reading the sentences. Four eye movement
measures were analyzed on each region (Inhoff & Radach, 1998): (1) first-fixation
duration is the duration of the initial fixation on a word, provided
that fixation was made during first-pass reading; (2) gaze
duration is the sum of the durations of all fixations on a word
during first-pass reading; (3) Go-past time (or
regression-path duration) is the sum of all fixations (including
regressive fixations) from the first fixation on a word during first-pass
reading until the eyes move past the word; and (4) first-pass
regressions out is the proportion of trials on which a regression was
launched from a word during first-pass reading. 2×2 repeated measures
ANOVAs with both participants (F1) and items
(F2) as random factors were used to analyze the
data.

Table
1 reports means on the critical verb (region 1). All measures
showed a reliable main effect of structure, with longer fixation durations
or more regressions in the complex condition than in the simple condition,
first-fixation: F1(1,47) = 9.12, p = .004;
F2(1,23) = 8.45, p = .008; gaze duration:
F1(1,47) = 5.86, p = .019;
F2(1,23) = 9.10, p = .006; go-past:
F1(1,47) = 518.26, p < .001;
F2(1,23) = 21.99, p < .001; first-pass
regressions out: F1(1,47) = 11.95, p = .001;
F2(1,23) = 6.88, p = .015. There were no
reliable effects of the frequency of the upcoming adverb, and no
interactions.

Table
1

Average eye
movement measures on Region 1, the critical verb, in milliseconds
(standard errors in parentheses).

Table
2 reports means on the critical adverb (region 2).
First-fixations and gaze durations were inflated when the adverb was
low-frequency rather than high-frequency, first-fixation:
F1(1,47) = 11.61, p = .001;
F2(1,23) = 10.48, p = .004; gaze duration:
F1(1,47) = 14.99, p < .001;
F2(1,23) = 12.63, p = .002. These measures
showed no fully reliable effects of structure [by items there was a
marginally reliable effect of structure in first-fixation,
F2(1,23) = 3.19, p = .087] nor any
interactions [in the participants analysis there was a marginally reliable
interaction in gaze duration with a pattern such that the frequency effect
appeared larger in the simple as compared to complex conditions,
F1(1,47) = 3.65, p = .062;
F2(1,23) = 2.46, p = .131]. Go-past on the
adverb showed fully reliable effects of both structure, with longer times
in complex than simple conditions, F1(1,47) = 5.15,
p = .028; F2(1,23) = 4.40, p = .047,
and frequency, with longer times for low- compared to high-frequency
adverbs, F1(1,47) = 11.71, p = .001;
F2(1,23) = 10.14, p = .004, but no
interaction. First-pass regressions out on the adverb showed an effect of
structure that was fully reliable by participants and marginally reliable
by items, F1(1,47) = 4.85, p = .033;
F2(1,23) = 3.53, p = .073, with more
regressions from the complex conditions. There was a marginal effect of
frequency in the analysis by participants, F1(1,47) =
3.71, p = .060; F2(1,23) = 1.61, p =
.217, with more regressions from low-frequency adverbs. These factors did
not interact.

Table
2

Average eye
movement measures on Region 2, the critical adverb, in milliseconds
(standard errors in parentheses).

In region 3, a spillover region after the
adverb, effects patterned similarly to region 2. Means are provided in Table
3. First-fixation and gaze duration again were reliably
affected only by frequency, first-fixation: F1(1,47) =
3.40, p = .072; F2(1,23) = 7.767, p
= .011; gaze duration: F1(1,47) = 4.73, p =
.035; F2(1,23) = 16.06, p = .001, with longer
reading times in low frequency conditions. These measures showed no effect
of structure and no interaction. Like in region 2, go-past was affected by
both structure, F1(1,47) = 5.10, p = .029;
F2(1,23) = 5.16, p = .033, and frequency,
F1(1,47) = 6.65, p = .013;
F2(1,23) = 14.23, p = .001, but there was no
interaction between the two. In region 3, first pass regressions out were
not reliably affected by either experimental manipulation.

Table
3

Average eye
movement measures on Region 3, the spillover region after the
critical adverb, in milliseconds (standard errors in
parentheses).

Region 4 was the remainder of the
sentence; means are reported in Table
4. There were no reliable effects of the experimental
manipulations on first-fixation or gaze durations in this region. However,
there was a reliable effect of structure on go-past times, with longer
times associated with the complex conditions, F1(1,47)
= 5.66, p = .022; F2(1,23) = 6.86, p
= .015. Go-past was not reliably affected by frequency, and there was no
interaction between structure and frequency in this measure. First-pass
regressions out showed the same pattern, with slightly smaller effects.
There were more regressions from the final region of complex sentences
than simple sentences, F1(1,47) = 3.70, p =
.060; F2(1,23) = 4.35, p = .048, but no
reliable effects of frequency and no interactions.

Table
4

Average eye
movement measures on Region 4, the sentence-final region, in
milliseconds (standard errors in parentheses).

Simulations were run to
determine whether E-Z Reader (Reichle et al., 2009) could capture the patterns of data on
the critical verb and adverb in the current study. These simulations were
completed using the Schilling, Chumbley, and Rayner (1998) sentences frames; the
critical verb (word N), the preceding word (word N−1), and the critical
adverb (word N+1) were embedded within these frames by setting the lengths
and frequencies of these words equal to their observed values and their
cloze-predictabilities equal to zero. Multiple grid-searches of the
model's parameter space were then completed to find those values that
minimized the absolute deviation between the mean observed and simulated
first-fixation durations, gaze durations, and regressions out for words N
and N+1 across the four conditions. These parameters and their values
were: (1) α1 = 101 ms; (2) α2 = 7
ms; (3) α3 = 8 ms; (4) t(I) = 50 ms;
and (5) pF = 0.15. The first three of these parameters
control the rate of lexical processing and are within a few milliseconds
of the parameters reported and used in Reichle et al. (2009). The parameter t(I)
is the mean minimal post-lexical integration time and is 25 ms greater
than the default used in Reichle et al. (2009) and Warren et al. (2009). The fact that there are small
differences between these best-fitting parameter values and the
best-fitting values in previous simulations may be due to differences
among participants (e.g., individual differences in reading ability)
and/or differences in the text materials (e.g., text difficulty). The last
parameter, pF, is the probability of rapid integration
failure; although this parameter has no default value, the value that
provided the best fit to our data is similar to those used in previous
simulations. Finally, because the t(I) and
pF parameters reflect the post-lexical processing
difficulty associated with specific words, their values were allowed to
vary on the critical verb (word N) to simulate the simple and complex
conditions. In the simple conditions, the duration of post-lexical
processing, t(I), was 70 ms and the probability of rapid
post-lexical integration failure, pF, was 0.15. In the
complex conditions, t(I) was also 70 ms but
pF was 0.47. Again, these parameter values are well
within the ranges of those reported for simulations in Reichle et al. (2009) and Warren et al. (2009). (All other parameters were set equal
to their default values; for a full description of all of the parameters,
see Reichle et al., 2009.) The results of the final simulation
using these parameters and 1,000 statistical subjects per conditions are
shown in Figure
2. As can be seen, E-Z Reader does a relatively good job of
simulating the experimental results. Note that in this simulation, the
duration of post-lexical processing is both considerably shorter than
necessary to drive predictions about an interaction in regressions out and
does not vary across the complexity conditions.

Figure
2

Observed and
simulated first fixation durations, gaze durations, and regression
probabilities for the critical verb (word N) and the critical adverb
(word N+1).

Other
Sections▼

Abstract

Introduction

Methods

Results

Discussion

References

Discussion

The current experiment
investigated eye movement reactions to a syntactic complexity manipulation
and a subsequent lexical manipulation. Eye movement disruption associated
with the complex structure appeared immediately at the verb and was
apparent in every measure on the verb, including first-fixation duration.
This disruption did not spill over onto first-fixation or gaze durations
on the next word, but it was evident in the go-past measure in every
subsequent region of the sentence. There were also more first-pass
regressions out in the complex conditions both on the word after the verb
and in the sentence-final region, suggesting a local increase in
regressions on words around the syntactic manipulation and then a
reappearance of this increase in regressions at the end of the sentence.
This indicates that a relatively strong manipulation of syntactic
complexity can have long lasting effects on eye movement patterns, and
these long lasting effects are primarily manifested in regressions and
re-reading.

The pattern of eye-movement disruption
associated with object clefts in the current experiment is consistent with
some aspects of other experiments investigating these structures. Using
essentially the same manipulation, Warren et al. (2009) found disruption in go-past and
regressions out but not first-fixation or gaze duration on the verb of an
object cleft construction. Given the strong variability in post-lexical
eye movement effects (e.g. Clifton et al., 2007), the fact that some experiments show
effects in all measures but others only in some is not entirely
surprising. Using self-paced reading and a slightly different
manipulation, Warren and Gibson (2005) found that complexity effects
apparent on the verb of an object cleft dissipated after the verb but
subsequently reappeared on the sentence-final word, similar to the pattern
in first-pass regressions out in the current study. This pattern, namely
that readers regressed (and subsequently reread) more from around the area
of the point of high structural difficulty, and again at the end of the
sentence is consistent with accounts from the sentence processing
literature suggesting that comprehenders are often unable to retrieve the
necessary referents and/or syntax at the verb of an object cleft and are
left confused about who did what to whom in the sentence (e.g., Gordon et al., 2001; Warren & Gibson, 2005). Perhaps readers reread in an
attempt to provide memory support for this difficult retrieval, and if
they reach the end of the sentence without a coherent representation of
who did what to whom, they may be more likely to regress and reread.

The lexical manipulation on the critical
adverb had a more local effect on eye movements. Low-frequency adverbs
were associated with longer fixations in all fixation-based measures, and
marginally more first-pass regressions out (in the analysis by
participants). This frequency effect spilled over onto the region after
the adverb, again inflating all fixation-based measures, but did not
appear in the sentence-final region. This finding that disruption from a
lexical frequency manipulation spilled over onto the subsequent word is
consistent with many previous findings (e.g. Rayner & Duffy, 1986; Kliegl et al., 2006). The finding that this manipulation did
not affect reading times on the word before the manipulation is consistent
with the predictions of E-Z Reader, but not models assuming distributed
lexical processing (e.g., Engbert et al., 2005; Kliegl et al., 2006; Reilly & Radach, 2006)

The current findings are not consistent
with previous findings that a syntactic manipulation of foveal load
affected the amount of parafoveal processing accomplished on the following
word (Henderson & Ferreira, 1990). In the current experiment,
unlike in Henderson and Ferreira's, there was no interaction between
post-lexical processing on word N and lexical processing on word N + 1.
However, Henderson and Ferreira's finding of an interaction may have been
related to the interference caused by, and the reprocessing necessitated
by, initially processing a nonsense string in the dissimilar preview
condition. The foveal-load hypothesis might not predict an interaction
under conditions like those in the current experiment, in which all words
are presented correctly. If this is the case, then a better test of the
foveal-load hypothesis is whether the main effects of complexity in
first-fixation and gaze duration on word N spilled over onto word N + 1.
This prediction follows from the assumption that what drives the eyes to
saccade after initially fixating a word is the completion of an initial
stage of lexical processing (e.g. Reichle et al., 1998). If this is the case, first-fixations,
and possibly gaze durations, on a word should be longer the less
parafoveal pre-processing that word received. In Henderson and Ferreira's (1990) data for conditions with
correct previews, the syntactic complexity effect on word N did spill over
onto first-fixation durations on word N + 1; although the reliability of
this effect was not statistically tested, it was quite large and probably
real. In the current experiment, there was no such spill over. One
possible account for this discrepancy is the difference in the kind of
post-lexical processing necessitated in the two experiments. Henderson and
Ferreira's manipulation of syntactic complexity involved introducing a
word with an unexpected syntactic category. This was a surprise to readers
and forced them to revise their syntactic representations- a process that
was likely not too difficult in this case, and that readers probably
finished before reading further so that they could incorporate any further
words into the newly-built correct structure. The current experiment's
manipulation was different. Readers could anticipate that a point of high
syntactic complexity was imminent based on the fact that the beginning of
the sentence necessitated a cleft structure. More importantly, readers may
have been unable to fully resolve the correct structure and meaning at the
critical word, because of the difficult memory retrievals that were
necessary. These considerations suggest that post-lexical processing
difficulty may have been more distributed in the current experiment, and
readers may have been more likely to read on with vague or incomplete
post-lexical representations than in Henderson and Ferreira's experiment.
If this were the case, it would explain why post-lexical processing did
not delay lexical processing in the current experiment.

Counter to Kliegl et al. (2006)'s interpretation of the foveal-load
hypothesis, structural complexity and lexical frequency did not interact
in the eye movement data. The pattern of means in gaze duration on the
adverb was actually counter to this prediction, with a numerically larger
difference in the structurally simple conditions. There are two relevant
points here. First, as discussed above, it is not clear that the
foveal-load hypothesis must predict a superadditive interaction on word N
+ 1. If increased post-lexical processing on word N simply delays the
initiation of lexical processing on N + 1, there is no reason to expect
that delay to interact with the duration of lexical processing. Second,
the interaction Kliegl et al. (2006) observed was between lexical frequency
on words N and N + 1, perhaps indicating that the same kind of processing
must be cascaded in order to cause an interaction.

The findings of the current
experiment suggest that lexical processing on word N + 1 may not have to
wait for post-lexical processing on word N to either progress to some
predetermined point or be completed. Evidence for this is the fact that
first fixation and gaze durations on word N + 1 were unaffected by the
manipulation of post-lexical processing on word N, and that there were no
interactions between the post-lexical and lexical manipulations on words N
and N + 1. These findings also suggest that lexical and post-lexical
processing may rely on at least somewhat independent resources or
processes. This characterization is consistent with the E-Z Reader model's
(Reichle et al., 2009) assumptions about how post-lexical and
lexical processing progress, namely that lexical processing on word N + 1
begins immediately upon completion of lexical processing on word N,
without having to wait for post-lexical processing on N + 1, and that if
post-lexical processing on word N affects eye movements on word N + 1 it
does so via regressions and re-reading.

Acknowledgements

The work described in this article was supported by a
NIH R01 grant (HD053639) awarded to the first and second authors. Portions
of this work were presented at the 15th European Conference on
Eye Movements, Southampton, U.K.

Appendix

Experimental items: conditions a and c
used the low frequency adverb, which is first; conditions b and d used the
high frequency adverb, which is second. To create conditions c and d from
a and b, add an “it was” to the beginning of the sentence and replace
“and” with “who,” as in 1 below.

1a-b)
Tim and Sam
wrestled noisily/outside during practice yesterday.

1c-d)
It was Tim who Sam
wrestled noisily/outside during practice yesterday.

2a-b)
Paul and Sue
cuddled happily/closely while watching a movie.

3a-b)
Cara and Molly
debated heatedly/recently about who to vote for in the election.

4a-b)
Mike and John were
meeting locally/already to formulate a budget for the business.

5a-b)
Joe and Lisa
married hastily/quickly on a vacation to Las Vegas.

6a-b)
Colette and Mark
kissed eagerly/exactly once on the train.

7a-b)
Kristen and Holly
fought vocally/largely about U.S. foreign policy.

8a-b)
Leah and Brian
snuggled routinely/primarily when it was cold at night.

9a-b)
Steve and Rob
saluted solemnly/properly at the military funeral.

10a-b)
Alan and Debbie
divorced nicely/fairly after ten years of marriage.

11a-b)
Jeff and Sarah
dated socially/recently for several months.

12a-b)
Rick and Ben
battled madly/later for control of the TV remote.

13a-b)
Beth and Nick
embraced snugly/slowly for the first time in years.

14a-b)
Colin and Alex
debated adamantly/carefully about standardized testing in
schools.

15a-b)
Tom and Kate
kissed tirelessly/frequently while in the movie theater.

16a-b)
Rachel and Nicole
hugged emotionally/immediately following the football team's big
win.

17a-b)
Josh and Drew
wrestled superbly/recently at the national championship
tournament.

18a-b)
Ben and Dave
debated stubbornly/frequently during family dinners.

19a-b)
Allison and Susan
were meeting irregularly/immediately following the conference.

20a-b)
Phil and Karen
fought aloud/twice about the death penalty.

21a-b)
Irene and Victor
snuggled shyly/often while watching the fireworks.

22a-b)
Eddie and Megan
married humbly/abroad in a small ceremony.

23a-b)
Bill and
Christina hugged intimately/frequently before leaving the house.

24a-b)
Marie and Robert
embraced stiffly/quickly when no one was
watching.

Other
Sections▼

Abstract

Introduction

Methods

Results

Discussion

References

References

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Using
E-Z Reader to model the effects of higher level language processing on eye
movements during reading.

Psychon Bull Rev. 2009 Feb;
16(1):1-21.
[Psychon Bull Rev. 2009]

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more articles cited in this paragraph

ReviewEye movements in reading and information processing:
20 years of research.

Psychol Bull. 1998 Nov;
124(3):372-422.
[Psychol Bull. 1998]

See
more articles cited in this paragraph

ReviewEye movements in reading and information processing:
20 years of research.

Psychol Bull. 1998 Nov;
124(3):372-422.
[Psychol Bull. 1998]

SWIFT:
a dynamical model of saccade generation during reading.

Psychol Rev. 2005 Oct;
112(4):777-813.
[Psychol Rev. 2005]

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anatomically constrained, stochastic model of eye movement control in
reading.

Psychol Rev. 2005 Oct;
112(4):814-40.
[Psychol Rev. 2005]

ReviewToward a model of eye movement control in reading.

Psychol Rev. 1998 Jan;
105(1):125-57.
[Psychol Rev. 1998]

Using
E-Z Reader to model the effects of higher level language processing on eye
movements during reading.

Psychon Bull Rev. 2009 Feb;
16(1):1-21.
[Psychon Bull Rev. 2009]

See
more articles cited in this paragraph

ReviewToward a model of eye movement control in reading.

Psychol Rev. 1998 Jan;
105(1):125-57.
[Psychol Rev. 1998]

See
more articles cited in this paragraph

Tracking
the mind during reading: the influence of past, present, and future words on
fixation durations.

J Exp Psychol Gen. 2006 Feb;
135(1):12-35.
[J Exp Psychol Gen.
2006]

See
more articles cited in this paragraph

Using
E-Z Reader to model the effects of higher level language processing on eye
movements during reading.

Psychon Bull Rev. 2009 Feb;
16(1):1-21.
[Psychon Bull Rev. 2009]

SWIFT:
a dynamical model of saccade generation during reading.

Psychol Rev. 2005 Oct;
112(4):777-813.
[Psychol Rev. 2005]

Tracking
the mind during reading: the influence of past, present, and future words on
fixation durations.

J Exp Psychol Gen. 2006 Feb;
135(1):12-35.
[J Exp Psychol Gen.
2006]

See
more articles cited in this paragraph

Tracking
the mind during reading: the influence of past, present, and future words on
fixation durations.

J Exp Psychol Gen. 2006 Feb;
135(1):12-35.
[J Exp Psychol Gen. 2006]

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E-Z Reader to model the effects of higher level language processing on eye
movements during reading.

Psychon Bull Rev. 2009 Feb;
16(1):1-21.
[Psychon Bull Rev. 2009]

Investigating
the causes of wrap-up effects: evidence from eye movements and E-Z Reader.

Cognition. 2009 Apr; 111(1):132-7.
[Cognition. 2009]

See
more articles cited in this paragraph

Using
E-Z Reader to model the effects of higher level language processing on eye
movements during reading.

Psychon Bull Rev. 2009 Feb;
16(1):1-21.
[Psychon Bull Rev. 2009]

Investigating
the causes of wrap-up effects: evidence from eye movements and E-Z Reader.

Cognition. 2009 Apr; 111(1):132-7.
[Cognition. 2009]

See
more articles cited in this paragraph

Investigating
the causes of wrap-up effects: evidence from eye movements and E-Z Reader.

Cognition. 2009 Apr; 111(1):132-7.
[Cognition. 2009]

See
more articles cited in this paragraph

Tracking
the mind during reading: the influence of past, present, and future words on
fixation durations.

J Exp Psychol Gen. 2006 Feb;
135(1):12-35.
[J Exp Psychol Gen. 2006]

SWIFT:
a dynamical model of saccade generation during reading.

Psychol Rev. 2005 Oct;
112(4):777-813.
[Psychol Rev. 2005]

See
more articles cited in this paragraph

ReviewToward a model of eye movement control in reading.

Psychol Rev. 1998 Jan;
105(1):125-57.
[Psychol Rev. 1998]

See
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Tracking
the mind during reading: the influence of past, present, and future words on
fixation durations.

J Exp Psychol Gen. 2006 Feb;
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See
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