Parafoveal Preview During Reading

Effects of Sentence Position

White, Sarah J.
Warren, Tessa
Reichle, Erik D.

¹School of Psychology, University of Leicester, United Kingdom
²Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh

Tessa Warren and Erik D. Reichle were supported by National Institutes of Health grant HD053639 while carrying out this work. Portions of this work were completed while Erik D. Reichle was a fellow at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg in Delmenhorst, Germany and while Sarah J. White was on Study Leave granted by the University of Leicester. We would like to thank Wayne Murray, and Don Mitchell for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sarah J. White, School of Psychology, University of Leicester, Lancaster Road, Leicester LE1 9HN, United Kingdom [email protected][email protected]

Received January 25, 2010

Revision received October 18, 2010

Accepted October 26, 2010

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 37(4):p 1221-1238, August 2011. | DOI: 10.1037/a0022190

Two experiments examined parafoveal preview for words located in the middle of sentences and at sentence boundaries. Parafoveal processing was shown to occur for words at sentence-initial, mid-sentence, and sentence-final positions. Both Experiments 1 and 2 showed reduced effects of preview on regressions out for sentence-initial words. In addition, Experiment 2 showed reduced preview effects on first-pass reading times for sentence-initial words. These effects of sentence position on preview could result from either reduced parafoveal processing for sentence-initial words or other processes specific to word reading at sentence boundaries. In addition to the effects of preview, the experiments also demonstrate variability in the effects of sentence wrap-up on different reading measures, indicating that the presence and time course of wrap-up effects may be modulated by text-specific factors. We also report simulations of Experiment 2 using version 10 of E-Z Reader (), designed to explore the possible mechanisms underlying parafoveal preview at sentence boundaries.