Abstract
The present study was designed to examine the processes underlying word identification during reading, by manipulating both lexical and visual aspects of the text. Specifically, participants’ eye movements were monitored while they read sentences in which high-frequency and low-frequency target words were presented either normally (i.e., the normal condition) or with reduced stimulus quality (i.e., the faint condition), or with alternating lower and upper case letters (i.e., the case alternated condition). Both the stimulus quality and case alternation manipulations interacted with word frequency for the gaze duration measure (i.e., the cumulative duration of all first-pass fixations on the target word), such that the magnitude of word frequency effects was increased relative to the normal condition. However, stimulus quality (but not case alternation) interacted with word frequency for the early fixation time measures (i.e., first fixation, single fixation), whereas case alternation (but not stimulus quality) interacted with word frequency for the later fixation time measures (i.e., total time, go-past time). We interpret this pattern of results as evidence that stimulus quality influences an earlier stage of lexical processing than case alternation, and we discuss the implications of our results for models of eye movement control during reading.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2013