The timeline of word recognition and oculomotor control in reading

• Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Werner Sommer
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Allgemeine, Kognitive und Mathematische Psychologie
• Förderung: Förderung von 2007 bis 2016
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 34181293

• Erstellungsjahr: 2016

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

In the second phase of the project we obtained findings on two main issues: (1) The effect of parafoveal information has at least two functional loci. An early effect, corresponding to a reduction of the N1 component likely reflects preview-driven facilitation at an orthographic or phonological level. A second effect manifests during later time segments, probably reflecting the N400. With other important factors held constant, we found that preview effects are much more pronounced during natural reading than in the RSVP-with-flankers paradigm without eye movements, establishing a crucial role of saccade-related attention shifts for parafoveal processing. In contrast, semantic preview effects, both at the oculomotor and neural level, could be shown only in reading Chinese sentences and not while reading (context-free) German word lists. However, delayed parafovea-on-foveal effects in the EEG provide evidence that some preprocessing of lexicosemantic features also occurs in the latter condition. We also showed - for the first time - preview effects depending on the emotional valence of words (in Chinese). Although parafoveal information is essential for speeding up reading, individual differences in parafoveal visual acuity contribute little to individual differences in reading speed. (2) We established evidence for a dynamic modulation of the attention span during reading. With the visual probe technique and in a strongly simplified reading task, these modulations were confined to situations where a given task or a given foveal load persisted over a number of trials. However, FRP recordings in a more natural left-to-right list reading situation revealed robust and systematic moment-to-moment fluctuations in the size of the preview positivity as a function of the foveal load induced by the previously fixated word. The latter result provides strong evidence for the foveal load hypothesis. During the project runtime, a corresponding mechanism of a load-dependent attentional “zoom lens” was included in the SWIFT model of eye movement control. Also in FRP studies we found that parafoveal effects contribute much stronger to natural reading situations with saccades than to designs where eye movements are precluding by RSVP presentation with flankers. This indicates both the importance of the oculomotor process to natural reading and advice against considering the RSVP with flanker task as a valid proxy for the normal reading process. Together these studies provide important empirical constraints for the development of computational models of reading.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

• (2011). Co-registration of eye movements and eeg in natural reading: Analyses and review. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140(4):552–572
  Dimigen, O., Sommer, W., Hohlfeld, A., Jacobs, A. M., and Kliegl, R.
  
• (2012). Eye movements and brain electric potentials during reading. Psychological Research, 76(2):145–158
  Kliegl, R., Dambacher, M., Dimigen, O., Jacobs, A. M., and Sommer, W.
  
• (2012). Stimulus onset asynchrony and the timeline of word recognition: Event-related potentials during sentence reading. Neuropsychologia, 50(8):1852–1870
  Dambacher, M., Dimigen, O., Braun, M., Wille, K., Jacobs, A. M., and Kliegl, R.
  
• (2012). Trans-saccadic parafoveal preview benefits in fluent reading: A study with fixation-related brain potentials. Neuroimage, 62:381–393
  Dimigen, O., Kliegl, R., and Sommer, W.
  
• (2014). Oculomotor control, brain potentials, and timelines of word recognition during natural reading, pages 141–155. Springer International Publishing, Cham, Switzerland
  Kliegl, R., Dambacher, M., Dimigen, O., and Sommer, W.
  
• (2015). Are individual differences in reading speed related to extrafoveal visual acuity and crowding? PLoS ONE, 10(3):e0121986
  Froemer, R., Dimigen, O., Niefind, F., Krause, N., Kliegl, R., and Sommer, W.
  
• (2015). Microsaccade-related brain potentials signal the focus of visuospatial attention. NeuroImage, 104(1):79–88
  Meyberg, S., Werkle-Bergner, M., Sommer, W., and Dimigen, O.
  
• (2015). Modulation of the attentional span by foveal and parafoveal task load: An erp study using attentional probes. Psychophysiology, 52(9):1218–1227
  Kornrumpf, B. and Sommer, W.
  
• (2015). Parafoveal processing in reading chinese sentences: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Psychophysiology, 52(10):1361–1374
  Li, N., Niefind, F., Wang, S., Sommer, W., and Dimigen, O.
  
• (2016). Neural correlates of word recognition: A systematic comparison of natural reading and rapid serial visual presentation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, pages 1–18
  Kornrumpf, B., Niefind, F., Sommer, W., and Dimigen, O.