Reading As A Perceptual Process

This book is divided into five sections dealing with various fundamental issues in current research: attention, information processing and eye movement control; the role of phonology in reading; syntax and discourse processing and computational models and simulations. Control and measurement of eye movements form a prominent theme in the book. A full understanding of the where and when of eye movement control is a prerequisite of any complete theory of reading, since it is precisely at this point that perceptual and cognitive processes interact. Amongst the 'hot topics' included are the relation between parafoveal and foveal visual processing of linguistic information, the role of phonology in fluent reading and the emergence of statistical 'tuning' approaches to sentence parsing. Also discussed in the book are three attempts to develop quantitative models of reading which represent a significant departure in theory-building and a quantum step in the maturation of reading research. Much of the work reported in the book was first presented at the 5th European Workshop on Language Comprehension organised in April 1998 which was held at the CNRS Luminy Campus, near Marseilles. All contributions summarise the state-of-the-art in the relevant areas of reading research.

Originally published in 1977, this volume contains the most recent theoretical views and experimental findings by prominent psychologists at the time, working in areas they considered to be most basic to the reading processes. The material will still be of value to people interested in applied and basic aspects of reading, as well as those concerned with language processing and information processing in general. The volume divides conveniently into two areas, perception and comprehension. The initial chapters deal with the perceptual processes involved in reading. The second half of the volume delves into the area of comprehension. The interested reader will find a wide variety of topics covered in the volume that reflect the amazingly wide range of cognitive functions that are part of the reading process.

Eye Movements in Reading: Perceptual and Language Processes focuses on eye movement and cognitive processes as a way to study the reading process. This book also discusses the different aspects of reading. Organized into seven parts encompassing 26 chapters, this book begins with a discussion on the perceptual and psychophysical factors essential to eye movement during reading. This book then explains how some psychophysical factors, such as type size and masking, affect the reading performance. Other chapters consider the role of transient and sustained cells, as well as their possible effects on reading. This text also examines the size of the perceptual span in reading and the integration of information across eye movement. Finally, this book explains the eye movement abnormalities, general eye movement parameters, and the cognitive processes within the reading disabled group. This book is a valuable resource to optometrists, scientists, field researchers, and readers who are interested in the reading process.

In reading, word frequency is commonly regarded as the major bottom-up determinant for the speed of lexical access. Moreover, language processing depends on top-down information, such as the predictability of a word from a previous context. Yet, however, the exact role of top-down predictions in visual word recognition is poorly understood: They may rapidly affect lexical processes, or alternatively, influence only late post-lexical stages. To add evidence about the nature of top-down processes and their relation to bottom-up information in the timeline of word recognition, we examined influences of frequency and predictability on event-related potentials (ERPs) in several sentence reading studies. The results were related to eye movements from natural reading as well as to models of word recognition. As a first and major finding, interactions of frequency and predictability on ERP amplitudes consistently revealed top-down influences on lexical levels of word processing (Chapters 2 and 4). Second, frequency and predictability mediated relations between N400 amplitudes and fixation durations, pointing to their sensitivity to a common stage of word recognition; further, larger N400 amplitudes entailed longer fixation durations on the next word, a result providing evidence for ongoing processing beyond a fixation (Chapter 3). Third, influences of presentation rate on ERP frequency and predictability effects demonstrated that the time available for word processing critically co-determines the course of bottom-up and top-down influences (Chapter 4). Fourth, at a near-normal reading speed, an early predictability effect suggested the rapid comparison of top-down hypotheses with the actual visual input (Chapter 5). The present results are compatible with interactive models of word recognition assuming that early lexical processes depend on the concerted impact of bottom-up and top-down information. We offered a framework that reconciles the findings on a timeline of word recognition taking into account influences of frequency, predictability, and presentation rate (Chapter 4).

The psychology of reading investigates the process by which readers extract visual information from written text and make sense of it. Psychology Library Editions: Psychology of Reading (11 Volumes) brings together as one set, or individual volumes, a small series of previously out-of-print titles, originally published between 1980 and 1995. The set includes topics such as dyslexia and the relationship between speech and reading.