An eye movement analysis of topic-shift effect during repeated reading.
This study replicated previous reading time studies that have observed increased reading times for sentences introducing a new subtopic in a text, compared with sentences that are continuations of a subtopic. This topic-shift effect was obtained for the initial reading but not when the same text was reread. The absence of topic-shift effect was taken to suggest that readers construct a mental representation of the text's topic structure during the initial reading. The topic-shift effect was primarily due to regressive fixations, which tended to land in the first half of sentences. Regressions were typically launched at the end of sentences, with topic-shift sentences also well before the sentence end was reached. These findings are interpreted as evidence for the integrative nature of regressive fixations.
Hyönä
J
J
Experimental Psychology Laboratory, University of Turku, Finland. hyona@sara.utu.fi
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D012016:Reference Values