title: Parafoveal processing of word n + 2 during reading: do the preceding words matter?
abstract: We used the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to test two hypotheses that might explain why no conclusive evidence has been found for the existence of n + 2 preprocessing effects. In Experiment 1, we tested whether parafoveal processing of the second word to the right of fixation (n + 2) takes place only when the preceding word (n + 1) is very short (Angele, Slattery, Yang, Kliegl, & Rayner, 2008); word n + 1 was always a three-letter word. Before crossing the boundary, preview for both words n + 1 and n + 2 was either incorrect or correct. In a third condition, only the preview for word n + 1 was incorrect. In Experiment 2, we tested whether word frequency of the preboundary word (n) had an influence on the presence of preview benefit and parafoveal-on-foveal effects. Additionally, Experiment 2 contained a condition in which only preview of n + 2 was incorrect. Our findings suggest that effects of parafoveal n + 2 preprocessing are not modulated by either n + 1 word length or n frequency. Furthermore, we did not observe any evidence of parafoveal lexical preprocessing of word n + 2 in either experiment.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0109, USA. bangele@ucsd.edu
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Angele
authors.forename: Keith
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Rayner
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D032882:Comprehension; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D005584:Fovea Centralis; D006801:Humans; D008606:Mental Processes; D011932:Reading; D012016:Reference Values; D014785:Vision, Ocular; D014794:Visual Fields; D014796:Visual Perception