title: Effects of load on the time course of attentional engagement, disengagement, and orienting in reading.
abstract: We examined how the frequency of the fixated word influences the spatiotemporal distribution of covert attention during reading. Participants discriminated gaze-contingent probes that occurred with different spatial and temporal offsets from randomly chosen fixation points during reading. We found that attention was initially focused at fixation and that subsequent defocusing was slower when the fixated word was lower in frequency. Later in a fixation, attention oriented more towards the next saccadic target for high- than for low-frequency words. These results constitute the first report of the time course of the effect of load on attentional engagement and orienting in reading. They are discussed in the context of serial and parallel models of reading.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK. s.ghahghaei@gold.ac.uk
authors.forename: Saeideh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ghahghaei
authors.forename: Karina J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Linnell
authors.forename: Martin H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Fischer
authors.forename: Amit
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dubey
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Davis
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D023882:Dominance, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D019416:Head Movements; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult