Effects of Contextual Constraints and Non-fixated Words in a Simple Reading Task

Journalof Research in Reading (1982), 5(2), 89-100

Effects of Contextual Constraints and Non-fixated Words in a Simple Reading Task Geoffrey Underwood, Alison Whitfield & Jane Winfield Department of Psychology, University of Nottingharn

ABSTRACT

An experiment is reported which investigates the perceptual span available to skilled readers in a single fixation. After adult readers had listened to an incomplete sentence they were presented tachistoscopically with a word which they were to name aloud. Congruency between sentence and word facilitated naming, but the presence of an unattended word in the right visual field confounded this relationship. If the unattended word was also congruent, then the naming response was further facilitated, but a congruent unattended word interfered with the naming of an incongruent attended word. This relationship did not hold for unattended words which were presented in the left visual field, and which did not appear to have been processed for meaning. An effect of an unattended word upon the naming of a fixated word suggests that skilled readers recognize the meanings of more words than are fixated. Skilled readers may use the meanings of words ahead of fixation to enrich their interpretation of the text, or use those words more simply as markers to guide future eye-movements to the location of the next useful fixation.

RESUME

Les effets des contraintes de contexte et des mots dktachb dans une tdche de lecture simple

On passe en revue une exptrience qui a examint le champ visuel perceptible qui se prtsente aux lecteurs habiles dans une seule fixation des yeux.

Des adultes ont ecoutt d’abord une phrase inachevte (p.e. ‘Les pompiers ont Ctt appelts B la forCt pour combattre le. . .’) et ont lu B haute voix un mot qu’on les a montrt tout de suite apr&s avoir lu la phrase (p.e ‘incendie’). On sait dejB qu’il est

0141-0423/82/0502-89 0 1982 Journal of Research in Reading (UKRA) 89

90 G. UNDERWOOD, A. WHITFIELD AND J. WINFIELD

possible de faciliter la reconnaissance des mots en les prtsentant dans un contexte stmantique et syntactique approprit, et cet effet s’est employk dans notre exptrience pour examiner l’influence d’un mot dttacht sur la reconnaissance d’un mot fix6 par les yeux. Plusieurs questions se posaient au cours de cet examen; si un mot dttacht pouvait rtagir sur le contexte de la phrase pour aider la reconnaissance du mot fix& et si cette action rtciproque ttait provenu du fonctionnement des htmisph2res A la droite ou A la gauche du cerveau.

On a prksentt le mot qu’il fallait nommer pendant 150 msec, pour simuler une courte fixation chez des lecteurs habiles, et le mot dttachk a ttk prksentt en mCme temps que le mot attacht. Le mot dttachk s’est place ou A la gauche ou A la droite du mot en phrase, et un angle visuel de trois degrts et demi a stpark le point de fixation et le premier caractere du mot dktacht. Le mot attacht ktait ou congru ou incongru par rapport A la phrase, de meme que le mot dttacht. La prksence d’un rapport direct entre la phrase et le mot a facilite son identification dans l’experience, mais la prtsence d’un mot dktachk dans le champ visuel A la droite a renversk ce rapport. Si le mot dttacht ttait aussi congru, la reconnaissance du mot en phrase s’est rendue encore plus facile, mais un mot dktacht sans rapport A la phrase a gCnk l’identification d’un mot fixt incongru. Cet accord n’ttait pas valable pour les mots dttachts prtsentks dans le champ visuel A gauche, qui semblent n’avoir pas t t t considtrts en ttablissant le sens de la phrase,

Un effet exerct par un mot dktacht sur l’identification d’un mot fix6 sugg&re que des lecteurs habiles reconnaissent les sens de plus de mots que ceux directement en vue. La reconnaissance des sens des mots prtsentts dans le parafovea de la vision Cnonce deux hypotheses des proctdes requis pour lire couramment. D’abord, des lecteurs habiles peuvent employer les sens des mots en avant de la fixation pour enrichir leur interprktation du texte, ou en dkveloppant des associations ou en rksoudant des ambigujitks, par exemple. Deuxiemement, et plus simplement, des lecteurs peuvent employer des mots en avant de la fixation, une fois reconnus, pour diriger les mouvements oculaires futurs au point de la prochaine fixation utile. Nous n’avons pas de l’kvidence qui nous permettrait de distinguer ces hypotheses l’une de l’autre, mais cette exptrience-ci a dkmontrk qu’une caracttristique de la lecture courante est l’emploi de plus d’informations que des mots fixks. Ceci nous mene A suggtrer que l’instruction en lecture pour des lecteurs d’autres que les dtbutants devraient tenir compte de la stratkgie de lecture moins convergte qu’emploient les lecteurs habiles.

INTRODUCTION

What sources of information are available to the skilled reader during a single fixation? Knowledge of what has been recently understood will affect recognition of a newly fixated word, but can any use be made of words ahead of fixation? Willows (1974) found that good young readers were more affected than were poor young readers by ‘irrelevant’ words printed between the lines of the text which was to be read aloud. This suggests that good readers might learn to focus less narrowly upon

EFFECTS OF CONTEXTUAL CONSTRAINTS AND NON-FIXATED WORDS 91

the words being read at any one moment, and accept information about the text in a less serial manner as their skills develop. If so, then the effect of unattended words should be observable in adult skilled readers for the case of a single fixation. In the present experiment we attempted to influence reading behaviour by presenting ‘irrelevant’ words in the same display, in a simulation of the view gained in a single fixation of text.

The recognition of words can be facilitated by presenting them in the appropriate semantic and syntactic context. Work by Tulving and Gold (1963) and Morton (1964) established that the amount of stimulus information necessary for recognition, as determined by the exposure duration threshold for visually presented words, was reduced when the word was congruent with a previously presented and incomplete sentence. This well-established effect was exploited in the present study, which examined the effectiveness of an unattended word upon the recognition of a fixated word in circumstances where the unattended word was presented to the right or to the left of fixation. The questions asked in this experiment were whether an unattended word could interact with the sentential context to influence the naming of the word to be recognized, and whether this interaction depended upon processing in the right or left cerebral hemisphere. Unattended words are known to be recognized for meaning, because the responses to attended stimuli can be shown to depend upon the semantic relationship between the attended and unattended stimuli (Bradshaw, 1974; Underwood, 1976; Allport, 1977). Only if unattended words are read (whether the reader knows that they are being read or not) could their meanings influence the responses to attended stimuli. We may infer from these results that non-fixated words can be read for meaning, and that the meanings of all stimuli in the visual field interact and influence each other.

The influence of sentential context upon word recognition can be observed by determining the recognition duration threshold as a function of the context (Tulving and Gold, 1963), but can also be demonstrated to influence the time taken to name a word. West and Stanovich (1978) observed a decreasing influence of context upon word naming as reading skills increased, and suggested that skilled readers are less influenced by context because they recognize words too quickly for expectations to be ggnerated by a conscious, attentional process. This interpretation was confirmed in a subsequent experiment (Stanovich and West, 1979) in which skilled readers were presented with words which were visually degraded and therefore were recognized slower. With degraded words greater effects of context were observed than with non-degraded words, suggesting that when recognition is performed slowly then the conscious and strategical generation of expectancies can be shown to influence recognition. Another way of describing this interaction would be to say that when visual information is impoverished then contextual information is used more readily than when recognition is straightforward.

The interactions between the influences of stimulus information and contextual information, in the recognition of words, are well described by a model of semantic processing which suggests two influential processes. Collins and Loftus (1975) and Posner and Snyder (1975) have argued independently that whereas words may be processed by a limited capacity system which is under volitional control, their processing is also influenced by a spread of automatic activation from the processing


of previous stimuli. In particular, the two-process model suggests that whereas automatic activation is fast spreading and can offer only facilitation in the processing of semantically related items, the conscious activation process is slow-acting and can lead to interference in the recognition of unexpected words (Posner and Snyder, 1975). Interference is possible because the retrieval of information from unexpected locations in the semantic lexicon requires the limited capacity processor to delete its expectations and re-enter information from a different location in the lexicon. Degraded stimuli slow down the recognition process, and allow the influence of expectations based upon contextual information. They are recognized subject to greater influences from context (Meyer, Schvaneveldt and Ruddy, 1974; Stanovich and West, 1979).

Any manipulation which slows down the recognition of words should, according to this analysis, result in greater influences of contextual information upon recognition. Moreover, the influence of any stimulus which does not enter awareness, and does not therefore direct the limited capacity processor, should be restricted to the provision of facilitation in the case of stimuli related to the stimulus being recognized. An unattended word should therefore provide facilitation, by the automatic spread of activation, but should provide no interference with the processing of an attended word. This has not been observed to be the case in previous examinations of the effects of unattended words, and so we must question the generality of the principle of facilitation-without-interference. In cases of brief visual displays, unattended stimuli facilitate the success of report of related stimuli (Allport, 1977; Underwood, 1977) and interfere with the latency of report (Underwood, 1976, 1977). The direction of influence depends upon the task being performed. In the case above, it may have been the activation of unattended words which were related to the attended word which resulted in both greater awareness of the attended word and a slower response. The present experiment attempts to increase the effectiveness of an unattended word upon the naming of an attended word by presenting an unattended word which fulfils the expectations of context. Attended words which are contextually congruent should, on the basis of the previous analysis, gain faster naming responses than words which are incongruent. What would be the effect of congruent unattended words? By the two-process model of lexical access (Posner and Snyder, 1975) congruent unattended words should provide only facilitation in the naming of attended words. This facilitation would presumably be observable when both words are contextually congruent.

In an attempt to isolate the effects of the meanings of unattended words upon the naming of attended words, this experiment used lateralized presentations of unattended words. Attended words were presented to the location of fixation. If word recognition is the prerogative of the left cerebral hemisphere (Mishkin and Forgays, 1952; McKeever and Huling, 197 l), then the interference effects described above should be evident only for presentations of unattended words in the right visual field (RVF). Underwood (1977) reported this to be the case in a simple naming task, in which an unattended word in the RVF influenced the naming of an attended and fixated picture, but in which an unattended word in the left visual field (LVF) had no influence. This confirmed a previous result (Underwood, 1976), but held only for those cases in which the unattended word was unavailable for conscious


report. If unattended words in the LVF can gain lexical access, then the present experiment provides a greater chance for their access to be demonstrated because, as well as providing stimulus evidence for lexical recognition, contextual evidence is also provided. Contextual information activates a restricted area of semantic memory (Collins and Loftus, 1975) and provides facilitation by reducing the amount of stimulus information necessary for recognition. Recognition of an unattended word may then provide information which facilitates or interferes with the response to the attended word. Presentation of contextual information immediately prior to presentation of an unattended word acts to prime that word, and this experiment investigates the effects caused by the priming of words presented in each visual field.

METHOD

Apparatus and materials

Eighty sentences were composed, each with ten words and with a noun as the terminal word. The terminal (attended) word was either congruous with the context of the sentence, or was clearly incongruous. The 80 terminal words were each five to seven letters in length, and had a frequency of 40 to 50 per million (Thorndike and Lorge, 1944). Each terminal word was printed on a white card in black ink, using upper-case letters. The centre of each word was positioned at the centre of the card and, at the viewing distance used in the experiment, subtended an average angle of two and a quarter degrees. At a distance calculated to subtend a visual angle of three and a half degrees from the centre of the card, the nearest letter of a second word was printed. This second word was intended to be a distractor or unattended word, and for distractors printed to the right of the central word their first letter was printed three and a half degrees from the central point, and for distractors printed to the left it was the last letter which was printed three and a half degrees from the centre. Distractor words were similar to the central words in length and frequency, and were similarly printed.

To summarize the organization of stimuli: of the 80 sentences, 40 were completed with incongruous terminal words, and 40 with congruous words. The second word on each card was either congruous with the sentence, and could be used to complete it, or was incongruous. The second word was printed either to the left or to the right of the central word. A further eight sentences and terminal words were prepared for purposes of practice. Examples of sentences and terminal and distractor words are presented in Table 1. The 80 experimental trials contributed to a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design (terminal word congruous/incongruous x distractor word congruous/incongruous x distractor word in RVF/LVF), with ten trials in each of these eight conditions.

The central and distractor words were printed on white cards which were displayed on a Campden Instruments tachistoscope (model 610), and onset of the display started a Campden Instruments timer (model 565). When the subject spoke a


response to the display a microphone, suspended below the viewing hood of the tachistoscope, operated an Electronics Developments voice switch, which in turn stopped the timer.

Subjects

Ten volunteers (four female and six male) participated in the experiment. They were students from the University of Nottingham, and all claimed to be right-handed. No test of laterality was administered. All subjects had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Procedure

Subjects were tested individually with a repeated measures design, with each subject providing a response to each of the 80 terminal words. The 80 trials were presented in a different randomized order for each subject. The task was to fixate a small cross in the tachistoscope field in preparation for a word being presented a small distance above the cross. Immediately prior to presentation of the word the incomplete sentence was spoken by an experimenter who did not know the relationship between sentence and terminal word or sentence anddistractor word, nor the visual field of presentation of the distractor word. On completion of presentation of the incomplete sentence, the terminal and distractor words were displayed, and the subject read aloud the terminal word. The terminal and distractor words were displayed for 150 msec for each subject, a duration which simulates a short fixation for skilled readers. The latency for initiation of a saccadic eye-movement is between 180 and

‘Table 1. Examples of the stimuli used in the congruity conditions.

Spoken sentence Attended Unattended word word

Attended word congruous, unattended word congruous: ‘Fireman were called to the forest to tackle the. . .’ Attended word congruous, unattended word incongruous: ‘The pirates took the treasure found in theoak. . .’ Attended word incongruous, unattended word congruous: ‘The snow emphasized the bright red breast of the. . .’ Attended word incongruous, unattended word incongruous: ‘Instead of holidaying in Britain they decided to travel . . .’

blaze

chest

bends

ducks

flames

fever

robin

pencil ~~

After hearing the incomplete sentence subjects were presented with a terminal attended word which was to be read aloud and which was congruous or incongruous with the sentence. An unattended distractor word was also presented with every terminal word, and the distractor was also congruous or incongruous with the sentence. The distractor appeared either to the left or to the right of the central, terminal word.


250 msec after onset of a visual stimulus (Haber and Hershenson, 1980), and so the subjects would not have been able to move their eyes to inspect the unattended words in response to their appearance. If they chose to anticipate the appearance of the unattended word by fixating the point on the screen where they thought it might appear, then they would anticipate correctly on half the trials by chance, but would then suffer the penalty of not looking at the word which they were to read aloud. The eight practice trials were followed immediately by the 80 experimental trials.

Instructions encouraged subjects to attend to the spoken sentence, to read aloud the terminal word as quickly as possible, and to ignore the distractors at all times by concentrating on the centre of the visual field.

RESULTS

Each subject provided ten responses in each of the eight experimental conditions in the 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design, and the means of these word naming latencies are presented in Table 2. The mean latencies from each subject were submitted to an analysis of variance for repeated-measures designs. This analysis indicated that two main effects and the three-way interaction accounted for the sources of experimental variance. Terminal target words presented in context (469 msec) with the sentence were named more easily than words presented out of context (53 1 msec) of the sentence (F = 170.9; d.f. = 1,9; P < 0.001). All ten subjects contributed with differences in this direction. The congruity of the distractor did not influence the haming latencies (F < 1) as a main effect. Unattended distractor words in the RVF (508 msec) resulted in slower terminal word naming latencies than LVF distractor words (492 msec), and this difference was reliable (F = 8.3; d.f. = 1,9; P < 0.02), although only seven out of the ten subjects responded in this direction. The three- way interaction between terminal (attended) word congruity, distractor (unattended) word congruity, and visual field of distractor word (F = 24.6; d.f. = 1,9; P < 0.001) indicates the differential effectiveness of the distractor word according to its visual field of presentation and the congruity of the accompanying central word. This interaction is best understood by consulting the mean latencies presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Mean response latencies (msec; and standard deviations in brackets) to the word naming task according to the congruity of the word to be named (in the context of the preceding sentence), according to the congruity of the unattended distractor word, and according to the visual field of presentation of the unattended word

Attended word (to be named): Congruous Incongruous

Unattended word in RVF: Distractor congruous

incongruous

Unattended word in LVF: Distractor congruous

incongruous

467.0 (73.9) 549.7 (66.9) 488.8 (54.6) 527.9 (50.9)

462.8 (66.3) 515.8 (63.9) 459.0 (52.7) 529.3 (68.3)

96 G . UNDERWOOD, A. WHITFIELD AND J. WINFIELD

When the unattended distractor was presented in the LVF then very little effect is observed upon the naming latency to the terminal word. A LVF distractor which is congruent appears to interfere with the naming of an incongruent terminal word, but this is a small (statistically unreliable) effect shown by seven out of the ten subjects, and is seen much more clearly with distractors presented in the RVF. Congruent distractors in the RVF provide facilitation to the naming latency if the terminal word is also congruent (eight out of ten subjects), and provide interference with the naming latency if the terminal word is incongruent (eight out of ten subjects). Planned comparisons looking at these effects of congruency of target word and distractor word, when the distractor appeared in each visual field, revealed differences only for the RVF comparisons. When the unattended distractor appeared in the LVF its congruity had no effect whether the target was congruent (t < 1) or incongruent (t = 2.2, d.f. = 9). However, when the distractor appeared in the RVF with a congruous target to fixation, then congruent distractors provided facilitation relative to incongruent distractors (t = 3.55, d.f. = 9, P < 0.01). Moreover, RVF congruent distractors provided interference relative to RVF incongruent distractors, when the terminal target word was itself incongruent with the sentence (t = 3.55, d.f. = 9, P < 0.01).

No naming errors were recorded during the course of this experiment.

DISCUSSION

The experiment confirmed previous reports of the facilitation offered by prior context upon the recognition and naming of single words (Tulving and Gold, 1963; Morton, 1964; West and Stanovich, 1978; Stanovich and West, 1979), extended Willows’ (1974) report of the effectiveness of unattended words upon recognition, and confirmed previous reports of unattended words being more disruptive when located in the RVF rather than the LVF (Underwood, 1976, 1977). The more interesting result, however, concerned the influence of unattended distractor words upon attended target words as a function of the congruity of unattended and attended words, and as a function of the visual field of presentation. This complex interaction provides an understanding of the interactions between attended and unattended words, and should be analysed first for the influence of lateralized unattended words.

The meanings of RVF unattended words can be shown to have been processed by the interaction between congruency and attention. Attended target words were named faster if they were congruent with the incomplete sentence, but they were named faster still if the accompanying unattended word was also congruent with the sentence. This suggests that the meaning of the RVF unattended word had been appreciated, in that the relationship depends upon the congruency of the unattended word with the meaning of the sentence. It is possible, however, that the effect stems not from the congruency of unattended word and sentence, but from the relationship between the unattended word and the attended word. When both words were congruent they were semantically related, and a structural model (e.g., Collins and


Loftus, 1975) would describe them as being located within the same area of semantic space in the lexicon. The congruent sentence would therefore prime both words, and the relationship between them might be expected to enhance their recognition further. This explanation is not consistent with earlier results (Underwood, 1976, 1977) which found that an unattended stimulus which is related to an attended stimulus tended to interfere with naming time rather than afford facilitation. This directionality holds only for simultaneous presentations of unattended and attended words, much as a Stroop effect in essence, and prior presentation of a related word can be seen to facilitate a response (Meyer and Schvaneveldt, 1971; Neely, 1977), much as a congruent sentence operates. The explanation of facilitation in terms of an interaction between the processing of the two words is further confounded by the case of an incongruent attended word presented with a congruent unattended word. As these two words were not related, then no effect might be expected. However, a congruent unattended word slowed down the naming response in comparison with an incongruent unattended word. If we assume that the sentence acts to prime a restricted area of the semantic lexicon, and that presentation of an unattended word from within this restricted area will result in more activation than would presentation of a non-primed unattended word, then we have an explanation of both the facilitation and interference effects.

Priming, by a congruent sentence, of an acceptable unattended word results in that word being activated, and when the attended word is also congruent then the resulting facilitation is because the unattended word confirms the expectancy generated by the sentence. It is this expectancy which results in the quick naming of the attended word. When an unattended word is congruent with a preceding sentence then the word will become activated and influence other ongoing processes, and if the attended word is incongruent, then the activation can only confirm an inappropriate expectancy. In this case the presence of an unattended word results in interference with the naming response. Recognition and activation of the unattended word is therefore performed independently of recognition of the attended word, and is not dependent upon a semantic relationship with the attended word. In the present case, recognition had been facilitated by prior presentation of sentential context.

It is interesting to note that these analyses of the interactions between attended and unattended words are restricted to the case of unattended words presented to the RVF. When the unattended word appeared in the LVF it was able to offer no facilitation towards the naming of a congruent attended word, and no interference with the naming of an incongruent attended word. For the present case, where the dependent measure is the extent of interference upon a naming task, we must conclude that there is no evidence of the semantic processing of words projected to the right cerebral hemisphere. This conclusion may not have held had we used a response which was not as well lateralized as vocal naming. Day (1977) has reported that when a manual lexical decision response is used, then evidence can be provided for a sensitivity to language for right hemisphere presentations. It is possible that the meanings of unattended words presented to the right hemisphere could show an influence upon attended words if the response to the attended words was not determined by a left hemisphere response system. If this is the case, then the present


experiment has failed to demonstrate semantic processing in the right hemisphere by using an insensitive dependent measure.

Words ahead of fixation can interact with previous sentential context, and with the meanings of fixated words, to have the effect of influencing the naming of fixated words. This effect may be of use to skilled readers in one of two ways. First, if the meanings of non-fixated words are recognized, as suggested by our experiment, then the comprehension of the fixated material may be modified and enriched by the perception of words in close proximity. Bradshaw (1974) has shown that the perception of the meaning of a fixated word can be influenced by the presentation of a word printed to one side. Alternatively, an unattended word may influence reading behaviour, not by influencing the comprehension of the fixated word but by guiding the eye to the next relevant location on the page. Rayner (1975) has reported that for words up to four degrees ahead of fixation, the initial letter, word shape and word length can all affect eye-movement behaviour. This suggests that some visual characteristics of non-fixated words are recognized and can modify reading. Rayner’s evidence falls short of supporting the cognitive-guidance model of eye- movement control, in which fixations are determined by the linguistic structure of the material being read. The present experiment, and those of Allport (1977), Bradshaw (1974), Underwood (1976, 1977) and Willows (1974), provide support for this model in that they indicate an influence of the meanings of unattended words. This influence confirms the plausibility of the model without establishing whether it is representative of all reading situations.

Evidence is not available for us to distinguish between the two hypotheses concerning the use of unattended words in reading, but the present experiment has demonstrated that one characteristic of skilled reading is the use of more information than is fixated. This confirms the trend reported by Willows (1974), and leads us to suggest that reading tuition for non-beginning readers should take account of the less-focused reading strategy employed by the successful reader.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work benefited from discussions with P. O’B. Holt and G.D. Jennings, and was supported partially by a Medical Research Council grant (no. G978/1173/N) to the senior author.

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GEOFFREY UNDERWOOD, ALISON WHITFIELD and JANE WINFIELD Department O f

Psychology, University of Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.

Documents

Effects of Contextual Constraints and Non-fixated Words in a Simple Reading Task