Phonological typicality does not influence fixation durations in normal reading.

Full Abstract

Using a word-by-word self-paced reading paradigm, T. A. Farmer, M. H. Christiansen, and P. Monaghan (2006) reported faster reading times for words that are phonologically typical for their syntactic category (i.e., noun or verb) than for words that are phonologically atypical. This result has been taken to suggest that language users are sensitive to subtle relationships between sound and syntactic function and that they make rapid use of this information in comprehension. The present article reports attempts to replicate this result using both eyetracking during normal reading (Experiment 1) and word-by-word self-paced reading (Experiment 2). No hint of a phonological typicality effect emerged on any reading-time measure in Experiment 1, nor did Experiment 2 replicate Farmer et al.'s finding from self-paced reading. Indeed, the differences between condition means were not consistently in the predicted direction, as phonologically atypical verbs were read more quickly than phonologically typical verbs, on most measures. Implications for research on visual word recognition are discussed. Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Author information

Author/s: Staub, Adrian (A); Grant, Margaret (M); Clifton, Charles (C); Rayner, Keith (K);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, amherst, MA 01003, USA. astaub(-atsign-)psych.umass.edu

Grants: HD18708 (Agency:NICHD NIH HHS) ; HD26765 (Agency:NICHD NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition (J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-May; vol 35 (issue 3) : pp 806-14

Dates: Created 2009/04/21; Completed 2009/06/26;

PMID: 19379050, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 6/26/2009, IMS Date: 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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