Readers accurately monitor their incidental word learning success during silent reading.

College-age adults who are skilled at reading use sentence context and morphemic information to learn definitions for new words they encounter in print (e.g., Tong et al.

Are there Individual Differences in Learning Homophones During Silent Reading?

The present study evaluated if lexical expertise, defined as the quality and quantity of a reader's word representations, influenced college students' ability to learn novel homophones while reading. In two experiments novel homophones (e.g.

Learning to Spell Novel Words: The Relationship Between Orthographic and Semantic Representations During Incidental Learning.

The current study investigated whether semantic (meaning) knowledge benefits learning orthography (spelling). Adult readers read 14 novel non-words embedded in sentences with informative or uninformative context. Orthographic and semantic posttests assessed learning.

Precision in the measurement of lexical expertise: the selection of optimal items for a spelling assessment.

Skilled adult readers vary in many skills related to visual word form processing such as phonological processing, vocabulary size, comprehension skill, and spelling skill (Kuperman & Van Dyke, 2011). Spelling skill in particular has received much attention because low- and high-skill spellers show different patterns of lexical processing as measured through eye movement behavior, reaction times, and word learning (Eskenazi et al., 2018; Veldre & Andrews, 2014).

Word skipping during the lexical acquisition process.

During reading, most words are identified in the fovea through a direct fixation; however, readers also identify some words in the parafovea without directly fixating them. This word skipping process is influenced by many lexical and visual factors including word length, launch position, frequency, and predictability. Although these factors are well understood, there is some disagreement about the process that leads to word skipping and the degree to which skipped words are processed.

Orthographic texture effects during spelling are due to variations in representational strength.

In this study, we investigated the source of the orthographic texture effect during familiar word spelling. Orthographic texture refers to the differential strength that individual letters in a word may be activated for output. Prior work indicates that strongly activated letters are more accurately produced than weakly activated ones (Jones, Folk, & Rapp, 2009, All Letters are not Equal: Sub-Graphemic Texture in Orthographic Working Memory.

Eye-tracking to Distinguish Comprehension-based and Oculomotor-based Regressive Eye Movements During Reading.

Regressive eye movements are eye movements that move backwards through the text and comprise approximately 10-25% of eye movements during reading. As such, understanding the causes and mechanisms of regressions plays an important role in understanding eye movement behavior. Inhibition of return (IOR) is an oculomotor effect that results in increased latency to return attention to a previously attended target versus a target that was not previously attended.

Uninformative contexts support word learning for high-skill spellers.

The current study investigated how high-skill spellers and low-skill spellers incidentally learn words during reading. The purpose of the study was to determine whether readers can use uninformative contexts to support word learning after forming a lexical representation for a novel word, consistent with instance-based resonance processes. Previous research has found that uninformative contexts damage word learning; however, there may have been insufficient exposure to informative contexts (only one) prior to exposure to uninformative contexts (Webb, 2007; Webb, 2008).

Regressions during reading: The cost depends on the cause.

The direction and duration of eye movements during reading is predominantly determined by cognitive and linguistic processing, but some low-level oculomotor effects also influence the duration and direction of eye movements. One such effect is inhibition of return (IOR), which results in an increased latency to return attention to a target that has been previously attended (Posner & Cohen, Attention and Performance X: Control of Language Processes, 32, 531-556, 1984). Although this is a low level effect, it has also been found in the complex task of reading (Henderson & Luke, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(6), 1101-1107, 2012; Rayner, Juhasz, Ashby, & Clifton, Vision Research, 43(9), 1027-1034, 2003).

Reading skill and word skipping: Implications for visual and linguistic accounts of word skipping.

We investigated whether high-skill readers skip more words than low-skill readers as a result of parafoveal processing differences based on reading skill. We manipulated foveal load and word length, two variables that strongly influence word skipping, and measured reading skill using the Nelson-Denny Reading Test. We found that reading skill did not influence the probability of skipping five-letter words, but low-skill readers were less likely to skip three-letter words when foveal load was high.

Skipped words and fixated words are processed differently during reading.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether words are processed differently when they are fixated during silent reading than when they are skipped. According to a serial processing model of eye movement control (e.g.

Mrs. Malaprop's Neighborhood: Using Word Errors to Reveal Neighborhood Structure.

Many theories of language production and perception assume that in the normal course of processing a word, additional non-target words (lexical neighbors) become active. The properties of these neighbors can provide insight into the structure of representations and processing mechanisms in the language processing system. To infer the properties of neighbors, we examined the non-semantic errors produced in both spoken and written word production by four individuals who suffered neurological injury.

All letters are not equal: subgraphemic texture in orthographic working memory.

A central issue in the study of reading and spelling has been to understand how the consistency or frequency of letter-sound relationships affects written language processing. We present, for the first time, evidence that the sound-spelling frequency of subgraphemic elements of words (letters within digraphs) contributes to the accuracy with which these letters are produced in spelling. We report findings from 2 studies that demonstrate that letters within digraphs display differential susceptibility to error under conditions of disruption to orthographic working memory (O-WM).

The purpose of lexical/sublexical interaction during spelling: further evidence from dysgraphia and articulatory suppression.

We investigated how the lexical and sublexical processes interact in spelling using an articulatory suppression task to disrupt the sublexical process in a dysgraphic patient (JDO). Using a similar task, Folk et al. (2002) found evidence that the sublexical process interacts with the lexical process by strengthening a target word's graphemes.

Effects of syntactic category assignment on lexical ambiguity resolution in reading: an eye movement analysis.

Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read sentences containing lexically ambiguous words whose meanings share a single syntactic category (e.g., calf), lexically ambiguous words whose meanings belong to different syntactic categories (e.

The interaction of lexical and sublexical information in spelling: What's the point?

Most theories of spelling propose two major processes for translating between orthography and phonology: a lexical process for retrieving the spellings of familiar words and a sublexical process for assembling the spellings of unfamiliar letter strings based on knowledge of the systematic correspondences between phonemes and graphemes. We investigated how the lexical and sublexical processes function and interact in spelling by selectively interfering with the sublexical process in a dysgraphic individual. By comparing spelling performance under normal conditions and under conditions of sublexical disruption we were able to gain insight into the functioning and the unique contributions of the sublexical process.