Parafoveal N400 effects reveal that word skipping is associated with deeper lexical processing in the presence of context-driven expectations.

Readers are able to begin processing upcoming words before directly fixating them, and in some cases skip words altogether (i.e., never fixated).

Chemogenetic Attenuation of Acute Nociceptive Signaling Enhances Functional Outcomes Following Spinal Cord Injury.

Identifying novel therapeutic approaches to promote recovery of neurological functions following spinal cord injury (SCI) remains a great unmet need. Nociceptive signaling in the acute phase of SCI has been shown to inhibit recovery of locomotor function and promote the development of chronic neuropathic pain. We therefore hypothesized that inhibition of nociceptive signaling in the acute phase of SCI might improve long-term functional outcomes in the chronic phase of injury.

Out of sight, out of mind: Foveal processing is necessary for semantic integration of words into sentence context.

Word recognition begins before a reader looks directly at a word, as demonstrated by the parafoveal preview benefit and word skipping. Both low-level form and high-level semantic features can be accessed in parafoveal vision and used to promote reading efficiency. However, words are not recognized in isolation during reading; once a semantic representation is retrieved, it must be integrated with the broader sentence context.

Event-related potentials show that parafoveal vision is insufficient for semantic integration.

Readers extract information from a word from parafoveal vision prior to looking at it. It has been argued that parafoveal perception allows readers to initiate linguistic processes, but it is unclear which stages of word processing are engaged: the process of extracting letter information to recognize words, or the process of extracting meaning to comprehend them. This study used the event-related brain potential (ERP) technique to investigate how word recognition (indexed by the N400 effect for unexpected or anomalous compared to expected words) and semantic integration (indexed by the Late-positive component; LPC effect for anomalous compared to expected words) are or are not elicited when the word is perceived only in parafoveal vision.

Readers scrutinize lexical familiarity only in the absence of expectations: Evidence from lexicality effects on event-related potentials.

Readers generate predictions about the meaning of upcoming words while reading constraining sentences. These predictions feed down to predictions about orthographic form. For example, orthographic neighbors of predicted words yield reduced N400 amplitudes compared to non-neighbors regardless of lexical status (Laszlo & Federmeier, 2009).

Are eye movements and EEG on the same page?: A coregistration study on parafoveal preview and lexical frequency.

Readers extract visual and linguistic information not only from fixated words but also upcoming parafoveal words to introduce new input efficiently into the language processing pipeline. The lexical frequency of upcoming words and similarity with subsequent foveal information both influence the amount of time people spend once they fixate the word foveally. However, it is unclear from eye movements alone the extent to which parafoveal word processing, and the integration of that word with foveally obtained information, continues after saccade plans have been initiated.

Semantic parafoveal processing in natural reading: Insight from fixation-related potentials & eye movements.

Prior research suggests that we may access the meaning of parafoveal words during reading. We explored how semantic-plausibility parafoveal processing takes place in natural reading through the co-registration of eye movements (EM) and fixation-related potentials (FRPs), using the boundary paradigm. We replicated previous evidence of semantic parafoveal processing from highly controlled reading situations, extending their findings to more ecologically valid reading scenarios.