On forward inferences of fast and slow readers. An eye movement study.

Sci Rep

Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstr. 34, 5020 Salzburg, Austria.

Published: February 2015

Unimpaired readers process words incredibly fast and hence it was assumed that top-down processing, such as predicting upcoming words, would be too slow to play an appreciable role in reading. This runs counter the major postulate of the predictive coding framework that our brain continually predicts probable upcoming sensory events. This means, it may generate predictions about the probable upcoming word during reading (dubbed forward inferences). Trying to asses these contradictory assumptions, we evaluated the effect of the predictability of words in sentences on eye movement control during silent reading. Participants were a group of fluent (i.e., fast) and a group of speed-impaired (i.e., slow) readers. The findings indicate that fast readers generate forward inferences, whereas speed-impaired readers do so to a reduced extent - indicating a significant role of predictive coding for fluent reading.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4327408PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep08432DOI Listing

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