This research will examine the integration of visual and cognitive information across eye movements in reading. During each eye fixation in reading, skilled readers acquire effective information from the word directly fixated and the next word in the text. In general, the word directly fixated is fully identified; the next word in the text, usually referred to as the parafoveal word, is "pre-viewed" but not identified. These experiments will examine the nature of this word preview process. One group of experiments will examine whether skilled readers use parafoveal word previews to acquire useful word length information and effective orthographic/lexical information. A second group of experiments will examine whether the usefulness of parafoveal word previews is a function of the sentential context within which these words occur. In each experiment, skilled readers' eye movements will be recorded while they read single sentences. During sentence reading, a stimulus available parafoveally will be replaced with a target word after completion of the eye movement from the fixated word to the parafoveal stimulus. The linguistic relationship between the stimulus available paravfoveally and the target word subsequently fixated will be varied to determine which type of effective visual and cognitive information was obtained from the parafoveal stimulus preview. The outcome of this research will reveal how learned perceptual and cognitive skills contribute to the effective "pre-viewing" of parafoveally available words in skilled reading. This may assist the development of remedial reading programs for people who lack sufficient development of these skills.
