ABSTRACT The research described in this project is concerned with on-line language comprehension processing during reading. In the proposal, a number of studies are outlined in which eye movement data are collected as subjects read sentences and text. The goal for the next period of research is to continue the empirical and theoretical work on sentence parsing, syntactic ambiguity, and lexical ambiguity that has been done in our laboratory over the past twelve years of this project. The experiments deal with (1) the role of focus structure in sentence and discourse processing, (2) the role of events in sentence and discourse structure, and (3) the effects of discourse structure on lexical processing. The theoretical implications of the work for a theory of reading and on-line language processing will be developed. The research should be useful in furhter understanding the reading process and help to reveal the relationship between skilled and poor reading.
