Parafoveal preview benefit in sentence reading: Independent effects of plausibility and orthographic relatedness

Abstract

Recent evidence from studies using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm suggests that parafoveal preview benefit is contingent on the fit between a preview word and the sentence context. We investigated whether this plausibility preview benefit is modulated by preview/target orthographic relatedness. Participants’ eye movements were recorded as they read sentences in which the parafoveal preview of a target word was manipulated. Non-identical previews were plausible or implausible continuations of the sentence that were either an orthographic neighbor of the target or unrelated to the target. First-pass reading measures showed a strong plausibility preview benefit. There was also a benefit from preview/target orthographic relatedness across reading measures. These two preview effects did not interact on any fixation measure. There was also no evidence that the relatedness effect was caused by misperception of an orthographically similar preview as the target word. These data highlight the existence of two independent mechanisms underlying preview effects: a benefit from the contextual fit of the preview word in the sentence and a benefit from the sublexical overlap between the preview and target word.