Establishing a time-line of word recognition evidence from eye movements and event-related potentia.pdf

Introduction There is considerable evidence to indicate that eye movements during skilled reading reflect moment-to- moment cognitive processes.1,2 The average fixation duration of around 250 ms places constraints on the amount of time available for lexical processing. Because eye movements are a motor response, they are programmed well before the end of a fixation. Given this oculomotor latency, lexical access must be well underway within the first 100–150 ms if its complexities are reflected in fixation time. In the present study, we conceptually combined eye move- ment and event-related potential (ERP) measures to estimate a time-line of processing during eye fixa- tions in reading. Since ERPs reveal a continuous record of brain activity, they can elucidate stages of processing within an eye fixation. The ERP record revealed effects of early lexical processing in the P1, N1 and P2 components. The findings provide a real- istic time-line of lexical processing and eye move- ment programming during reading. High frequency (HF) and low frequency (LF) regular words (e.g., week and cask, respectively) were compared with HF and LF exception (non-regular) words (e.g., hour and pint, respectively) in a reading experiment and an ERP lexical decision experiment. Word regularity refers to the degree to which words follow the spelling-sound correspondence rules in English (cf. hour to your and tour, or pint to hint and mint). While word frequency has been inten- sively examined in prior eye movement experi- ments,3,4 most prior ERP studies have examined word frequency in the context of word repetition with effects in the N400 component.5,6 On the other hand, word regularity has seldom been investigated in eye movement or ERP studies, but has been studied in naming and lexical decision tasks. The typical finding is that that it takes longer to respond to LF excep- tion than LF regular words, but that HF words show no such effect.7,8 In the reading experiment reported here, tar