Yim, Nga Kin Edward. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 46-53). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Table Captions --- p.v / Figure Captions --- p.vi / Abstract --- p.vii / Chapter Chapter 1: --- Introduction --- p.1 / "The ""Awareness"" Approach to Tapping Influence of Morphemes" --- p.2 / "Inadequacies of the ""Awareness"" Approach" --- p.6 / "The ""Processing"" Approach to Tapping Influence of Morphemes" --- p.7 / Measuring Eye Movements in Linguistic Research --- p.10 / The Present Study --- p.13 / Chapter Chapter 2: --- Method --- p.15 / Participants --- p.15 / Stimuli and Apparatus --- p.16 / Design and Procedure --- p.19 / Data Analyses --- p.20 / Chapter Chapter 3: --- Results --- p.22 / Literacy Tasks --- p.22 / Experimental Session 1 (Picture) --- p.23 / Experimental Session 2 (Printed Words) --- p.28 / Comparison between Picture and Printed Word session --- p.32 / Chapter Chapter 4: --- Discussion --- p.34 / Reliability and Validity of the Measure --- p.34 / Grade Differences in Morphemic Processing --- p.35 / Mechanisms of Morphemic Ambiguity Resolution and Speech Processing in Children --- p.38 / Stimulus Differences --- p.41 / Chapter Chapter 5: --- Conclusion --- p.43 / Theoretical and Methodological Contributions --- p.43 / Limitations and Future Directions --- p.44 / References --- p.46 / Appendix --- p.54

Fixational eye movements occur involuntarily during visual fixation of stationary scenes. The fastest components of these miniature eye movements are microsaccades, which can be observed about once per second. Recent studies demonstrated that microsaccades are linked to covert shifts of visual attention [e.g., Engbert & Kliegl (2003), Vision Res 43:1035-1045]. Here,we generalized this finding in two ways. First, we used peripheral cues, rather than the centrally presented cues of earlier studies. Second, we spatially cued attention in vision and audition to visual and auditory targets. An analysis of microsaccade responses revealed an equivalent impact of visual and auditory cues on microsaccade-rate signature (i.e., an initial inhibition followed by an overshoot and a final return to the pre-cue baseline rate). With visual cues or visual targets,microsaccades were briefly aligned with cue direction and then opposite to cue direction during the overshoot epoch, probably as a result of an inhibition of an automatic saccade to the peripheral cue. With left auditory cues and auditory targets microsaccades oriented in cue direction. Thus, microsaccades can be used to study crossmodal integration of sensory information and to map the time course of saccade preparation during covert shifts of visual and auditory attention.

The present study explores the role of the word position-in-text in sentence and paragraph reading. Three eye-movement data sets based on the reading of Dutch and German unrelated sentences reveal a sizeable, replicable increase in reading times over several words in the beginning and the end of sentences. The data from the paragraphbased English-language Dundee corpus replicate the pattern and also indicate that the increase in inspection times is driven by the visual boundaries of the text organized in lines, rather than by syntactic sentence boundaries. We argue that this effect is independent of several established lexical, contextual and oculomotor predictors of eye-movement behavior. We also provide evidence that the effect of word position-intext has two independent components: a start-up effect arguably caused by a strategic oculomotor program of saccade planning over the line of text, and a wrap-up effect originating in cognitive processes of comprehension and semantic integration.

Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm with the boundary placed after word n, we manipulated preview of word n+2 for fixations on word n. There was no preview benefit for first-pass reading on word n+2, replicating the results of Rayner, Juhasz, and Brown (2007), but there was a preview benefit on the three-letter word n+1, that is, after the boundary, but before word n+2. Additionally, both word n+1 and word n+2 exhibited parafoveal-on-foveal effects on word n. Thus, during a fixation on word n and given a short word n+1, some information is extracted from word n+2, supporting the hypothesis of distributed processing in the perceptual span.

Eye movements in reading are sensitive to foveal and parafoveal word features. Whereas the influence of orthographic or phonological parafoveal information on gaze control is undisputed, there has been no reliable evidence for early parafoveal extraction of semantic information in alphabetic script. Using a novel combination of the gaze-contingent fast-priming and boundary paradigms, we demonstrate semantic preview benefit when a semantically related parafoveal word was available during the initial 125 ms of a fixation on the pre-target word (Experiments 1 and 2). When the target location was made more salient, significant parafoveal semantic priming occurred only at 80 ms (Experiment 3). Finally, with short primes only (20, 40, 60 ms) effects were not significant but numerically in the expected direction for 40 and 60 ms (Experiment 4). In all experiments, fixation durations on the target word increased with prime durations under all conditions. The evidence for extraction of semantic information from the parafoveal word favors an explanation in terms of parallel word processing in reading.

Reading requires the orchestration of visual, attentional, language-related, and oculomotor processing constraints. This study replicates previous effects of frequency, predictability, and length of fixated words on fixation durations in natural reading and demonstrates new effects of these variables related to previous and next words. Results are based on fixation durations recorded from 222 persons, each reading 144 sentences. Such evidence for distributed processing of words across fixation durations challenges psycholinguistic immediacy-of-processing and eye-mind assumptions. Most of the time the mind processes several words in parallel at different perceptual and cognitive levels. Eye movements can help to unravel these processes.

In four experiments we used eye-tracking to investigate biases in looking behaviour during visual decision making tasks. In Experiment 1, participants viewed arrays of images of photographic art and decided which image was preferred (from a set of either two or eight alternatives). To analyze gaze behaviour during the decision we identified dwells (where a dwell is a series of consecutive fixations on a decision alternative). This analysis revealed two forms of gaze bias in the period prior to the response. Replicating prior findings (Shimojo, Simion, Shimojo, & Scheier, 2003), just prior to the response we found an increase in the frequency of dwells on the chosen item. In addition, throughout the decision, dwells on the chosen item were longer than dwells on other items. This pattern of biases was extremely similar across preference and non-preference decision instructions, but overall the biases were more pronounced in eight alternative decisions than in two alternative decisions. In Experiment 2 we manipulated the number of decision alternatives while controlling for differences in the stimulus displays. Participants viewed displays containing six everyday items, and chose either which of two sets of three items was the most expensive (two alternative set selection task) or which of the six items was the most expensive (six alternative item selection task). Consistent with Experiment 1, participants exhibited greater selectivity in their processing of stimulus information in the six alternative decisions compared to the two alternative decisions. In Experiments 3 and 4 we manipulated stimulus exposure in order to test predictions derived from the Gaze Cascade model (Shimojo et al., 2003). In Experiment 3, participants performed an eight alternative decision in which four of the items had been pre-exposed prior to the decision. In Experiment 4, stimulus exposure was manipulated during the ongoing decision using a gaze-contingent methodology. While these manipulations of stimulus exposure had strong effects on gaze bias, the specific predictions of the model were not supported. Rather, we suggest an interpretation based on prior research, according to which the gaze bias reflects the selective processing of stimulus information according to its relevance to the decision task.

Mental workload is commonly defined as the proportion of a person's total mental capacity in use at a given moment. A measure of mental workload would have utility in a number of rehabilitation medicine applications, but no method has been adequately examined for these purposes. A candidate measure is the intersaccadic interval (ISI), which is the duration between two successive saccades. Previous studies indicate that ISI length may be linked to mental workload, but this link is poorly understood for tasks that are not primarily visual. Therefore, the current study was an investigation of ISI and workload intensity in three non-visual tasks: mental arithmetic, verbal fluency, and audio perception. Workload was manipulated through changes in task difficulty as well as study participant motivation level. An analysis of eye movements and other experimental workload measures indicated a significant association between audio perceptual workload and ISI length.

Mental workload is commonly defined as the proportion of a person's total mental capacity in use at a given moment. A measure of mental workload would have utility in a number of rehabilitation medicine applications, but no method has been adequately examined for these purposes. A candidate measure is the intersaccadic interval (ISI), which is the duration between two successive saccades. Previous studies indicate that ISI length may be linked to mental workload, but this link is poorly understood for tasks that are not primarily visual. Therefore, the current study was an investigation of ISI and workload intensity in three non-visual tasks: mental arithmetic, verbal fluency, and audio perception. Workload was manipulated through changes in task difficulty as well as study participant motivation level. An analysis of eye movements and other experimental workload measures indicated a significant association between audio perceptual workload and ISI length.

In four experiments we used eye-tracking to investigate biases in looking behaviour during visual decision making tasks. In Experiment 1, participants viewed arrays of images of photographic art and decided which image was preferred (from a set of either two or eight alternatives). To analyze gaze behaviour during the decision we identified dwells (where a dwell is a series of consecutive fixations on a decision alternative). This analysis revealed two forms of gaze bias in the period prior to the response. Replicating prior findings (Shimojo, Simion, Shimojo, & Scheier, 2003), just prior to the response we found an increase in the frequency of dwells on the chosen item. In addition, throughout the decision, dwells on the chosen item were longer than dwells on other items. This pattern of biases was extremely similar across preference and non-preference decision instructions, but overall the biases were more pronounced in eight alternative decisions than in two alternative decisions. In Experiment 2 we manipulated the number of decision alternatives while controlling for differences in the stimulus displays. Participants viewed displays containing six everyday items, and chose either which of two sets of three items was the most expensive (two alternative set selection task) or which of the six items was the most expensive (six alternative item selection task). Consistent with Experiment 1, participants exhibited greater selectivity in their processing of stimulus information in the six alternative decisions compared to the two alternative decisions. In Experiments 3 and 4 we manipulated stimulus exposure in order to test predictions derived from the Gaze Cascade model (Shimojo et al., 2003). In Experiment 3, participants performed an eight alternative decision in which four of the items had been pre-exposed prior to the decision. In Experiment 4, stimulus exposure was manipulated during the ongoing decision using a gaze-contingent methodology. While these manipulations of stimulus exposure had strong effects on gaze bias, the specific predictions of the model were not supported. Rather, we suggest an interpretation based on prior research, according to which the gaze bias reflects the selective processing of stimulus information according to its relevance to the decision task.