Investigating delayed parafoveal-on-foveal effects in eye movements during reading: The time course of word processing and its link to oculomotor control

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The two leading computational models in the field of eye-movement research on reading (i.e., E-Z Reader and SWIFT) have motivated a great deal of informative empirical studies. These studies suggest, for example, that parafoveal-on-foveal effects that were thought to be decisive between the models are more complex in their nature than previously assumed, and that their empirical inconsistency may be an important indicator for their temporal structure. In fact, they appear to be temporally delayed.The goals of the present research proposal are (1) to empirically establish the boundary conditions of this novel delayed parafoveal-on-foveal effect, (2) to investigate the temporal structure of integrating foveal and parafoveal word-information on the timing of saccade programs, and (3) to simulate the data with respect to different theoretical proposals on attention allocation, word processing, and saccadic timing during reading. The empirical findings will document new details on the integration of foveal and parafoveal word-recognition processes inside the perceptual span during reading. How this can be accounted for within the models will be answered with simulations. In contrast to previous approaches, the present proposal aims at studying different theoretical assumptions within the same model framework. Including also novel combinations of principles not incorporated in current reading models, the results will contribute much to our understanding of the interaction between processing and movement timing in eye guidance during reading.