Children's online processing of written language inferences from eye movements
This thesis reports seven experiments that investigated children's online processing of written language. A variety of visual and linguistic factors, for which there are well-documented effects in adults, were manipulated in order to examine children's and adults' eye movements as they read sentences containing these manipulations. Experiment 1 investigated saccadic targeting of long and short words and showed that adults and children are generally alike in where they target their initial saccade to a word, and how they use parafoveal word length information to skip words. It also showed that while the length of a word directly influences the eye movement behaviour of both adults and children during text reading, the magnitude of these effects is greater in children. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that reliable word frequency effects are observed in adults and children when age-appropriate texts are used to index frequency counts. Experiment 3 also showed that word frequency effects occur in children, even when the age at which words were acquired is held constant. In Experiment 4 lexical processing of semantically ambiguous words was examined and the data were suggestive of there being a cost associated with
Joseph, Holly
Children's online processing of written language inferences from eye movements. This thesis reports seven experiments that investigated children's online processing of written language. A variety of visual and linguistic factors, for which there are well-documented effects in adults, were manipulated in order to examine children's and adults' eye movements as they read sentences containing these manipulations. Experiment 1 investigated saccadic targeting of long and short words and showed that adults and children are generally alike in where they target their initial saccade to a word, and how they use parafoveal word length information to skip words. It also showed that while the length of a word directly influences the eye movement behaviour of both adults and children during text reading, the magnitude of these effects is greater in children. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that reliable word frequency effects are observed in adults and children when age-appropriate texts are used to index frequency counts. Experiment 3 also showed that word frequency effects occur in children, even when the age at which words were acquired is held constant. In Experiment 4 lexical processing of semantically ambiguous words was examined and the data were suggestive of there being a cost associated with
children online processing write_language inference eye_movement report investigated child online process write_language variety visual linguistic_factor well_documented effect adult manipulate order_examine child_adult eye_movement read sentence_contain manipulation investigated target long short word show adult_child generally alike target initial word_use word length information word also_show length word directly influence eye_movement behaviour adult_child text reading magnitude effect great child show reliable word_frequency effect observe adult_child age appropriate text use index frequency count also_show word_frequency effect occur child even age word acquire hold constant lexical_processing semantically ambiguous word examine data suggestive cost associate