A story about statistical learning in a story: Regularities impact eye movements during book reading

Joshua Snell*, Jan Theeuwes

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

A wealth of research attests to the key role of statistical learning in the acquisition and execution of skilled reading. Little is known, however, about how regularities impact the way readers navigate through their linguistic environment. While previous studies have mostly gauged the recognition of single words, oculomotor processes are likely influenced by multiple words at once. With these premises in mind, we performed analyses on the GECO book reading corpus to determine whether repeatedly encountering a given sentence structure improves oculomotor control. In the reading materials we labeled structures on the basis of both low- and high-level properties: respectively word length combinations (e.g., a 2-letter word followed by a 6-letter word followed by a 4-letter word) and syntactic structures (e.g., an article followed by a noun followed by a verb). Our analyses show that repeatedly encountering a structure leads to fewer and shorter fixations, and fewer corrective saccades. Critically, learning curves are steeper for structures that have a higher overall frequency, hence evidencing true statistical learning over and above readers’ general tendency to accelerate as they progress through the book. Further, data from Dutch-English bilingual readers suggest that these types of learning occur across languages and at various levels of proficiency. We surmise that the reading system is tuned to statistical regularities pertaining not just to single words but also combinations of words. These regularities impact both linguistic processing and oculomotor control.

Original languageEnglish
Article number104127
Pages (from-to)1-9
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of Memory and Language
Volume113
Early online date12 May 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2020

Funding

JS was funded by the European Commission , grant H2020-MSCA-IF-2018 833223 . JT was funded by a European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant 833029 – [LEARNATTEND]. The authors have no competing interests to declare. The authors would like to thank Marc Brysbaert, Simon Liversedge and one anonymous reviewer for their excellent comments and suggestions to an earlier version of the paper.

FundersFunder number
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme833029, 833223
European CommissionH2020-MSCA-IF-2018 833223
European Research Council

    Keywords

    • Book reading
    • Oculomotor control
    • Reading
    • Statistical learning
    • Syntactic processing

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