Angele, Bernhard; Rayner, Keith (2015). Data from: Processing 'the' in the parafovea: Are articles skipped automatically? In Keith Rayner Eye Movements in Reading Data Collection. UC San Diego Library Digital Collections. https://doi.org/10.6075/J04Q7RWB

Publication abstract:
One of the words that readers of English skip most often is the definite article "the". Most accounts of reading assume that in order for a reader to skip a word, it must have received some lexical processing. The definite article is kipped so regularly, however, that the oculomotor system might have learned to skip the letter string t-h-e automatically. We tested whether skipping of articles in English is sensitive to context information or whether it is truly automatic in the sense that any occurrence of the letter string "the" will trigger a skip. This was done using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to provide readers with false parafoveal previews of the article "the". All experimental sentences contained a short target verb, the preview of which could be correct (i.e., identical to the actual subsequent word in the sentence; e.g., "ace"), a nonword ("tda"), or an infelicitous article preview ("the"). Our results indicated that readers tended to skip the infelicitous "the" previews frequently, suggesting that, in many cases, they seemed to be unable to detect the syntactic anomaly in the preview and based their skipping decision solely on the orthographic properties of the article. However, there was some evidence that readers sometimes detected the anomaly, as they also showed increased skipping of the pretarget word in the "the" preview condition.

Subject population:
Adults, student

This package contains data and analysis scripts for a gaze-contingent display change experiment. The raw data are located in ASC format in the "ASC" sub-directory of the component titled, "Data", and processed data (DA1) files are in the "DA1" sub-directory. Data were collected separately with "sentence case" (normal capitalization) or "all caps". Sentence case files begin with "SNAF.." and all caps files begin with "SUP". Files used in the final analysis (one row per item per subj) are located in the "IXS" sub-directory and begin with "THE..". Files used in the supplemental analysis (felicitous occurrences of "the") begin with "FTHE..". Files used in data processing are located in the "Processing" sub-directory. The analysis script is located in the "Analysis" sub-directory. The experiment scripts are located in the component titled, "Materials". See the Guide (Related Resource link, below) for details on some of the different types of files and column definitions that are contained in the data collection.

• 2013

• 2015

• Angele, Bernhard

• Rayner, Keith

Presentation software: EyeTrack_0_7_10h; Font: 14pt Courier New (11 horizontal pixels per character); Viewing distance: 60 cm; Screen resolution: 1024 x 768; Cut-off for short fixations: 80 ms; Cut-off for long fixations; 800 ms; Fixations within n characters merged: 1 character; Software used for data processing: TimDrop10.pl, jkhook4.pl, jhook5b-eh2.pl, EyeDry

NIH HD26756

• Eye movements
• Eye-tracking
• Gaze-contingent display change
• Parafoveal processing
• Psychology
• Reading
• Word frequency

• data

• English

Doi: https://doi.org/10.6075/J04Q7RWB

Primary associated publication

• Angele, B., & Rayner, K. (2013). Processing 'the' in the parafovea: Are articles skipped automatically? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39, 649-662. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029294

Software

• EyeDry: https://blogs.umass.edu/eyelab/software/
• Presentation Software: https://blogs.umass.edu/eyelab/software/
• TimDrop.pl: https://sites.google.com/site/drtimothyjslattery/home/software/

Described by

• Abbott, Matthew J. (2015). Guide to Keith Rayner Eye Movements in Reading Data Collection. In Keith Rayner Eye Movements in Reading Data Collection. UC San Diego Library Digital Collections. https://doi.org/10.6075/J0FF3QPR

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License

• UC Regents

Under copyright (US)

Use: This work is available from the UC San Diego Library. This digital copy of the work is intended to support research, teaching, and private study.

Constraint(s) on Use: This work is protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). Use of this work beyond that allowed by "fair use" or any license applied to this work requires written permission of the copyright holder(s). Responsibility for obtaining permissions and any use and distribution of this work rests exclusively with the user and not the UC San Diego Library. Inquiries can be made to the UC San Diego Library program having custody of the work.

Research Data Curation Program, UC San Diego, La Jolla, 92093-0175 (https://lib.ucsd.edu/rdcp)

2023-06-01