Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory, and Cognition
2016, Vol. 42, No. 4, 000
© 2016 American Psychological Association
0278-7393/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000281
Semantic and Plausibility Preview Benefit Effects in English:
Evidence From Eye Movements
Elizabeth R. Schotter and Annie Jia
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
University of California, San Diego
Theories of preview benefit in reading hinge on integration across saccades and the idea that preview
benefit is greater the more similar the preview and target are. Schotter (2013) reported preview benefit
from a synonymous preview, but it is unclear whether this effect occurs because of similarity between
the preview and target (i.e., integration), or because of contextual fit of the preview—synonyms satisfy
both accounts. Studies in Chinese have found evidence for preview benefit for words that are unrelated
to the target, but are contextually plausible (Yang, Li, Wang, Slattery, & Rayner, 2014; Yang, Wang,
Tong, & Rayner, 2012), which is incompatible with an integration account but supports a contextual fit
account. Here, we used plausible and implausible unrelated previews in addition to plausible synonym,
antonym, and identical previews to further investigate these accounts for readers of English. Early
reading measures were shorter for all plausible preview conditions compared to the implausible preview
condition. In later reading measures, a benefit for the plausible unrelated preview condition was not
observed. In a second experiment, we asked questions that probed whether the reader encoded the
preview or target. Readers were more likely to report the preview when they had skipped the word and
not regressed to it, and when the preview was plausible. Thus, under certain circumstances, the preview
word is processed to a high level of representation (i.e., semantic plausibility) regardless of its
relationship to the target, but its influence on reading is relatively short-lived, being replaced by the target
word, when fixated.
Keywords: reading, semantic preview benefit, plausibility, eye movements
preview stimulus (e.g., another word, a nonword, or a string of x’s)
and is only revealed when the reader makes an eye movement to
fixate or skip over that location. The general finding from these
studies is that fixation durations on the target word show a preview
benefit—are shorter when the target was available as a parafoveal
preview (i.e., in the identical preview condition) compared to when
the reader had a parafoveal preview of a different stimulus, and
there are moderate benefits for words that are not identical to the
target but are similar to it in some way (e.g., visually, orthographically, phonologically; see Schotter, Angele, & Rayner, 2012 for a
review).
Despite the large amounts of evidence that parafoveal information is important for reading efficiency, it is still not entirely clear
how that information is used in the reading process. That is, initial
explanations of parafoveal preview benefit invoked the idea of
trans-saccadic integration—processing of the preview facilitates
processing of the target in that, to the extent that they are similar,
the access of properties of the preview allowed for a head-start on
processing of the target. For example, Rayner (1975, p. 80) concluded that across saccades “information from the two fixations is
integrated . . . when visual or semantic discrepancies were introduced between two successive fixations, this integration failed.”
Subsequently, Pollatsek, Lesch, Morris, and Rayner (1992, p. 159)
concluded that word properties (i.e., phonology) are “used to
preserve the ‘memory’ of a word from one fixation to aid in its
identification on the next fixation.” Thus, critical to an explanation
by means of integration is the idea that greater similarity between
preview and target (i.e., the more their orthographic, phonological,
A key question in reading research regards the extent to which
information about words obtained from parafoveal vision influences reading behavior. It is clear from over four decades of
research, since the introduction of the gaze-contingent boundary
paradigm (Rayner, 1975) and moving window paradigm (McConkie & Rayner, 1976), that parafoveal information is important
for reading efficiency. In the moving window paradigm, the letters
around the fixation location are revealed while letters beyond this
visible window are masked and the size of the window is varied
across experimental conditions. The general finding from these
studies is that reading rate decreases as the size of the visible
window becomes smaller (see Rayner, 2014 for a review). In the
boundary paradigm, a particular target word in the sentence is
selected to be manipulated: While the reader’s eyes fixate parts of
the sentence prior to that location the word is replaced by another
Elizabeth R. Schotter and Annie Jia, Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego.
This research was supported by the Atkinson Family Endowment Fund,
Grant HD065829 from the National Institutes of Health, and a gift from the
Microsoft Corporation. Portions of these data were presented at the European Conference on Eye Movements, Vienna, Austria, August, 2015. We
thank Denis Drieghe and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments
on an earlier version of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Elizabeth R. Schotter, Department of Psychology, University of California,
San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0109. E-mail:
[email protected]
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SCHOTTER AND JIA
and/or semantic representations overlap) the greater the magnitude
of preview benefit.
Initial investigations into preview benefit found data compatible
with an integration account and lead to the general conclusion that
semantic information was not used for integration. That is, there
were several studies across many different languages demonstrating preview benefit from orthographically similar previews (Balota, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 1985; Briihl & Inhoff, 1995; Drieghe,
Rayner, & Pollatsek, 2005; Inhoff, 1987, 1989a, 1989b, 1990;
Inhoff & Tousman, 1990; Lima & Inhoff, 1985; Rayner, 1975;
White, Johnson, Liversedge, & Rayner, 2008) and phonologically
similar previews (Ashby & Rayner, 2004; Ashby, Treiman, Kessler, & Rayner, 2006; Chace, Rayner, & Well, 2005; Liu, Inhoff,
Ye, & Wu, 2002; Miellet & Sparrow, 2004; Pollatsek et al., 1992;
Rayner, Sereno, Lesch, & Pollatsek, 1995; Sparrow & Miellet,
2002; Tsai, Lee, Tzeng, Hung, & Yen, 2004). In contrast, initial
investigations did not find any evidence for semantic preview
benefit in English (Rayner, Balota, & Pollatsek, 1986, see Rayner,
Schotter, & Drieghe, 2014 for a replication), but more recent
studies in German and Chinese did find evidence for it (Hohenstein & Kliegl, 2014; Hohenstein, Laubrock, & Kliegl, 2010; Yan,
Richter, Shu, & Kliegl, 2009; Yan, Zhou, Shu, & Kliegl, 2012;
Yang, 2013; Yang et al., 2012). These differences in the findings
were explained in terms of cross-language differences (see
Laubrock & Hohenstein, 2012; Schotter, 2013; Schotter et al.,
2012), until recent studies showed semantic preview benefit in
English when the preview was a synonym of the target (e.g.,
start-begin: Schotter, 2013; see also Schotter, Lee, Reiderman, &
Rayner, 2015). The suggested explanation for synonym preview
benefit in English was attributed to the similarity of meaning
between the two words (see discussions by Rayner & Schotter,
2014; Schotter, 2013) implying that meaning is what was being
integrated between preview and target.
In subsequent work, Schotter et al. (2015) also found preview
benefit for nonsynonymous semantically related words (e.g.,
ready-begin) when they were embedded in semantically constraining contexts. Importantly, the constraining contexts used by Schotter et al. (2015) were not high cloze in the traditional sense in
which one word form was very expected at the location of the
preview/target. That is, in a modified cloze norming task (see
Taylor, 1953 for the original task) in which subjects read the
sentence fragment leading up to the target/preview location and
had to fill in a word they thought could come next, the proportion
of responses that corresponded to the target, synonym, and semantically related word were .21, .25, and .00, respectively. On traditional views of predictability, cloze values of around 25% are
considered medium to low constraint (Rayner & Well, 1996).
However, as Schotter et al. (2015) note, their sentences were
constraining in the sense that a general meaning was highly expected, but that meaning could manifest itself as a variety of word
forms, in particular both the target and synonym (i.e., the cloze
probability for the shared meaning of the target, synonym preview,
and other similar words was .75). They suggested that the sentence
context generated expectations that whatever word would come
next should be easily identifiable and, to the extent that that
upcoming word had a meaning related to the event being described
(e.g., the target, synonym, or a semantically related word), that
preview facilitated processing and led to preview benefit. Indeed,
the issue of how sentence contexts lead to linguistic prediction and
how such prediction should be measured is an open area of
research; for example, see preface (Hauk, 2016) to a recent special
issue on prediction and language comprehension in language,
cognition and neuroscience, and various articles within it, as well
as DeLong, Troyer, and Kutas, (2014; Schotter et al., 2015). As
will be discussed below, the sentence constraint used in the current
studies is slightly different than that used by Schotter et al. (2015).
From Schotter’s (2013; Schotter et al., 2015) data it is unclear
whether the preview benefit she observed was because of similarity between the preview and target or was due to compatibility
between the preview and the sentence context. Importantly, because synonyms mean the same thing or are very similar in
meaning they should fit approximately as well in the same sentence context (e.g., “The horse race will start/begin in a couple of
minutes.”). Thus, an integration account and a contextual fit account can make divergent predictions. An integration account
predicts that a word that is neither orthographically, phonologically, or semantically similar to the target but still fits into the
sentence context should not provide preview benefit, whereas a
contextual fit account predicts that such a condition should provide
preview benefit. Most prior studies have not been able to address
this issue because the focus has been on the relationship between
the preview and target, rather than the preview and the sentence
context. That is, many prior studies have not assessed the plausibility of the preview in the sentence context and many have used
nonword previews, which by definition are implausible. Furthermore, the data from Schotter et al. (2015; Rayner et al., 1986,
2014; Schotter, 2013) cannot dissociate target-preview similarity
from preview-context compatibility because the semantically related but nonsynonymous conditions were not controlled for
whether they were contextually plausible or implausible; for example, Schotter (2013) reports that, of the semantically associated
previews, 17% were semantically anomalous and 13% were syntactically anomalous.
Although not designed to adjudicate between the integration and
contextual fit accounts, two recent studies on reading in Chinese
report patterns of data that are more compatible with the contextual
fit account (Yang, Li, Wang, Slattery, & Rayner, 2014; Yang,
Wang, Tong, and Rayner, 2012). Yang et al. (2012) found no
benefit in reading time on the target for a semantically related
preview relative to an unrelated preview when both those previews
were implausible in the sentence context (Experiment 1), but they
did find preview benefit for unrelated previews that were plausible
in the sentence context compared with unrelated previews that
were implausible (Experiment 2). Yang et al. (2014) conducted a
study to determine whether the plausibility preview benefit was
due to readers initially encoding the preview word rather than
encoding the target word. Their study involved three preview
conditions: (a) an identical word that was always plausible in the
sentence context, (b) an unrelated word that was initially plausible
in the preceding context but became implausible upon encountering the rest of the sentence and, (c) an unrelated word that was
always implausible. They found that early reading time measures
showed faster processing for the identical and initially plausible
conditions compared to the implausible condition, replicating the
effect of preview plausibility. However, they did not find evidence
for a larger penalty to later reading (i.e., no more regressions or
longer rereading times) in the initially plausible compared with the
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SEMANTIC AND PLAUSIBILITY PREVIEW BENEFIT
always implausible condition. They argue that these data challenge
the idea that readers had encoded the initially plausible preview
word (i.e., rather than the target). That is, had readers encoded and
maintained the meaning of the initially plausible preview they
would have eventually become confused when the sentence subsequently became implausible and would have spent more time
rereading in that condition relative to the always implausible
condition, where readers would have been more likely to discard
the implausible preview and encode the always plausible target
word instead.
The results from the studies conducted by Yang and colleagues
suggest that readers do obtain semantic information from a parafoveal preview because the plausibility of that word has an effect
on initial reading measures on the target, but the effect is shortlived in that it does not appear in later reading measures where
there is no difference between conditions with an unrelated preview that is initially plausible compared to always implausible.
However, there are several crucial differences between Chinese
and English that make it important to test whether a similar pattern
would also be observed in English. Importantly, many of these
differences have been argued to make it more likely to observe
semantic preview benefit in Chinese than in English (e.g., Schotter, 2013; Yang et al., 2012). First, because many Chinese characters have radicals that encode semantics in the orthography,
meaning may more readily be accessed directly from a parafoveal
word. Second, because there are no spaces between characters in
Chinese, upcoming words are closer to the fovea and may be
processed more efficiently than upcoming words in alphabetic
languages, due to higher acuity. Third, because of the lack of
spaces, readers may need to allocate more attention to both the
sentence context and parafoveal characters in order to properly
segment characters into words so that they can properly program
an eye movement to land in an optimal viewing location, which
could also encourage deeper encoding of upcoming words (Yan,
Kliegl, Richter, Nuthmann, & Shu, 2010; see also Li, Liu, &
Rayner, 2015).
In the current studies we sought to conduct an experiment in
English that was similar to those of Yang and colleagues, comparing unrelated preview words that were manipulated to be plausible in the sentence context or implausible. In addition, we included a comparison between synonym preview benefit and
antonym preview benefit in Experiment 1 (as well as the corresponding identical, plausible unrelated and implausible unrelated
conditions for the sentences in each stimulus set). In Experiment 2
we focus on the antonym set only in order to investigate whether
readers had encoded the preview or target word by asking twoalternative forced choice comprehension questions after every
sentence with response options that correspond to those two words.
The synonym condition is a replication of Schotter (2013;
Schotter et al., 2015; e.g., used the same synonym pairs, awardprize, but with different sentences to accommodate the other
preview conditions used here). Schotter (2013; Schotter et al.,
2015) found a preview benefit for synonyms that was almost as
large as the identical preview benefit. However, synonyms satisfy
the assumptions of both accounts mentioned above in that the
meanings of the two words are identical or very similar and, thus,
both words are plausible in the sentence context. Therefore, if we
were to assess which of those words (i.e., the target or its synonymous preview) the reader had encoded the reader might think
3
those words were interchangeable. In contrast, antonyms (e.g.,
loose-tight) satisfy the constraints of the contextual fit account in
that both words in the antonym pair fit well in similar contexts (for
the most part in general, and always in the experiments reported
below), but they do not satisfy all the assumptions of the integration account. That is, the antonym condition shares many properties to the synonym (i.e., sharing part of speech, and many semantic features), but should be less able to be integrated with the target
because it represents the opposite meaning from the target whereas
the synonym completely shares meaning with the target. It could
be argued that antonyms share all features, except that one of them
is flipped (e.g., the words large and small are both adjectives,
regarding the size of an entity with the only difference being that
large has a positive relative magnitude while small has a negative
relative magnitude; see Hutchison, 2003). A detailed investigation
of these issues is beyond the scope of the current article, but the
antonym condition will be an important feature of Experiment 2,
which assesses the reader’s interpretation of the sentence (i.e.,
whether it includes the preview or the target) and that is easier to
do by comparing antonyms than synonyms.
Finally, as noted above, we also included a condition in which
the preview was completely unrelated to the target word, but was
plausible in the sentence context (e.g., party-prize in the sentence
“Dale’s company gave him a huge party/prize for his hard work”),
replicating conditions used by Yang and colleagues, but for readers
of English. If these words pattern differently from the synonym
condition it would lend support for an integration account, but if
they pattern similarly it would challenge such an account and
support a contextual fit account.
Related to the use of the plausible unrelated preview condition,
the present studies required a sentence constraint manipulation that
was slightly different than that used by Schotter et al. (2015). That
is, because the sentences needed to allow for the target word,
synonyms of that word, as well as antonyms or a completely
unrelated word, the sentence contexts necessarily have to be less
constraining to a particular meaning than the 75% meaning constraint used by Schotter et al. (2015). Therefore, the cloze probability for the preview word forms in the current study was !5%,
which is lower than those reported by Schotter et al. (i.e., 15%–
35%), and the sentences used here did not converge onto one
meaning to the same extent that theirs did (see normative data
below).
In these studies, we used the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975)
and focused on various preview conditions that allow us to investigate the degree to which fixation durations on a fixated word are
influenced by the relationship between the parafoveal preview and
foveal target information or whether the contextual fit of the
preview word can facilitate reading in the absence of meaning
similarity between preview and target. As is standard in boundary
studies, we included an identical preview condition and an unrelated (i.e., implausible random word) preview condition, which
represent two baselines with which to compare the other two
preview conditions. The identical condition represents the case in
which all the information is the same between preview and target
and should afford the greatest opportunity for integration across
saccades. The unrelated random word preview was always implausible in the sentence (i.e., syntactically or semantically anomalous)
and represents the least easy to process condition, both in terms of
a lack of similarity to the target and incompatibility with the
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4
SCHOTTER AND JIA
sentence context. We also included a condition in which the
preview was unrelated to the target word, but a plausible word in
the sentence; the comparison between this condition and the implausible preview condition allows us to test the influence of the
contextual fit of the preview word when it has no relationship to
the target and extends the findings of Yang and colleagues to
English. The final condition was either a synonym of the target (in
60% of the sentences) or an antonym of the target (in 40% of the
sentences) in Experiment 1 to assess whether these conditions
pattern similarly. In Experiment 2 we focus further on the antonym
and plausible unrelated conditions in the set of antonym stimuli to
ask specific questions about which word’s meaning (i.e., the preview or the target) is ultimately represented in the reader’s understanding of the sentence.
Experiment 1
Method
Subjects. Twenty-four undergraduates at the University of
California, San Diego participated in the experiment for course
credit. All were native English speakers, with normal or correctedto-normal vision and were naïve to the purpose of the experiment.
Apparatus. An SR Research Ltd. Eyelink 1000 eye tracker
(with a sampling rate of 1,000 Hz) was used to record the
readers’ eye movements. The tracker was used in the tower
setup with forehead and chin rests, decreasing noise due to head
movements. Viewing was binocular, but only the movements of
the right eye were recorded. Subjects were seated approximately 60 cm away from a 20” HP p1230 CRT monitor with a
screen resolution of 1,024 " 768 pixels and a refresh rate of
150 Hz. The sentences were presented in the vertical center of
the screen with black Courier New 14-point font on a white
background and were always presented in one line of text with
2.41 characters subtending 1 degree of visual angle. Following
calibration, eye position errors were less than 0.3° at each
calibration point. The display change was completed, on average, within 4 ms (range # 0 ms–7 ms) of the tracker detecting
a saccade crossing the boundary.
Materials and design. Stimuli were created out of 140 pairs
of target words. Of these pairs, 56 were antonyms (e.g., loosetight) and 84 were synonyms (e.g., prize-award). Two sentence
frames were created for each pair such that each member of
the pair was the target (and identical preview) in its own
sentence frame and the other member was used as the preview
in the synonym/antonym preview condition (depending on the
stimulus set). In addition to these two preview conditions we also
included two more conditions that were the same across the two
sentence frames/targets, a plausible unrelated word or an implausible unrelated word to create a total of four conditions for each
target word (see Table 1 and Appendix A and B). Thus, each
subject read a total of 280 sentences with unique target words one
time each in one of four possible preview conditions (identical,
antonym/synonym, plausible unrelated, implausible unrelated).
Preview condition was counterbalanced across subjects and items
in a Latin square design such that each target word was encountered only once by a given subject, but across subjects each target
word was encountered in every condition. Because each version of
the antonym/synonym pair was used as a target this meant that on
one fourth of the trials (i.e., in the antonym/synonym preview
condition) the preview word was the same as a target word from
another trial. However, because the order of the trials was randomized independently for each subject and preview conditions
were counterbalanced across subjects and items, this design feature
is unlikely to affect the data in any systematic way. The target/
preview word was always preceded and followed by a minimum of
two words.
Normative data. The stimuli were assessed via three norming
procedures: two acceptability rating tasks (one for the sentence
fragment up to and including the preview/target word and the other
for the entire sentence) to assess whether the two versions of the
sentence for each pair were equally sensible, and a cloze norming
task to assess how predictable each of the preview/target word
forms was, given the preceding sentence fragment. Results of the
norming procedures and other characteristics of the stimuli are
reported in Table 2.
Forty-eight workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk participated in one of two acceptability judgment tasks— one in which
they rated the acceptability of the entire sentence, and one in
which they rated the acceptability of the sentence fragment up
to and including the preview/target word. In this task, subjects
rated sentences or sentence fragments on a 7-point Likert scale
to indicate how well they were written. The four versions of the
sentence or fragment (i.e., including one of the four different
preview words) were counterbalanced across four lists per task
(i.e., sentence or fragment) so that each version of each sentence or fragment was rated by six independent raters and each
rater saw a quarter of the stimuli in each condition (as well as
36 poorly written filler sentences or fragments). The data revealed that the words that were intended to be sensible in the
Table 1
Example Stimuli Used in Experiment 1
Example sentence with target word in boldface
Synonym stimulus set
Dale’s company gave him a huge prize for his hard work.
The kids were bored until the teacher offered a special award for doing well on a test.
Antonym stimulus set
Ron’s pants are still loose even after tailoring.
The professor’s coat is too tight for him.
Note. Target words are presented in boldface, but were presented normally in the experiments.
Antonym/
synonym
Plausible
Implausible
award
prize
party
party
weird
weird
tight
loose
short
short
poles
poles
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SEMANTIC AND PLAUSIBILITY PREVIEW BENEFIT
Table 2
Lexical Characteristics of and Normative Data for Target and Preview Words Used in Experiment 1, Presented Separately by
Stimulus Set
Preview condition
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Set variable
Antonym
Length
Log Frequency/mil (HAL)
Acceptability rating (fragment)
Acceptability rating (whole)
Cloze probability
Synonym
Length
Log frequency/mil (HAL)
Acceptability rating (fragment)
Acceptability rating (whole)
Cloze probability
Identical
Antonym/synonym
Plausible unrelated
Implausible unrelated
5.46 (.13)
1.72 (.07)
5.9 (.07)
5.8 (.11)
.04 (.01)
5.46 (.13)
1.72 (.07)
5.7 (.10)
5.5 (.07)
.02 (.01)
5.46 (.13)
1.42 (.08)
5.2 (.13)
5.4 (.05)
.03 (.01)
5.46 (.13)
1.25 (.09)
2.2 (.07)
2.0 (.10)
.00 (.00)
5.49 (.09)
1.35 (.06)
5.9 (.05)
5.2 (.08)
.02 (.01)
5.49 (.09)
1.35 (.06)
5.1 (.09)
5.7 (.05)
.02 (.01)
5.49 (.09)
1.54 (.06)
5.3 (.08)
5.5 (.08)
.03 (.01)
5.49 (.09)
1.56 (.06)
2.7 (.09)
3.3 (.07)
.00 (.00)
Note. Standard errors are in parentheses. HAL # Hyperspace Analogue to Language, obtained from the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2007).
sentence context were rated highly (5.1–5.9) whereas the implausible words were rated low (2.0 –3.3).
A separate group of 14 subjects participated in a cloze norming
task (adapted from Taylor, 1953) in which they were provided with
the sentence fragment leading up to the target/preview word and
were required to fill in a word they thought could come next.
Seven subjects completed the task for one of the sentence frames
of the pair and the other seven completed the task for the other
sentence frame of the pair to avoid carry-over in the responses
between pairs that contained sentence frames that were somewhat
similar in meaning. These data revealed that the sentences were not
constraining to the word forms of any of the previews or targets.
The average cloze probabilities were .03, .02, .03, and .00 for the
identical, synonym/antonym, plausible unrelated, and implausible
unrelated preview, respectively. Following Schotter et al. (2015),
we coded the responses to determine the predictability of the
meaning shared by the target and synonym (and any other synonymous words) for the synonym stimulus set only because it was
not possible to define the measure for antonyms or unrelated
words. This measure revealed that the cloze probability for the
meaning shared between the target and synonym was 11%, much
lower than that for the senteneces used by Schotter et al. (2015)
(75%).
Procedure. Subjects were instructed to read the sentences for
comprehension and to respond to occasional comprehension questions, pressing the left or right trigger on the response controller to
answer yes or no, respectively. At the start of the experiment (and
during the experiment if calibration error was greater than .3
degrees of visual angle), the eye-tracker was calibrated with a
3-point calibration scheme. At the beginning of the experiment,
subjects received five practice trials, each with a comprehension
question, to allow them to become comfortable with the experimental procedure.
Each trial began with a fixation point in the center of the screen,
which the subject was required to fixate until the experimenter
started the trial. Then a fixation box appeared on the left side of the
screen, located at the start of the sentence. Once a fixation was
detected in this box, it disappeared and the sentence appeared. The
sentence was presented on the screen until the subject pressed a
button signaling they had completed reading the sentence. Following the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975), the target replaced the
preview once the subject’s gaze crossed an invisible boundary
located before the space before the target and took between 0 ms
and 7 ms to complete. Subjects were instructed to look at a target
sticker on the right side of the monitor beside the screen when they
finished reading to prevent them from looking back to a word (in
particular, the target, which was often located in the center of the
sentence, near the location of the fixation point that started the next
trial) as they pressed the button. Comprehension questions followed 72 (26%) of the sentences, requiring a “yes” or “no”
response. Comprehension accuracy was very high (on average
91%). At the end of the experiment subjects were asked whether
they noticed the screen flickering or words changing (i.e., display
changes). The rate of display changes noticed was very low,
between 0 and 15 trials (M # 3.83), because subjects who reported
more than this (an indication of equipment or experimenter error)
were replaced without their data being analyzed, as is common in
boundary paradigm experiments. The experimental session lasted
approximately 40 min.
Results
Trials in which there was a blink or track loss on the target word
during first pass reading were excluded (7.5% of the data), as were
trials in which the display change was triggered by a saccade that
landed to the left of the boundary or trials in which the display
change was completed late (16% of the data). These data exclusions left 5,335 trials (79% of the original data) available for
analysis. Fixations longer than 800 ms were eliminated, as were
fixations shorter than 80 ms, unless they were within one character
space of a previous or subsequent fixation, in which case they were
combined with that fixation. Gaze durations longer than 2,000 ms
and total times longer than 4,000 ms were excluded (!1% of
fixations), as well as any fixation duration measures that were
more than 2.5 standard deviations from the mean for that measure
for that subject (1.4%–2.2% of fixations across measures) because
they are unlikely to represent normal reading (i.e., the subject may
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SCHOTTER AND JIA
Table 3
Means and Standard Errors, Aggregated by Subject, for Reading Time Measures in Experiment 1
Preview condition
Measure
First fixation duration
Single fixation duration
Gaze duration
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Go-past time
Total time
Fixation probability
Regressions out
Regressions in
Set
Identical
Antonym/
synonym
Antonym
Synonym
Antonym
Synonym
Antonym
Synonym
Antonym
Synonym
Antonym
Synonym
Antonym
Synonym
Antonym
Synonym
Antonym
Synonym
222 (5.1)
223 (4.9)
224 (5.3)
228 (5.2)
238 (6.5)
243 (7.6)
259 (8.6)
284 (13)
288 (10)
293 (12)
.82 (.03)
.81 (.03)
.08 (.01)
.11 (.02)
.17 (.03)
.14 (.02)
221 (5.8)
227 (5.3)
222 (6.1)
232 (6.3)
238 (6.7)
242 (7.5)
264 (11)
269 (10)
306 (13)
298 (14)
.82 (.03)
.81 (.03)
.09 (.02)
.09 (.01)
.21 (.03)
.18 (.03)
have been zoning out at the moment and had an unusually long
fixation).
We report standard reading time measures (Rayner, 1998)
used to investigate the time-course of word processing in reading, including first fixation duration (the duration of the first
fixation on the word, regardless of how many fixations are
made), single fixation duration (the duration of a fixation on a
word when it is the only fixation on that word in first pass
reading), gaze duration (the sum of all fixations on a word prior
to leaving it, in any direction), go-past time (the sum of all
fixations on a target word and all fixations on words to the left
of it, starting from the first fixation on that word before going
past the target word to the right), and total time (the sum of all
fixations on a word, including time spent rereading the word
after a regression back to it). In addition, we analyzed three
measures of fixation probability, including fixation probability
(the probability that the target was fixated at least once during
first-pass reading), probability of regressing out of the target
(i.e., to reread words prior in the sentence), and probability of
regressing into the target (i.e., from subsequent words in the
sentence).
Data were analyzed using inferential statistics based on general(ized) linear mixed-effects models (GLMMs) with stimulus
set entered with a centered contrast, preview condition entered
with planned contrasts (see below), as well as the interaction
between them entered as the fixed effects. In addition, we
entered subjects and items as crossed random effects (see
Baayen, Davidson, & Bates, 2008), using the maximal random
effects structure: intercepts and slopes for both factors and the
interaction for subjects, and intercepts and the preview contrasts for items (Barr, Levy, Scheepers, & Tily, 2013).1 To
assess whether there was a different pattern of effects between
the antonym and synonym stimuli we entered stimulus set,
centered, as a main effect and also its interaction with the
preview contrasts. For the preview contrasts, the unrelated word
was used as the baseline condition and three planned preview
contrasts tested for preview benefit in the three other preview
Plausible
unrelated
Implausible
unrelated
224 (4.8)
230 (5.1)
226 (5.3)
233 (5.8)
246 (6.0)
246 (7.2)
280 (10)
284 (11)
323 (14)
315 (14)
.82 (.03)
.81 (.03)
.10 (.02)
.10 (.02)
.22 (.03)
.19 (.02)
231 (6.1)
238 (5.2)
237 (6.9)
244 (6.1)
256 (8.4)
260 (8.4)
306 (12)
297 (12)
325 (13)
316 (12)
.85 (.03)
.84 (.03)
.14 (.02)
.12 (.02)
.22 (.02)
.20 (.02)
conditions: One tested the difference between the identical
condition and the implausible unrelated condition (i.e., an identical preview benefit), another tested for a difference between
the synonym/antonym condition and the implausible unrelated
condition (i.e., a synonym/antonym preview benefit), and the
third tested for a difference between the plausible unrelated
condition and the implausible unrelated condition (i.e., a plausibility preview benefit).
In order to fit the LMMs, we used the lmer function from the
lme4 package (version 1.1– 8; Bates, Maechler, Bolker, &
Walker, 2015) within the R Environment for Statistical Computing (R Development Core Team, 2015). For fixation duration measures, we report linear mixed-effects regressions on
the raw data: regression coefficients (b), which estimate the
effect size (in milliseconds) of the reported comparison,
standard error, and the (absolute) t-value of the effect coefficient. Log-transforming the dependent variable had almost no
effect on the patterns of significance, so for transparency we
report the results from the untransformed models and note when
the results from the models on transformed data differed. For
binary dependent variables (fixation probability data), logistic
mixed-effects regression models were used, and regression coefficients (b), which represent effect size in log-odds space, and
the (absolute) z value and p value of the effect coefficient are
reported. Absolute values of the t and z statistics greater than or
equal to 1.96 indicate an effect that is significant at approximately the .05 alpha level. Reading measures on the target word
are shown in Table 3, results of the LMMs on fixation duration
1
When models did not converge with the maximum random effects
structure we removed the random effect that accounted for the least amount
of variance until convergence and we report the results of the largest model
that converged. For the model on gaze duration this was the random slopes
for item in the model on the raw and log transformed data. For the model
on log-transformed first fixation data this was the slope for the interaction
for subjects.
SEMANTIC AND PLAUSIBILITY PREVIEW BENEFIT
Table 4
Results of the Linear Mixed Effects Models for Reading Time
Measures on the Target Across Preview Conditions (i.e.,
Identical, Antonym/Synonym, Plausible Unrelated, and
Implausible Unrelated) and Stimulus Sets (i.e., the Antonym Set
and the Synonym Set), Including the Interaction Term
Overall preview
benefit
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Measure
Contrast
First fixation duration
Intercept
Identical
Antonym/synonym
Plausible
Single fixation duration
Intercept
Identical
Antonym/synonym
Plausible
Gaze duration
Intercept
Identical
Antonym/synonym
Plausible
Go-past time
Intercept
Identical
Antonym/synonym
Plausible
Total time
Intercept
Identical
Antonym/Synonym
Plausible
b
SE
|t|
Interaction with
stimulus set
b
SE
|t|
234.84
!12.01
!12.02
!7.35
5.23 44.89 4.77
4.21 2.85 %3.60
3.64 3.30 2.49
3.56 2.06
.37
5.38
5.95
6.46
7.01
.89
.60
.39
.05
240.01
!13.44
!13.67
!9.98
5.94 40.40 4.76
4.63 2.90 %1.75
4.23 3.23 4.94
4.03 2.48
.24
5.48
6.20
6.45
7.47
.87
.28
.77
.03
258.10
!18.27
!19.22
!11.53
8.06 32.01 3.79
6.21 2.94 1.13
5.21 3.69 1.14
5.24 2.20 %5.21
5.97
6.73
7.36
7.47
.63
.17
.16
.70
301.16 11.71 25.73 %8.37 9.70 .86
!30.18 8.09 3.73 33.81 11.07 3.05
!33.67 7.72 4.36 13.16 12.68 1.04
!19.08 7.51 2.54 11.48 12.77 .90
320.56 12.08 26.54 %7.50 10.34 .73
!32.06 7.86 4.08 14.98 12.19 1.23
!18.29 7.57 2.42 1.44 12.60 .11
%1.12 6.43
.17 1.58 15.40 .10
Note. The left hand column represents the average effects across stimulus
sets (because stimulus set was entered as a centered predictor) and the right
hand column represents the tests for interactions between the preview
contrasts and stimulus set. In the left hand columns, the intercept represents
the implausible unrelated condition and the subsequent rows test for
preview benefit effects—the difference between the named condition and
the intercept. Significant effects are indicated by boldface.
measures are reported in Table 4 and results of the fixation
probability measures are reported in Table 5.
Fixation duration measures. None of the interactions between stimulus set and preview benefit contrast were significant,2
suggesting that the effects were similar for synonyms and antonyms (i.e., for the synonym/antonym contrast) and across different types of stimuli (for the identical and plausible unrelated
preview benefit). Therefore, while the analyses and tables reported
below maintain the interaction term in the models, we discuss the
preview benefit effects together for brevity and simplicity. For all
reading time measures, there was a significant identical preview
benefit (all ts $2.84) and a significant antonym/synonym preview
benefit (all ts $2.41), replicating the effect reported by Schotter
(2013; Schotter et al., 2015) for synonyms and extending the effect
to antonyms. The preview benefit provided by the plausible unrelated word was also significant in all early reading time measures
(all ts $2.05), replicating Yang and colleagues’ findings in English and suggesting that it is unlikely that integration between the
preview and target can completely explain the other preview
benefit effects observed here. That is, because there is no relation-
7
ship between the preview and target, it is unclear what information
would be integrated in order to facilitate processing once the target
word was fixated.
The plausibility preview benefit was not significant in total time
(t # 0.17), which includes any time spent rereading the target after
moving past it. Furthermore, the antonym/synonym preview condition produced reading times closer to the identical preview
condition in early reading time measures (e.g., gaze duration) than
in total time (see Figure 1), suggesting that any benefits from
having a plausible but nonidentical preview were relatively shortlived and diminished once the reader had moved past the word
(leading to a higher likelihood of making a regression back to the
target, see below).
Fixation probability measures. None of the interactions with
stimulus set were significant, indicating the same pattern of effects
for both sets3 so we discuss the patterns of preview effects together. Moreover, the lack of interaction between the intercept and
stimulus set indicates that there was no effect of stimulus set in the
implausible unrelated condition, and the additional lack of interactions with the preview contrasts suggests that the overall main
effect of stimulus set was not significant overall.
For fixation probability, only the contrast for the identical preview was significant (p ! .05),4 indicating that the identical
preview was fixated less often than the implausible unrelated
word. The contrast for the antonym/synonym preview was marginally significant (p # .06), also indicating that these previews
were fixated slightly less often than implausible unrelated preview.
The contrast for the plausible unrelated previews was not significant (p $ .24), indicating that those previews were fixated as
frequently as the implausible unrelated preview.
For regressions out of the target word, both the contrasts for the
identical preview and the antonym/synonym were significant (both
ps ! .05), indicating that those preview conditions produced fewer
regressions out of the target than the implausible unrelated preview
condition. The contrast for the plausible unrelated preview was not
significant (p # .10), indicating an approximately equivalent rate
of regressions out as in the implausible unrelated preview condition.
For regressions into the target word, only the contrast for the
identical preview condition was significant (p ! .001.), indicating
fewer regressions in the identical preview condition than in the
implausible unrelated preview condition, which did not differ from
the other preview conditions (both ps $ .31).
2
The interaction between stimulus set and the identical preview benefit
was significant in go-past time. However, because this is the only measure
in which this occurred we consider this to be an anomaly and did not
pursue it further.
3
There was a significant interaction between stimulus set and the
contrast for the identical preview condition in the probability of regressions
out of the target, which likely contributed to the interaction in go-past time.
As with go-past time, we did not pursue this effect further.
4
The reason that the statistics show differences across conditions that
are not apparent in the table of means is due to aggregation across subjects
when reporting the means but not in the GLMMs, as well as rounding to
two decimal places when reporting the means but using the raw binary
outcome as the dependent variable in the GLMMs.
8
SCHOTTER AND JIA
gzd
tvt
330
●
●
320
310
Reading Time (ms)
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●
300
290
Stimulus Set
●
●
280
Antonym
Synonym
270
260
●
250
●
240
●
●
230
Identical
Antonym/ Plausible Implausible
Synonym
Identical
Preview
Antonym/ Plausible Implausible
Synonym
Figure 1. Reading time on the target word in Experiment 1 as a function of preview condition and stimulus
set (antonyms or synonyms), across two reading time measures (gzd # gaze duration; tvt # total time).
Discussion
Table 5
Results of the Linear Mixed Effects Models for Reading
Probability Measures on the Target Across Conditions
Overall preview
benefit
Measure
Contrast
b
|z|
p
Fixation probability
Intercept
2.27
7.77 <.001
Identical
!.39
2.13 <.05
Antonym/synonym %.33
1.88
.06
Plausible
%.21
1.15
.25
Regressions out
Intercept
!2.16 12.12 <.001
Identical
!.35
2.26 <.05
Antonym/synonym !.42
2.23 <.05
Plausible
%.32
1.66
.10
Regressions in
Intercept
!1.49 11.22 <.001
Identical
!.66
3.55 <.001
Antonym/synonym %.14
.99
.32
Plausible
%.003
.02
.99
Interaction
w/ set
b
|z|
.18 .69
%.14 .44
%.44 1.26
%.51 1.52
p
.49
.66
.21
.13
%.22 1.14
.25
.63 2.39 <.05
.21 .78
.44
.23 .89
.38
%.13
%.20
%.14
%.04
.75
.71
.55
.19
.45
.48
.58
.85
Note. The left hand column represents the average effects across stimulus
sets (because stimulus set was entered as a centered predictor) and the right
hand column represents the tests for interactions between the preview
contrasts and stimulus set. In the left hand columns, the intercept represents
the implausible unrelated condition and the subsequent rows test for
preview benefit effects—the difference between the named condition and
the intercept. Significant effects are indicated by boldface.
There are several important aspects of the data from Experiment
1. The lack of interactions between the antonym/synonym contrast
and stimulus set suggests that the preview benefit for synonyms
observed by Schotter (2013; Schotter et al., 2015) cannot exclusively be explained by similarity and trans-saccadic integration of
meaning between the preview and target. Instead, it is possible
that, because both the synonym and antonym preview were plausible in the sentence context, the contextual fit of the preview itself
(i.e., postlexical integration of the word in the sentence context)
might explain the observed preview benefit, as suggested by Yang
and colleagues. Moreover, this interpretation is supported by the
data from the plausible unrelated preview condition, which provided preview benefit in all reading time measures except for total
time, which includes regressions back into the target. Because the
preview in this condition did not share any meaningful relationship
with the target it is unlikely that a similarity-based or integrationbased account can explain these data. Furthermore, this condition
replicates the plausibility effects observed by Yang and colleagues
and extends the effect from Chinese to English. The preview
benefit for the plausible unrelated condition likely disappeared in total
time because, after the reader had fixated and processed the target
word, discrepancies between its orthographic and/or semantic form
and that of the preview lead to increased rereading time. The total
time data suggest that there is more of a benefit for antonym and
synonym previews, which are semantically similar to the target word
and thus may mostly carry a cost of difference in orthography, than
for plausible unrelated previews, which may impose costs for both
9
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SEMANTIC AND PLAUSIBILITY PREVIEW BENEFIT
orthographic and semantic discrepancies between representations (see
General Discussion).
In light of these data, instead of an account that invokes integration, we favor an account whereby preview benefit for first-pass
measures can be explained in terms of ease of processing the
preview per se via its compatibility with the sentence context (in
addition to lexical features like word frequency and predictability;
see Schotter et al., 2015; Schotter, Reichle, & Rayner, 2014). We
will elaborate on this account in the General Discussion, but note
here that the three conditions in Experiment 1 that lead to the
fastest first-pass reading times were those where the preview was
plausible in the sentence context. As noted by Yang et al. (2012,
2014), this finding suggests that readers were able to access a
linguistically high level of information from the preview word—
not only its meaning but also the extent to which that meaning was
appropriate in the sentence context. This then raises the question of
whether the readers had obtained so much information from the
preview that they had actually encoded that word rather than the
target word when the preview was a plausible word in the sentence. We explore this possibility in Experiment 2.
Experiment 2
Experiment 2 was designed to assess which of the two words—
the preview or the target—the subject had interpreted by the time
he or she had finished reading the sentence. We took an approach
first reported by Blanchard, McConkie, Zola, and Wolverton
(1984), in which there was a comprehension question after each
sentence that, in display change conditions, could be answered
with either the preview or the target (see details in the Method
section below). For the identical (i.e., nondisplay change) condition there was a comprehension question that asked about parts of
the sentence other than the target in order to encourage the subjects
to read for comprehension and not merely recognize and remember
individual words. We analyzed the responses to the questions in
relation to the eye movement behavior to assess (a) whether
subjects ever reported the preview word, and (b) what experimental conditions and eye movement behaviors made reporting the
preview word more likely.
Method
Subjects. Twenty-four UCSD students participated in the experiment for course credit. None had participated in Experiment 1,
but they were selected using the same inclusion criteria.
Apparatus. The apparatus was the same as in Experiment 1.
Table 6
Example Questions Across Condition in Experiment 2 for the
Example Sentence “Ron’s Pants are Still
Loose/Tight/Short/Poles Even After Tailoring”
Preview
Condition
Question
Option 1
Option 2
Identical
Antonym
Plausible
Implausible
Did Ron get his pants tailored?
How are Ron’s pants now?
How are Ron’s pants now?
Which of these words did you read?
Yes
LOOSE
LOOSE
LOOSE
No
TIGHT
SHORT
POLES
Materials and design. Because it would be confusing for subjects to choose between two synonyms in the comprehension questions, this experiment used only the antonym sentences from Experiment 1. Additionally, two sentences from the antonym stimulus set
were excluded because it was not possible to create a comprehension
question that satisfied our constraints, yielding 110 experimental
sentences. Every sentence was followed by a question, which differed
depending on the experimental condition. In the identical preview
condition, the question was a general comprehension question that did
not refer to the target word. For both the antonym and plausible
unrelated preview conditions, the question was designed such that
either the preview or target could be plausible answers. For the
unrelated preview condition the question directly asked which word
the subject read (see Table 6 and Appendix C). The response options
were presented in all capital letters whereas the preview and target
words in the sentence were presented normally in lower case letters so
that subjects could not rely on visual memory of the words in the
sentence to make their response.
Procedure. The procedure was the same as in Experiment 1
except questions followed 100% of the sentences and differed
depending on experimental condition (see above) and the experimental session lasted approximately 30 min. The rate of display
changes noticed was very low, between 0 and 15 trials (M # 2.42).
Comprehension accuracy in the identical preview condition (i.e.,
the general comprehension questions) was high (on average 95%).
Responses to the questions that probed whether the subjects had
maintained the preview or target representation are reported below.
Results
Data processing procedures were the same as for Experiment 1,
leaving 2,156 trials for analysis (82% of the original data: 7.5% of
trials were excluded for blinks and track loss, 13.5% of trials were
excluded for late or inappropriate display changes; !1% of long or
short fixations were excluded, and 1.4%–2.4% of fixations were
excluded based on standard deviation by subject). Data analysis
procedures were mostly the same except only the contrasts to
test for preview benefit were used as fixed and random effects
because there was only one stimulus set: The intercept of the
model was the implausible unrelated word and the preview
contrasts tested for the difference of each of the other preview
Table 7
Means and Standard Errors, Aggregated by Subject, for
Reading Time Measures in Experiment 2
Preview condition
Measure
Identical
Antonym
Plausible
Implausible
First fixation duration
Single fixation duration
Gaze duration
Go-past time
Total time
Fixation probability
Regressions out
Regressions in
217 (5.7)
222 (5.9)
235 (7.6)
267 (11)
293 (12)
.85 (.03)
.10 (.02)
.16 (.02)
218 (6.0)
223 (6.6)
241 (7.7)
275 (13)
333 (17)
.87 (.03)
.09 (.02)
.23 (.02)
227 (6.3)
231 (7.5)
245 (8.2)
273 (10)
341 (16)
.85 (.03)
.09 (.01)
.25 (.03)
236 (6.4)
245 (6.5)
266 (8.8)
313 (13)
350 (16)
.86 (.03)
.15 (.02)
.23 (.03)
10
SCHOTTER AND JIA
Table 8
Results of the Linear Mixed Effects Models for Reading Time
Measures on the Target Across Conditions in Experiment 2
Measure
Contrast
|t|
Intercept
Identical
Antonym
Plausible
235.58
!18.31
!17.17
%8.50
6.65
4.39
5.11
4.50
35.43
4.17
3.36
1.89
Fixation probability
Intercept
Identical
Antonym
Plausible
244.87
!24.32
!20.49
!13.17
6.77
4.99
5.57
5.68
36.19
4.87
3.68
2.32
Regressions out
Intercept
Identical
Antonym
Plausible
265.54
!31.66
!23.47
!20.43
9.10
5.72
6.31
5.88
29.17
5.54
3.72
3.47
Regressions in
Intercept
Identical
Antonym
Plausible
313.83
!49.48
!37.39
!39.89
14.00
11.06
9.55
9.65
22.41
4.47
3.92
4.13
Intercept
Identical
Antonym
Plausible
349.52
!60.07
%14.46
%8.12
16.12
10.95
10.08
11.03
21.68
5.49
1.44
.74
Single fixation duration
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SE
Measure
First fixation duration
Gaze duration
Go-past time
Total time
Note.
b
Table 9
Results of the Linear Mixed Effects Models for Reading
Probability Measures on the Target Across Conditions in
Experiment 2
Significant effects are indicated by boldface.
conditions compared to the baseline, independently.5 Reading
measures on the target word are shown in Table 7, results of the
LMMs on fixation duration measures are reported in Table 8
and results of the fixation probability measures are reported in
Table 9.
Fixation duration measures. The fixation data from Experiment 2 mostly replicate the patterns of data from Experiment 1.6 For
all duration measures, the identical preview benefit was significant
(all ts $4.16). For all early duration measures the antonym preview
benefit was significant (all ts $3.35), but the effect was not significant
in total time (t # 1.44) whereas it was significant in Experiment 1. It
is likely that the high occurrence of word-specific comprehension
questions caused the readers to be more cautious about their understanding of the sentences, which eradicated the effect in the antonym
condition. That is, because antonyms do not have identical meanings,
if readers had encoded both the preview from parafoveal vision and
the target, once it was directly fixated, these two representations might
compete in the comprehension system and cause the reader to make
a regression to double check the meaning of the sentence. This is more
likely to happen when they encounter questions after every sentence
that require a precise understanding of the meaning of the sentence (as
in Experiment 2) than when the questions appear less often and only
probe a general understanding of the text (as in Experiment 1). The
plausible unrelated preview benefit was significant in single fixation
duration, gaze duration, and go-past time (all ts $2.31), marginally
significant in first fixation duration (t # 1.89) and was not significant
in total time (t !1). The nonsignificant preview benefit in total time
for the plausible unrelated condition was not observed in Experiment 1
either. We suspect that this is also because of the difference in meaning
between the sentences with the preview and target, as noted above.
Note.
Contrast
b
|z|
p
Intercept
Identical
Antonym
Plausible
2.51
%.31
%.05
%.47
7.64
1.04
.16
1.71
<.001
.30
.87
.09
Intercept
Identical
Antonym
Plausible
!2.02
%.64
!.75
%.31
9.10
1.84
2.39
1.20
<.001
.07
<.05
.23
Intercept
Identical
Antonym
Plausible
!1.47
%.33
.08
.33
7.58
1.42
.34
1.64
<.001
.16
.73
.10
Significant effects are indicated by boldface.
However, because the meanings are so different, this was observed even
in the first experiment, with lower comprehension demands.
Fixation probability measures. There were no significant differences across preview condition for the probability of making a firstpass fixation on the target (all ps $ .08).7 For regressions out of the target,
numerically all plausible conditions had lower regression rates than the
implausible condition, but only the difference for the antonym condition
was significant (p ! .05). For the probability of making a regression into
the target, none of the contrasts were significant (all ps $ .09), even
though numerically, there was a lower rate of regressions in the identical
preview condition than in the other preview conditions.
Comprehension analyses. In order to investigate whether readers had identified and maintained the preview information, we analyzed the readers’ responses to the questions. Critically, the questions
in the display change conditions allowed us to probe which of the
words the reader had interpreted by the end of the sentence. For the
most part, readers reported the target rather than the preview word,
suggesting that the information from a directly fixated word was
maintained more strongly than (or replaced) the information obtained
only from a parafoveally viewed word.
The only fixation related measure that showed a relationship with
the reader’s response was the measure of skipping. To assess this
relationship we conducted a mixed effects logistic regression analysis
with the reader’s response on each trial(i.e., target coded as 1 vs.
5
The random effects that were removed were the following. For the
model on raw single fixation duration we removed the slope for the
identical preview contrast for subjects. For the model on raw gaze duration
we removed the correlation between the slope for the plausible preview
contrast from the other effects for items. For the model on log-transformed
go-past time we removed the correlation between the intercept and slopes
for items. For the model on raw total time we removed the correlation
between the intercept and slopes for items.
6
In addition to the differences noted in the text, the plausible preview
benefit was only marginally significant in first fixation duration whereas it
was fully significant in Experiment 1.
7
The lack of differences in fixation probability is likely because the increased
rate of questions (i.e., one after every sentence) made readers more cautious when
reading the sentence and increased fixation probabilities overall (e.g., 81%–85% in
Experiment 1 compared with 85%–87% in Experiment 2).
11
SEMANTIC AND PLAUSIBILITY PREVIEW BENEFIT
●
Proportion Target Responses
0.90
●
●
0.85
Fixation Status
0.80
●
Fixated
Skipped
0.75
0.70
0.65
0.60
Antonym
Plausible
Implausible
Preview Type
Figure 2. Proportion of trials in which the reader selected the response
that indicates that he or she had maintained the representation of the target
as a function of whether the target was fixated (filled circles) or skipped
(open triangles) and preview condition in Experiment 2.
preview coded as 0) as the dependent measure and two variables
(including their interaction) as predictors. The first predictor was the
probability of skipping the preview/target word, entered as a centered
predictor, and the second variable was preview condition entered with
0
1
1.00
0.90
●
●
0.95
Proportion Target Responses
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0.95
successive differences contrasts that tested for (a) a difference between
the implausible and plausible condition and (b) a difference between the
plausible and antonym condition. We included random slopes only for
preview condition since there was very little variability in skipping the
preview/target word. The identical preview condition was excluded from
the analyses because the comprehension question did not assess whether
the subjects remembered the preview versus the target.
The analysis revealed a significant effect of skipping on the readers’ responses; readers were more likely to respond that they had read
the target word when they had fixated it than when they had skipped
it (p ! .001). There were also differences across experimental conditions; in the antonym preview condition, subjects reported the
preview 14% of the time, more often than in the plausible unrelated
preview condition (11% of the time; p ! .01), which was more likely
than in the implausible unrelated preview condition (only 3% of the
time; p ! .01). Furthermore, there was one significant interaction
between skipping and experimental condition whereby the effect of
skipping the word (i.e., increased likelihood of reporting the preview
if the reader had skipped it) was more pronounced in the antonym
preview condition (an average effect size of 22 percentage points)
than in the plausible unrelated preview condition (an average effect
size of 9 percentage points; interaction p ! .05). The effect of
skipping in the plausible unrelated condition did not differ from the
effect of skipping on the probability of reporting the target in the implausible unrelated preview condition (an average effect of 4 percentage
points; interaction p $ .13; Figure 2). In addition, this pattern held (and
was slightly more pronounced) for trials in which the reader did not make
a regression (Figure 3, left panel) but did not hold when the reader made
a regression and therefore directly fixated the target word (Figure 3, right
panel). Therefore, the effect seems to be completely dissolved if the target
word is fixated at all during reading of the sentence.
●
●
●
●
0.85
0.80
Fixation Status
●
0.75
Fixated
Skipped
0.70
0.65
0.60
0.55
Antonym
Plausible
Implausible
Antonym
Plausible
Implausible
Preview Type
Figure 3. Proportion of trials in which the reader selected the response that indicates that he or she had
maintained the representation of the target as a function of whether the target was fixated (filled circles) or
skipped (open triangles) and preview condition in Experiment 2, split by trials in which the reader did not make
a regression back to the target (left panel) or did make a regression (right panel).
12
SCHOTTER AND JIA
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Discussion
The data from Experiment 2 replicate the main pattern of eye
movement measures from Experiment 1. In addition, analysis of the
comprehension questions that were designed to assess which of the
words (i.e., the preview or target) the reader had encoded by the end
of the sentence shows an interesting, but not necessarily surprising
finding. Mainly, readers almost always maintained the representation
of the target word by the end of the sentence, leading to rates of
reporting the target rather than the preview of around 90%. Importantly, however, the probability of reporting the preview increased
when the reader had skipped the target and never regressed to fixate
it, suggesting that words that are directly fixated are more likely to be
encoded than words that are only viewed in parafoveal vision. However, in the absence of direct fixation on the target word, a parafoveal
preview was sufficient for the preview to be encoded and maintained
in the reader’s interpretation of the sentence, except when the preview
word was implausible.
These data might help to explain why Yang et al. (2014) did not
find evidence in their regression data that Chinese readers encoded the
plausible preview word. In their study readers only skipped the
preview/target word 4% of the time and they did not report an analysis
comparing regression behavior between trials in which the target
word was fixated compared with when it was skipped. Therefore, it
might be that readers in their study did not maintain the meaning of
the preview word because they had fixated the target word and its
representation overrode the representation of the target word.
General Discussion
The results from these studies add to a growing body of literature
(Rayner & Schotter, 2014; Schotter et al., 2015; Yang et al., 2014,
2012) that suggest that preview benefit may not necessarily operate
through integration of preview and target information, as was initially
assumed. Instead, these data suggest that, to the extent that information can be obtained from the preview to cause the upcoming word to
be skipped, preview information may be sufficient to support efficient
reading. In such cases, readers are likely to encode and maintain the
representation of the preview and may be completely unaware that the
stimulus had actually changed to something else as they were reading,
leading to a higher likelihood of reporting the preview on skipping
trials in Experiment 2. Indeed, this proposition is not new and researchers have posited that skipping of words does indicate that
readers had obtained a significant amount of meaningful information
from (if not completely identified) the target (see Rayner, 2009).
However, the pattern of data for early eye movement measures in
both Experiments 1 and 2, in which we observed shorter reading time
on directly fixated target words following any plausible parafoveal
preview regardless of its relationship to the target (i.e., synonym,
antonym, or completely unrelated), suggests that the influence of the
preview’s meaning is not completely confined to the measure of
skipping. Importantly, the fact that all of the plausible conditions,
regardless of the preview’s relationship to the target, yielded a preview benefit in early fixation duration measures challenges an integration account in favor of a contextual fit account. However, the
effect of preview plausibility is relatively short-lived and the benefit
of an unrelated yet plausible preview is not seen in later reading time
measures. What might be driving the effects of the preview on early
fixations on the target if not integration across saccades, and why do
those effects differ from the pattern of data in later measures?
It may be the case that the contextual fit account is most appropriate
to explain the first-pass reading data since the preview information is
available earlier (i.e., from parafoveal vision) than the target information. Target information is only available once the word is fixated,
after the delay for transmission of information from the retina to the
brain (i.e., the 50 ms– 60 ms eye-brain lag; see Reichle & Reingold,
2013 for a review) and then after some amount of time required for
linguistic processing of the content of that word. To explain how
reading behavior on a fixated target word can be primarily influenced
by properties of a different, unfixated (i.e., parafoveal preview) word
we turn to an explanation suggested by Schotter et al. (2014; see also
Schotter et al., 2015) regarding the relationship between linguistic
processing and eye movement programming in first-pass reading as
described by the framework of the E-Z Reader model (e.g., Reichle,
2011). The full details of the model are beyond the scope of this
article, but it is sufficient for the following discussion to know that
both word identification and saccade programming are divided into
two stages in the model. With respect to word identification, the
completion of the first stage (L1) triggers both the second stage of
word identification (L2) and the first stage of saccade programming
(M1) away from that word. The completion of the second stage of
word identification causes attention to shift to the upcoming word and
for the first stage of word identification to start for that word. Therefore, covert attention and eye movement control are often dissociate in
the model, with the shift of attention toward a word preceding the eye
movement toward it. With respect to the saccade programming stages,
the first stage is labile, meaning that the saccade program can be
cancelled and a new one can be programmed whereas the second
stage (M2) is nonlabile, meaning that it cannot be cancelled.
The above description of the E-Z Reader model has remained mostly
unchanged since it was first proposed (Reichle, Pollatsek, Fisher, &
Rayner, 1998). The idea regarding preview benefit effects introduced by
Schotter et al. (2014) is that there is a subset of cases (8% of the time in
the simulation of Schotter’s (2013) data that they conducted) in which L1
for the upcoming preview word completes and the model enters the L2
stage for that word while the eyes are still fixating the prior word. As
noted by Schotter et al. (2015), a consequence of the completion of the L1
stage is not only the start of the L2 stage, but also the initiation of a
saccade program (M1). If the completion of the L1 stage that initiates the
M1 stage for the upcoming word occurs during the current saccade
program’s labile (M1) stage, then the saccade to the preview/target is
cancelled and the system programs a skip instead (as noted above, word
skipping is uncontroversially influenced by properties of the preview;
Rayner, 2009). If, however, completion of the L1 stage that initiates the
M1 stage for the upcoming word occurs during the current saccade
program’s nonlabile (M2) stage, the system cannot skip the preview word
and instead preinitiates the upcoming saccade program (i.e., from the
preview/target word to the following word) prior to fixation on the target
word. This feature of parallel saccade programs was introduced in Morrison’s (1984) model of oculomotor control in reading and was incorporated into the E-Z Reader framework. This preinitiation shortens the
subsequent fixation duration on the target word and appears as a preview
benefit effect. Thus, there are some fixations on the target whose duration
is determined by properties of the preview rather than the target because
the saccade toward that word was in the nonlabile (M2) stage when
the completion of the L1 stage for that word completed. Importantly,
because the completion of L1 had happened while the eyes were still
fixating the prior word, the completion of L1 (and therefore initiation of
M1 and concomitant shortening of the subsequent fixation duration) was
based on the preview, rather than the target word.
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SEMANTIC AND PLAUSIBILITY PREVIEW BENEFIT
This account also predicts that fixation durations on the target word
should be lengthened if the L1 stage does not complete early enough
during parafoveal preview to cause a skip or trigger preinitiation of
the upcoming saccade (i.e., if it is a nonword as in many prior
boundary paradigm experiments). In this case, more information is
needed and the target word must be fixated and processed to some
degree in order to initiate saccade programming, leading to a long
fixation on the word. In the model, the duration of the L1 stage is
determined by three lexical characteristics: word length, frequency,
and word-form cloze predictability. However, in the present study, we
observed longer first pass times on actual words (i.e., as opposed to
nonwords) when the preview was an implausible word. At the moment, this effect cannot be explained within the E-Z Reader framework because plausibility is considered a postlexical characteristic
and does not exert an influence on reading behavior until after the L1
stage. Without conducting simulations with the model it is not possible make concrete predictions, but to accommodate this finding we
can imagine (at least) two possibilities. First, plausibility of the preview may also be a feature of words that influences L1 and could be
incorporated as an additional parameter in determining its duration.
Second, plausibility of the preview word may be processed shortly
after L1 (after fixation on the target word) and, at that point, inhibits
or cancels the saccade program, which would similarly predict longer
fixation durations. Either of these accounts could explain why the
implausible unrelated preview condition yielded longer first-pass fixation durations than any of the plausible preview conditions even
though it was similar in length and frequency to the other preview
words, and why it yielded the lowest proportion of nontarget responses in the questions in Experiment 2.
One note we must make with respect to preview benefit effects from
the prior literature is that some studies have actually found significant
preview benefit in first-pass fixation duration measures from orthographically related nonword previews (e.g., Drieghe et al., 2005; Rayner et al.,
1986). As mentioned in the introduction, the explanation for the effects
was by means of integration across saccades, an account against which
we argue here. These data may be accommodated by the account we
describe above by means of misperception of the nonword preview for a
similar real word form (see Slattery, 2009 for a discussion of misperception). Particularly, the nonword preview could have been misperceived as
the visually/orthographically similar target word, which in the context of
the sentences used in those studies was a plausible and sensible word
form. This seems to be a reasonable account because visual acuity is poor
in the parafovea and especially for early studies that used low quality
computer monitors that would make it difficult to precisely determine
letter identities (see Drieghe et al., 2005 for a similar argument about
monitor quality).
The above account only describes eye movement behavior during
first-pass reading. The total time and regression data might be better
accommodated by an integration account because the target information would have had more time to be processed and the relationship
between it and the preview might therefore be more pertinent to eye
movement behavior. We must, however, be more specific in what we
mean by “integration” in this case. In fact, the E-Z Reader framework
incorporated an integration stage (Reichle, Warren, & McConnell,
2009), which refers to the postlexical integration of a given word with
the sentence context, rather than the trans-saccadic integration of the
preview and the target. Perhaps the idea of “memory codes” suggested by Pollatsek et al. (1992) operates on a longer time scale than
across saccades and at a higher linguistic level than between the
individual word forms of the preview and target. That is, it is possible
13
that the total time data in our experiments could be explained by the
reader entertaining two simultaneous representations of the event
being described by the two versions of the sentence, one including the
preview word and the other including the target word. Indeed, prior
research has suggested that readers maintain uncertainty about the
identities of previously read words until they can be resolved by
subsequent input (Levy, Bicknell, Slattery, & Rayner, 2009). This
notion could easily extend to two representations of a word or described event that the reader has encountered— one prior to fixation
and the other upon direct fixation. To the extent that these two
representations are the same (i.e., when the words are synonyms) or
very similar (i.e., when they are antonyms) not much distinction or
adjudication between the events is necessary in order for the reader to
settle on a reasonable general understanding. However, in the plausible unrelated preview condition this is not the case and two unrelated but equally plausible events are now both entertained and the
reader needs to select one of them. This would lead the reader to make
a regression and check which word was actually there, increasing total
time and leading to the elimination of the early preview benefit that
was afforded by the contextual fit of the preview, despite the fact that
the norming procedures showed that the complete sentences with the
plausible unrelated word were still perfectly sensible.
The lack of a preview benefit in total time for the plausible
unrelated condition, which contrasted with the significant preview
benefit in first-pass measures for that condition, was observed in both
experiments. In contrast, two different patterns of preview benefit in
total time were observed for the antonym condition between the two
experiments. This difference could be explained by the above account
because of the different comprehension demands imposed by the
nature of the questions in the two experiments. In the first experiment,
questions probed a general understanding of the sentence (i.e., did not
distinguish between the preview/target words) and only occurred on
26% of the trials. In contrast, in the second experiment questions
occurred after every sentence and, in addition to general comprehension questions on nondisplay change trials, included detailed comprehension questions that probed whether the reader had encoded the
preview or the target. It is likely that the increased demand on the
comprehension system to have a precise representation of the sentence made the readers more cautious and less willing to accept an
incomplete or ambiguous understanding of the event.
The account of early preview effects based on the timing of
parafoveal word identification relative to saccade programming predicts that the patterns of data observed in these studies are due to a
mixture of cases—skip trials, shortened fixations that are due to
preinitiated saccades influenced primarily by the parafoveal preview,
and long fixations influenced primarily by the foveal target. Thus, the
preview benefits observed in all of the plausible preview conditions in
the studies reported here are likely to have a greater proportion of
shortened fixations than the implausible preview conditions. Because
this is a probabilistic account, future research will be necessary to
determine on an individual trial basis whether a fixation should be
considered a shortened fixation or a long fixation, given variability
across both subjects and items in terms of fixation durations. Using
the computational models of oculomotor control in reading, with
which we can probe the time course of word identification stages
relative to saccade programming stages, could be quite useful in
simulating and estimating these probabilities, which can only be
inferred from the empirical data. Relatedly, recent research has shown
that the skill level of the reader affects the pattern of semantic (Veldre
& Andrews, 2016a) and plausibility (Veldre & Andrews, 2016b)
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14
SCHOTTER AND JIA
preview benefits observed in boundary paradigm studies. Thus, modeling work simulating different proportions of shortened and long
fixation cases, as well as individual differences across readers’ skill
levels, will be useful in supporting or disconfirming these hypotheses.
The account of the later reading time data via competing sentence
representations is admittedly quite speculative and future work will be
needed to more precisely determine the reader’s internal representation of the event being described in the text, particularly with respect
to skipping and display change paradigms in which there may be two
parallel events being represented. One thing that is clear from the
current data is that initial eye movement behavior on a word, not only
the likelihood of skipping but also fixation durations on the word
when it is not skipped, can be influenced by properties of the parafoveal preview (e.g., its plausibility) irrespective of its relationship to
the target, as demonstrated by the first-pass reading data in both
Experiments 1 and 2. However, the ultimate understanding of the
sentence is most likely to be based on the target word if that has been
fixated either during first pass reading or after a regression, as demonstrated by the comprehension data in Experiment 2. This dissociation suggests that the engine driving the eyes forward in the text is a
quick and relatively risky local word identification processes, to a
large part determined by properties of the parafoveal preview. However, the ultimate understanding of the sentence is the consequence of
a more sluggish and careful process that requires regressions to ensure
accurate understanding and which is mostly determined by fixated
target information and the relationship between the preview and target
in the case in which they are different.
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(Appendices follow)
16
SCHOTTER AND JIA
Appendix A
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Set of Antonym Stimuli Used in the Experiments
Item
Sentence
Antonym
Plausible
unrelated
Implausible
unrelated
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
Jane will travel south on her trip to Los Angeles next week.
Every year, the family flies north on their way to a fabulous vacation.
His friend advised him to graciously accept the generous bribe.
Jane would never refuse a bonus from her boss.
The ghost suddenly appeared in the upper window of the house.
The young girl vanished from around the corner suddenly.
Jenny prefers to purchase large bottles of lotion.
My aunt liked the very small earrings in the display.
George wore a new black suit to the party.
Deb test drove a fancy white car yesterday with her friend.
The new student answered the question boldly when no one else raised their hand.
Karen jumped over the stream meekly before everyone else.
The children came up with a very clever way to fix the sink.
My nephew is very stupid when doing housework.
Somehow, the food stayed cool after the long trip.
David likes to eat extremely warm potato salad.
The teacher always seemed too kind to his students.
Jen’s classmate is always mean when they go on trips.
Sam’s train arrived just before dusk and we were able to give her a ride home.
Mindy’s dog always wakes up after dawn and we are always waiting for them.
The final seemed extremely easy after the last midterm.
The hike up the mountain was hard but very fun.
Kevin’s brother ate all their fresh bread in the apartment.
The supermarket stopped selling stale pastries on the weekends.
Everyone looks like a skinny giant standing next to Henry.
Yesterday I saw a famous dwarf at the beach.
The box gradually became heavier the longer he carried it.
Betty wondered if she looked lighter when she spent more time at the gym.
At the restaurant, the girl wanted less dressing in her salad.
John should have baked more apples into the pie.
Ron’s pants are still loose even after tailoring.
The professor’s coat is too tight for him.
The dogs are always noisy when people visit the house.
The children are very quiet during story time.
The train has to run under the bridge before reaching the town.
Visitors have to drive above the cliff to get to Sarah’s house.
Dana didn’t realize his tattoo was permanent until almost four months later.
Everyone wanted Jeff to quit his temporary job as soon as possible.
Nobody could agree if the jewel was real or if it wasn’t.
Zoe insisted her hair color wasn’t fake but no one believed her.
Everyone knew the girl was very rich because of the neighborhood she lived in.
Her previous roommate was extremely poor and had no friends.
Kristy realized that she guessed the answer right on yesterday’s exam.
Olga set up the equipment wrong the first time.
All the vegetables have to be kept separate on the boy’s plate or he will be upset.
Employees are told to store the chemicals together or there will be an explosion.
There were so many serious stories in the news today.
The accident was considered trivial by most of the bystanders.
The new event was such a great success that people were talking about it for weeks.
The TV show became a famous failure after the actress joined the cast.
The man claimed that the dogs became tame after they were given to him.
The circus had many wild lions in the show.
Jessica always drives too fast on the highway.
The boat trip was so extremely slow that I couldn’t enjoy it.
The grandmother can only sleep on soft mattresses or she complains of backaches.
Jason likes to eat hard candies while doing homework.
The special fruits were recently exported from the neighboring country.
north
south
refuse
accept
vanished
appeared
small
large
white
black
meekly
boldly
stupid
clever
warm
cool
mean
kind
dawn
dusk
hard
easy
stale
fresh
dwarf
giant
lighter
heavier
more
less
tight
loose
quiet
noisy
above
under
temporary
permanent
fake
real
poor
rich
wrong
right
together
separate
trivial
serious
failure
success
wild
tame
slow
fast
hard
soft
imported
coach
coach
report
report
screamed
screamed
fancy
fancy
shiny
shiny
easily
easily
clumsy
clumsy
soft
soft
dull
dull
ours
ours
long
long
baked
baked
model
model
dirtier
dirtier
tart
tart
short
short
eager
eager
along
along
offensive
offensive
pink
pink
lazy
lazy
badly
badly
lukewarm
lukewarm
strange
strange
scandal
scandal
loud
loud
long
long
many
many
snatched
house
house
device
device
nominate
nominate
whale
whale
years
years
killer
killer
roamer
roamer
nose
nose
luck
luck
year
year
pens
pens
place
place
peels
peels
checker
checker
bats
bats
poles
poles
ocean
ocean
bland
bland
schoolbag
schoolbag
bars
bars
mall
mall
flute
flute
discover
discover
already
already
kittens
kittens
ball
ball
yelp
yelp
jump
jump
believer
(Appendices continue)
17
SEMANTIC AND PLAUSIBILITY PREVIEW BENEFIT
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Appendix A (continued)
Item
Sentence
Antonym
Plausible
unrelated
Implausible
unrelated
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67!
68!
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
The people suddenly imported all the goods they could before the embargo.
Joshua is always drunk outside of school.
Henry didn’t allow anyone to be visibly sober at his party last week.
There was a woman walking three tiny dogs at the park today.
Dale’s favorite horse at the stable was huge and lively.
Ian put the containers above the cabinet with the dishes.
Alex was surprised her glasses were below the dresser in her brother’s room.
My aunt likes to occasionally give apples to her neighbors’ children.
The student will reluctantly take his research paper to the professor.
Adam’s younger brothers hate eating junk food when depressed.
The high school students always love running when they are tired.
The tools Robert has are more inferior compared to the ones we have.
The bakery’s pastries are truly superior compared to the other places.
Bob was forced to repaint the building’s exterior three times before getting it right.
We noticed that the company’s interior was very fancy.
The number of cookies in the jar seems decreased from the last time I looked.
The amount of classwork has become increased after the first few weeks.
Every week I always find my keys behind the couch.
Darren managed to somehow lose the wedding ring down the storm drain.
The family left the garage door closed when they went on vacation.
The storefront was unexpectedly opened over the weekend.
Her plane will arrive later in the afternoon than expected.
Gary didn’t expect to have to suddenly depart but he pulled it off without a hitch.
The team expected a huge victory after seeing the competition.
We watched an interesting failure on TV last night.
Ted thinks the singer’s loud voice doesn’t fit this song.
Jeffrey didn’t like the really soft music playing at the party.
Amanda likes her soup salty and her desserts sweet.
This restaurant’s broth is too bland and spicy for my taste.
Melissa found a very sharp knife in her mother’s closet.
The swords in the museum were blunt and covered with jewels.
My roommate’s furniture is very fancy compared to mine.
Anne didn’t feel comfortable in the plain restaurant and wanted to leave.
The company requires workers to slowly raise the crane to prevent accidents.
Jacob was told to promptly lower the plow but he forgot.
Even five men could not easily pull the boulder off the road.
The directions state that you should push the lever when the red light is on.
The chemical laboratory’s danger area is marked by a large sign.
Steve’s mother is concerned about safety issues and won’t stop talking about them.
The class noticed the repeated angel motifs in the paintings.
Jenna decided to dress in a sexy devil costume and won the prize.
Amy’s little brother never argues with his parents.
The couple always agrees with each other and has a reputation.
The kids always ignore when their shoes are untied.
By all accounts, the janitor shouldn’t notice that the toilet was overflowing.
The court officials cannot enter before the emperor allows them to.
The restaurant patrons are urged to kindly leave by the side door.
The artist loved to paint rural landscapes as well as portraits.
The newlyweds decided to move somewhere urban for a change.
Everyone driving by stops to see the damage done on the bridge.
The PTA was eager to talk about the expensive repair happening at the school.
Lucy thinks her parents will forbid her going to the dance.
David would never permit a girl going out on the town.
The kids were excited to leave for their summer vacation and could barely sleep.
The children played all day during winter inside but there was no choice.
exported
sober
drunk
huge
tiny
below
above
take
give
love
hate
superior
inferior
interior
exterior
increased
decreased
lose
find
opened
closed
depart
arrive
failure
victory
soft
loud
bland
salty
blunt
sharp
plain
fancy
lower
raise
push
pull
safety
danger
devil
angel
agrees
argues
notice
ignore
leave
enter
urban
rural
repair
damage
permit
forbid
winter
summer
snatched
angry
angry
gray
gray
aside
aside
show
show
stop
stop
delicate
delicate
insignia
insignia
unchanged
unchanged
toss
toss
broken
broken
refuel
refuel
quarrel
quarrel
cute
cute
clear
clear
shiny
shiny
dirty
dirty
drive
drive
drop
drop
office
office
daisy
daisy
drives
drives
scream
scream
drink
drink
green
green
dances
dances
escort
escort
school
school
believer
gauge
gauge
what
what
hairy
hairy
cape
cape
deep
deep
absently
absently
bathrobe
bathrobe
afterglow
afterglow
blue
blue
banana
banana
turtle
turtle
polygon
polygon
leap
leap
shine
shine
chair
chair
drink
drink
table
table
blue
blue
easily
easily
crawl
crawl
dancer
dancer
laptop
laptop
tiger
tiger
stare
stare
stifle
stifle
jagged
jagged
change
change
Note. Target words (identical previews) are presented in boldface (not in boldface in the experiments). Columns to the right represent the antonym,
plausible unrelated, and implausible unrelated previews. Items with asterisks were excluded from Experiment 2.
(Appendices continue)
18
SCHOTTER AND JIA
Appendix B
Set of Synonym Stimuli Used in Experiment 1
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Item
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
Sentence
The dishes are stored below the sink in the kitchen.
Bob carefully put the glassware under the counter to make more room for other things.
The sons were quite lousy at doing their chores before dinner.
The neighbor’s kids were too awful to remember to clean up their mess.
Tim really wanted to become buddies with more people at his school.
Anna didn’t want to remain friends with the weird kids in her class.
At the zoo, Kim saw the giant adult panda eating bamboo leaves.
There were many older men on the bus this morning.
Ian auctioned an antique clock to raise money for a charity.
Harry bought a broken watch to repair for fun.
Max had to have the teacher clarify when the homework assignment was due.
The lawyer asked the witness to carefully explain what he saw on the day of the crime.
Everyone was pleased that the talented chef prepared such a wonderful meal.
The couple went to try what the famous cook had made for the food festival.
The new hairdresser has never placed curlers in another person’s hair before.
Jane had forgotten to take out several rollers from her hair and everyone stared.
After working out, Shelley felt a sudden acute pain in her calves.
Johnny had noticed sharp pains in his tooth and called the dentist.
The Johnson family loved the beautiful vast backyard at their new home.
Hanna pleasantly looked out across huge stretches of ocean and contemplated life.
The little girl complained about her upset tummy and asked to skip soccer practice.
The puppy exposed his soft belly and enjoyed when it was rubbed.
Tammy noticed many items were still blank when checking over her exam.
Dina gave Manny a cold empty stare when he asked a stupid question.
Cops need to be aware of a possible ambush while on the job.
The building was closed due to a recent attack that occurred inside.
Sara’s friends watch the same movie every week because they can’t agree on another one.
Jennifer went to watch the exciting video at the new theater.
Betty enjoys going to the nearby town to have fun on the weekends.
It was Kara’s dream to live near the beautiful city after retiring from her job.
Frank always sits in the exact middle of the classroom every day.
Sal lost his notes somewhere in the messy center of his bedroom.
Greta’s dog would always select the bowl with the treats inside.
Lisa always manages to easily choose the correct answer, even if she isn’t sure.
Lana’s roommate would never scrub the dishes enough and they were always dirty.
The boy tried to quickly clean the car window before rushing to his meeting.
Steven liked to make mean quips about his sister’s boyfriends.
Teresa’s grandmother doesn’t like to hear any jokes about the war.
The man was a notorious murderer and stories about him can be found in many papers.
The people feared that a dangerous assassin would come into town in the night.
The ring had beautiful jewels around the band.
The crown was inlaid with nice stones all over and was known throughout the land.
We received a warning that a dangerous tornado might hit the town this week.
Sandra’s grandmother is scared that a freak twister would suddenly come.
After a while, Kelly noticed a weird scent coming from the trash can.
We ran away from the overpowering smell of the stink bomb exploding.
After dinner, Wendy always rinsed the dishes right away.
Howard’s chemistry lab partner washed the beakers in the sink.
After witnessing the theft, many guards chased the thief.
Jason was nervous walking past police who were standing outside the embassy.
Buying a car seems very essential for most college students.
The sign stated that it is absolutely necessary that no garbage is left behind.
Although the apartment décor was too drab the owners felt it suited their needs.
Jean says that dull clothing is all the rage these days.
Andrew enjoyed the interesting tome he borrowed from the library.
Pam almost forgot to return the heavy book in time.
Brad thought his project idea was incredibly ingenious and wanted to tell everyone.
(Appendices continue)
Synonym
Plausible
unrelated
Implausible
unrelated
under
below
awful
lousy
friends
buddies
older
adult
watch
clock
explain
clarify
cook
chef
rollers
curlers
sharp
acute
huge
vast
belly
tummy
empty
blank
attack
ambush
video
movie
city
town
center
middle
choose
select
clean
scrub
jokes
quips
assassin
murderer
stones
jewels
twister
tornado
smell
scent
washed
rinsed
police
guards
necessary
essential
dull
drab
book
tome
brilliant
aside
aside
happy
happy
popular
popular
quiet
quiet
chair
chair
restate
restate
kids
kids
flowers
flowers
weird
weird
lush
lush
ankle
ankle
wrong
wrong
murder
murder
dance
dance
lake
lake
corner
corner
ignore
ignore
break
break
songs
songs
lecturer
lecturer
shapes
shapes
tsunami
tsunami
sound
sound
forgot
forgot
people
people
expensive
expensive
busy
busy
tape
tape
efficient
order
order
rated
rated
towards
towards
album
album
peace
peace
captain
captain
acid
acid
suffice
suffice
strip
strip
dogs
dogs
darts
darts
imply
imply
effort
effort
water
water
only
only
member
member
chance
chance
alone
alone
gates
gates
enormous
enormous
cleans
cleans
booster
booster
vault
vault
socket
socket
palace
palace
remaining
remaining
hulk
hulk
jump
jump
fortified
19
SEMANTIC AND PLAUSIBILITY PREVIEW BENEFIT
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Appendix B (continued)
Item
Sentence
Synonym
Plausible
unrelated
Implausible
unrelated
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
Everybody applauded his brilliant gadget at the meeting.
Jim’s children are often obdurate when it is time to clean up.
The puppy was so extremely stubborn that it took three people to get him into the car.
Chris is always told that he should relax after he gets back from work.
All Calvin wanted to do was sleep after getting home at midnight.
Dan needed to have his molar replaced after the accident.
Peggy thought she cracked her tooth when she fell off the wall.
Dave admired his well-kept turf while driving home.
George planned to get a new lawn for his front yard.
Every year the children wish for new toys.
As December approaches, the students hope for Christmas vacation.
Felix likes to wear clean boots to his line dancing party.
Heidi always packs too many shoes when she goes on vacation.
Gary thought if he put on a costume he could excite the children in the class.
Hailey was trying to subtly thrill her students by taking them to Disneyland.
George was afraid of stepping on a possibly lethal part of the abandoned building.
Shane jumped when he thought about deadly snakes that had been seen nearby.
Alice’s perfume was very aromatic and caught the attention of many men.
Angie bent down to the pleasantly fragrant rose and took a deep breath.
Peg thought Jen would be somewhat envious about her engagement ring and kept it hidden.
Howard was extremely jealous because of Sam’s new game boy.
As the family approached their cabin they noticed some things were out of place.
Ann always stays at the same house in Tahoe for vacation.
Bo got a really cool gadget for his seventeenth birthday.
Jamie begged his parents to get him a nifty device but they didn’t have the money.
She noticed that there was a small stone spire on top of the church.
Despite hearing many stories, Jan didn’t notice a single tower on her trip to Prague.
Dale’s company gave him a huge prize for his hard work.
The kids were bored until the teacher offered a special award for doing well on a test.
Sheena wrote down the incorrect avenue and got lost on her way to the restaurant.
The police searched every street for the suspect.
Jack heard of more unusual sightings in the woods last week.
Marsi pondered the recent strange events and wondered how to make them stop.
James agreed to meet at the large foyer in the hotel before dinner.
There were renovations on the outdated lobby and hotel patrons need to use a back door.
Joel made a rapid halt when the light turned red.
When Betty couldn’t stop the car fast enough she ran into the median.
Last night my dreams were very lucid so I wrote about them in my journal.
Austin peered down toward clear ponds in the distance.
The man took out his scary Satan costume for Halloween.
The family put an evil looking devil decoration on their front lawn.
Anna’s nanny made her a bracelet with string for her fifth birthday.
She thought that the bright thread was perfect for her art project.
Nadine goes to the gym because she wants to look lean in a swimsuit at the beach.
The tall man looked very thin wearing his new tuxedo.
Peter was asked to point out on the large globe where Antarctica was.
He looked over the used world to find the country he was looking for.
Samantha was very prudent about not making a mistake in her drawing.
The young boy was always careful when he received any money.
Sheldon could not hear their answers over the loud music.
Rachel’s new parrot replies whenever you ask it a question.
Some animals eat from very tall trees in the zoo.
His stature was quite high for a boy of his age.
Some people think a heavy brick could break a window.
He was injured by the solid stone that was thrown at him.
Some people thought the parrot was mute but it just did not want to talk.
The doctor said the man would be nearly dumb when the operation was finished.
The chemist did not realize the reaction could arise without a spark.
A riot was certain to quickly occur if the people were not helped.
The church received a beautiful piano from an anonymous donor.
ingenious
stubborn
obdurate
sleep
relax
tooth
molar
lawn
turf
hope
wish
shoes
boots
thrill
excite
deadly
lethal
fragrant
aromatic
jealous
envious
house
cabin
device
gadget
tower
spire
award
prize
street
avenue
strange
unusual
lobby
foyer
stop
halt
clear
lucid
devil
Satan
thread
string
thin
lean
world
globe
careful
prudent
replies
answers
high
tall
stone
brick
dumb
mute
occur
arise
organ
efficient
restless
restless
drink
drink
joint
joint
tree
tree
yell
yell
pants
pants
baffle
baffle
flimsy
flimsy
specific
specific
excited
excited
place
place
outfit
outfit
eagle
eagle
party
party
number
number
raccoon
raccoon
bench
bench
turn
turn
weird
weird
ghost
ghost
silver
silver
good
good
print
print
excited
excited
screams
screams
rare
rare
punch
punch
dead
dead
erupt
erupt
bible
fortified
stitches
stitches
cheap
cheap
tenth
tenth
lava
lava
days
days
chess
chess
thrift
thrift
kindle
kindle
linguist
linguist
gardens
gardens
known
known
drives
drives
horns
horns
weird
weird
clears
clears
storage
storage
fifty
fifty
ship
ship
class
class
trend
trend
threat
threat
kiss
kiss
tried
tried
invited
invited
replace
replace
kept
kept
clean
clean
pile
pile
seven
seven
argue
(Appendices continue)
20
SCHOTTER AND JIA
Appendix B (continued)
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Item
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
Sentence
She received a well-used organ from her great grandmother.
The class complained about the boring exam to the professor.
The students thought the long test was rather tedious.
The dog would always sniff the grass in front of the house.
Hillary was asked to quickly smell the leftover scented paper.
The losing team’s rebuttal was so legendary that it went viral on YouTube.
The angry mob’s growing response could not be controlled.
The loving couple looked at the peaceful shore while on vacation.
No one lived in the house by the secluded beach for many years.
The notorious gang defaced the statue in front of city hall.
An unknown person damaged the wall of the museum
The police were alert after they got a call from dispatch.
Roger made sure he was always ready for his exams so that he would do well.
After the party the couch felt grimy from all the guests sitting on it.
The hotel room was dirty when the maids came to clean it.
The salesman said the sculpture would hold its original worth for many years.
It was unfortunate that the great value of the house had diminished.
The sisters could not name all their favorite movies because there were too many.
They were able to quickly list everything they needed.
Everyone thought the student was very astute after meeting him.
Martin was known for being quite clever when he was younger.
The students always save all their homework when the quarter is over.
Mark thought it was best to carefully keep his old personal documents.
The teacher always finds a relevant topic for the students to write about.
Danny thought that the unclear issue was pointless to discuss.
The teacher thought the reports were too brief and didn’t give anyone a good grade.
There was a very short news story on tv last night.
The team captains tried to establish concord between the two teams.
The two cities lived in complete harmony for many years.
The most experienced scout led the group along the cliff.
George was a skilled guide and had explored the trail many times.
Tommy decided he would fling the stone in the pond later that day.
Billy was asked to just throw the frisbee on the table.
Will keeps a large knife in his backpack when he goes hiking.
Liam made sure to have a backup blade in case of emergencies.
The horse race will begin in a couple minutes.
Registration for the event will start at the end of the month.
Kenny told his longtime rival to meet him outside after school.
Andrew gained a major enemy at his new school.
Last week, Alexander totaled his newly bought car.
They had heard that he fully wrecked his garage last Saturday.
Callie and her coworker must evade the office because their boss is mad at them.
The criminal tried to stealthily avoid the cops in the building.
In kindergarten the kids would loudly notify the teacher when someone cut in line.
The junk mail would always inform its recipients with new offers.
In the morning Jessica tallied all the sales from last weekend to her boss.
Peter made sure that he promptly counted the numbers to his friend.
The frogs in the pond can leap around the lily pads to get to the log.
Katie watched the kids jump in the pool at the rec center.
Sally forgot the specific tune she made up while walking home.
Lisa taught the children a familiar song to keep them entertained.
Synonym
Plausible
unrelated
Implausible
unrelated
piano
test
exam
smell
sniff
response
rebuttal
beach
shore
damaged
defaced
ready
alert
dirty
grimy
value
worth
list
name
clever
astute
keep
save
issue
topic
short
brief
harmony
concord
guide
scout
throw
fling
blade
knife
start
begin
enemy
rival
wrecked
totaled
avoid
evade
inform
notify
counted
tallied
jump
leap
song
tune
bible
book
book
shred
shred
insanity
insanity
hills
hills
painted
painted
early
early
comfy
comfy
shape
shape
take
take
smelly
smelly
burn
burn
movie
movie
awful
awful
rivalry
rivalry
hiker
hiker
leave
leave
phone
phone
close
close
tutor
tutor
painted
painted
block
block
bother
bother
emailed
emailed
swim
swim
poem
poem
argue
kind
kind
vault
vault
congress
congress
trust
trust
foreign
foreign
table
table
lunge
lunge
sites
sites
best
best
cheese
cheese
long
long
musty
musty
stand
stand
forming
forming
quote
quote
floor
floor
forge
forge
check
check
array
array
awaited
awaited
round
round
actors
actors
existed
existed
goat
goat
warp
warp
Note. Target words (identical previews) are presented in boldface (not in boldface in the experiment). Columns to the right represent the synonym,
plausible unrelated, and implausible unrelated previews.
(Appendices continue)
21
SEMANTIC AND PLAUSIBILITY PREVIEW BENEFIT
Appendix C
Experimental Questions and Response Options for the Comprehension Questions Used in Experiment 2
Item
1
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Question
a Is Jane traveling to San Francisco?
b How will Jane travel to Los Angeles?
c How will Jane travel to Los Angeles?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does the family take a plane for their vacation?
b How does the family get to their vacation?
c How does the family get to their vacation?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did his friend give him advice?
b What was he advised to do with the bribe?
c What was he advised to do with the bribe?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was Jane contemplating a bonus?
b What would Jane never do with a bonus?
c What would Jane never do with a bonus?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was there a dog in the window?
b What did the ghost just do?
c What did the ghost just do?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was the girl at the mall?
b What did the girl just do?
c What did the girl just do?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does Jenny buy lotion?
b What lotion bottles does Jenny prefer?
c What lotion bottles does Jenny prefer?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Were there earrings on display?
b What kind of earrings did she like?
c What kind of earrings did she like?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did George wear a t-shirt?
b What type of suit did George wear?
c What type of suit did George wear?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did Deb drive a motorcycle?
b What type of car did Deb test drive?
c What type of car did Deb test drive?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did the new student answer the question?
b How did the student answer the question?
c How did the student answer the question?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was Karen the last person to jump over the stream?
b How did she jump?
c How did she jump?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did the children fix the toilet?
b How are the children?
c How are the children?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does my nephew have homework?
b How is the nephew with housework?
c How is the nephew with housework?
d Which of these words did you read?
(Appendices continue)
Option 1
Option 2
Yes
South
South
South
Yes
North
North
North
Yes
Accept
Accept
Accept
Yes
Refuse
Refuse
Refuse
Yes
Appeared
Appeared
Appeared
Yes
Vanished
Vanished
Vanished
Yes
Large
Large
Large
Yes
Small
Small
Small
Yes
Black
Black
Black
Yes
White
White
White
Yes
Boldly
Boldly
Boldly
Yes
Meekly
Meekly
Meekly
Yes
Clever
Clever
Clever
Yes
Stupid
Stupid
Stupid
No
North
Coach
House
No
South
Coach
House
No
Refuse
Report
Device
No
Accept
Report
Device
No
Vanished
Screamed
Nominate
No
Appeared
Screamed
Nominate
No
Small
Fancy
Whale
No
Large
Fancy
Whale
No
White
Shiny
Years
No
Black
Shiny
Years
No
Meekly
Easily
Killer
No
Boldly
Easily
Killer
No
Stupid
Clumsy
Roamer
No
Clever
Clumsy
Roamer
22
SCHOTTER AND JIA
Appendix C (continued)
Item
Question
15
a Did the food heat up on the drive?
b After the trip, how was the food?
c After the trip, how was the food?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does David have a temperature preference for his potato salad?
b What kind of salad does David like?
c What kind of salad does David like?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does the teacher have students?
b How does the teacher’s personality seem?
c How does the teacher’s personality seem?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did Jen have classmates?
b What is Jen’s classmate like?
c What is Jen’s classmate like?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Were we able to give Sam a ride?
b When did the train arrive?
c When did the train arrive?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Are we always waiting for Mindy and her dog?
b When did Mindy’s dog wake up?
c When did Mindy’s dog wake up?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did we have a final for the class?
b How was the final compared to the midterm?
c How was the final compared to the midterm?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was the hike down a canyon?
b What was the mountain hike like?
c What was the mountain hike like?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did Kevin’s brother eat all the fruit?
b What kind of bread did he eat?
c What kind of bread did he eat?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did the supermarket sell pastries on the weekend?
b What kind of pastries was the supermarket selling?
c What kind of pastries was the supermarket selling?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does everyone look skinny next to Henry?
b What would someone next to Henry look like?
c What would someone next to Henry look like?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was there someone famous at the beach?
b Who did I see at the beach yesterday?
c Who did I see at the beach yesterday?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was he carrying a bag?
b What did the box become?
c What did the box become?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did Betty go to the gym a lot?
b How does Betty think she looks?
c How does Betty think she looks?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did the girl want less salad?
b What did the girl ask for regarding the dressing?
c What did the girl ask for regarding the dressing?
d Which of these words did you read?
16
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
(Appendices continue)
Option 1
Yes
Cool
Cool
Cool
Yes
Warm
Warm
Warm
Yes
Kind
Kind
Kind
Yes
Mean
Mean
Mean
Yes
Dusk
Dusk
Dusk
Yes
Dawn
Dawn
Dawn
Yes
Easy
Easy
Easy
Yes
Hard
Hard
Hard
Yes
Fresh
Fresh
Fresh
Yes
Stale
Stale
Stale
Yes
Giant
Giant
Giant
Yes
Dwarf
Dwarf
Dwarf
Yes
Heavier
Heavier
Heavier
Yes
Lighter
Lighter
Lighter
Yes
Less
Less
Less
Option 2
No
Warm
Soft
Nose
No
Cool
Soft
Nose
No
Mean
Dull
Luck
No
Kind
Dull
Luck
No
Dawn
Ours
Year
No
Dusk
Ours
Year
No
Hard
Long
Pens
No
Easy
Long
Pens
No
Stale
Baked
Place
No
Fresh
Baked
Place
No
Dwarf
Model
Peels
No
Giant
Model
Peels
No
Lighter
Dirtier
Checker
No
Heavier
Dirtier
Checker
No
More
Tart
Bats
23
SEMANTIC AND PLAUSIBILITY PREVIEW BENEFIT
Appendix C (continued)
Item
30
31
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
Question
a Did John need more pears?
b What should he have baked into the pie?
c What should he have baked into the pie?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did Ron get his pants tailored?
b How are Ron’s pants now?
c How are Ron’s pants now?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does the coat fit well?
b How does the coat fit on the professor?
c How does the coat fit on the professor?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Are there dogs at the house?
b How do the dogs behave when there are visitors?
c How do the dogs behave when there are visitors?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Are the dogs at story time?
b How are the children at story time?
c How are the children at story time?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Is there a bridge before the town?
b How does the train pass the bridge?
c How does the train pass the bridge?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Are visitors trying to get to Sarah’s house?
b How do visitors get past the cliff?
c How do visitors get past the cliff?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did Dana get a tattoo yesterday?
b What kind of tattoo does Dana have?
c What kind of tattoo does Dana have?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did Jeff quit his job yet?
b What type of job did Jeff have?
c What type of job did Jeff have?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Are people disagreeing over a jewel?
b What could nobody agree on about the jewel?
c What could nobody agree on about the jewel?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did people believe Zoe?
b What does Zoe deny about her hair color?
c What does Zoe deny about her hair color?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did everyone know about the girl?
b What was the girl’s neighborhood like?
c What was the girl’s neighborhood like?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was the previous roommate popular?
b What was the roommate like?
c What was the roommate like?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did Kristy have an exam?
b How was her answer written?
c How was her answer written?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was Olga setting up equipment?
b How did she set up the equipment?
c How did she set up the equipment?
d Which of these words did you read?
(Appendices continue)
Option 1
Option 2
Yes
More
More
More
Yes
Loose
Loose
Loose
Yes
Tight
Tight
Tight
Yes
Noisy
Noisy
Noisy
Yes
Quiet
Quiet
Quiet
Yes
Under
Under
Under
Yes
Above
Above
Above
Yes
Permanent
Permanent
Permanent
Yes
Temporary
Temporary
Temporary
Yes
Real
Real
Real
Yes
Fake
Fake
Fake
Yes
Rich
Rich
Rich
Yes
Poor
Poor
Poor
Yes
Right
Right
Right
Yes
Wrong
Wrong
Wrong
No
Less
Tart
Bats
No
Tight
Short
Poles
No
Loose
Short
Poles
No
Quiet
Eager
Ocean
No
Noisy
Eager
Ocean
No
Above
Along
Bland
No
Under
Along
Bland
No
Temporary
Offensive
Schoolbag
No
Permanent
Offensive
Schoolbag
No
Fake
Pink
Bars
No
Real
Pink
Bars
No
Poor
Lazy
Mall
No
Rich
Lazy
Mall
No
Wrong
Badly
Flute
No
Right
Badly
Flute
24
SCHOTTER AND JIA
Appendix C (continued)
Item
45
46
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
Question
a Does the boy want his vegetables separately?
b How does the boy like his vegetables?
c How does the boy like his vegetables?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Are they storing food?
b How must the chemicals be stored?
c How must the chemicals be stored?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Were there many stories in the news?
b What kind of stories were in the news?
c What kind of stories were in the news?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was there an accident?
b What kind of accident was it?
c What kind of accident was it?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was there a new event?
b What was the event considered as?
c What was the event considered as?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did the actress join a TV show?
b What was the TV show considered as?
c What was the TV show considered as?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was the man given cats?
b What were the dogs like, to cause his complaint?
c What were the dogs like, to cause his complaint?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did the circus have lions?
b What kind of lions were at the circus?
c What kind of lions were at the circus?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does Jessica drive on the highway?
b How does Jessica drive?
c How does Jessica drive?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was the boat trip enjoyable?
b How was the boat trip?
c How was the boat trip?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does she like to sleep on the floor?
b What kind of mattresses does she prefer?
c What kind of mattresses does she prefer?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does Jason like eating fruit while doing homework?
b What kind of candy does he eat?
c What kind of candy does he eat?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Are the fruits special?
b What happened to the special fruit?
c What happened to the special fruit?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was there an embargo?
b What did people do with the goods?
c What did people do with the goods?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does Joshua go to school?
b What is Joshua always like?
c What is Joshua always like?
d Which of these words did you read?
(Appendices continue)
Option 1
Yes
Separate
Separate
Separate
Yes
Together
Together
Together
Yes
Serious
Serious
Serious
Yes
Trivial
Trivial
Trivial
Yes
Success
Success
Success
Yes
Failure
Failure
Failure
Yes
Tame
Tame
Tame
Yes
Wild
Wild
Wild
Yes
Fast
Fast
Fast
Yes
Slow
Slow
Slow
Yes
Soft
Soft
Soft
Yes
Hard
Hard
Hard
Yes
Exported
Exported
Exported
Yes
Imported
Imported
Imported
Yes
Drunk
Drunk
Drunk
Option 2
No
Together
Lukewarm
Discover
No
Separate
Lukewarm
Discover
No
Trivial
Strange
Already
No
Serious
Strange
Already
No
Failure
Scandal
Kittens
No
Success
Scandal
Kittens
No
Wild
Loud
Ball
No
Tame
Loud
Ball
No
Slow
Long
Yelp
No
Fast
Long
Yelp
No
Hard
Many
Jump
No
Soft
Many
Jump
No
Imported
Snatched
Believer
No
Exported
Snatched
Believer
No
Sober
Angry
Gauge
25
SEMANTIC AND PLAUSIBILITY PREVIEW BENEFIT
Appendix C (continued)
Item
60
61
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
62
63
64
65
66
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
Question
a Did Henry have a party last week?
b How were the people at Henry’s party?
c How were the people at Henry’s party?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was the woman walking her cat?
b What kind of dogs was she walking?
c What kind of dogs was she walking?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does Dale like horses?
b What kind of horse does Dale like?
c What kind of horse does Dale like?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did he put them with the dishes?
b Where did Ian put the containers?
c Where did Ian put the containers?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was Alex looking for her earring?
b Where were her glasses?
c Where were her glasses?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does she like giving candy to the children?
b What does she do with the apples?
c What does she do with the apples?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did the student forget to do the research paper?
b What did he do with the paper?
c What did he do with the paper?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Are Robert’s tools the best?
b How are Robert’s tools?
c How are Robert’s tools?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does the bakery sell pastries?
b How are the pastries at this bakery?
c How are the pastries at this bakery?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did Bob paint the building more than once?
b What did Bob have to repaint?
c What did Bob have to repaint?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Is the company shoddy-looking?
b Which part of the company is fancy?
c Which part of the company is fancy?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was the jar filled with candies?
b How did the cookie level change?
c How did the cookie level change?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was there classwork?
b How did the classwork load change?
c How did the classwork load change?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did I lose my keys in the garden?
b What did I do to the keys?
c What did I do to the keys?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did Darren lose his watch?
b What did he do to the ring?
c What did he do to the ring?
d Which of these words did you read?
(Appendices continue)
Option 1
Option 2
Yes
Sober
Sober
Sober
Yes
Tiny
Tiny
Tiny
Yes
Huge
Huge
Huge
Yes
Above
Above
Above
Yes
Below
Below
Below
Yes
Give
Give
Give
Yes
Take
Take
Take
Yes
Inferior
Inferior
Inferior
Yes
Superior
Superior
Superior
Yes
Exterior
Exterior
Exterior
Yes
Interior
Interior
Interior
Yes
Decreased
Decreased
Decreased
Yes
Increased
Increased
Increased
Yes
Find
Find
Find
Yes
Lose
Lose
Lose
No
Drunk
Angry
Gauge
No
Huge
Gray
What
No
Tiny
Gray
What
No
Below
Aside
Hairy
No
Above
Aside
Hairy
No
Take
Show
Cape
No
Give
Show
Cape
No
Superior
Delicate
Absently
No
Inferior
Delicate
Absently
No
Interior
Insignia
Bathrobe
No
Exterior
Insignia
Bathrobe
No
Increased
Unchanged
Afterglow
No
Decreased
Unchanged
Afterglow
No
Lose
Toss
Blue
No
Find
Toss
Blue
26
SCHOTTER AND JIA
Appendix C (continued)
Item
77
78
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
Question
a Was the front door left open?
b How did they leave the garage door?
c How did they leave the garage door?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Is the store normally closed on the weekend?
b Over the weekend, how was the storefront?
c Over the weekend, how was the storefront?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Is she arriving in a train?
b What will her plane be doing this afternoon?
c What will her plane be doing this afternoon?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did Gary have any problem with the sudden change in plans?
b What did Gary have to do?
c What did Gary have to do?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did the team see the competition?
b What did the team expect?
c What did the team expect?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did we watch TV last night?
b What was on TV last night?
c What was on TV last night?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was Ted listening to a singer?
b What kind of voice did the singer have?
c What kind of voice did the singer have?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was Jeffrey at his office?
b What kind of music was playing at the party?
c What kind of music was playing at the party?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does Amanda like sour dessert?
b What kind of soup does Amanda prefer?
c What kind of soup does Amanda prefer?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Is the broth spicy?
b What was the broth like?
c What was the broth like?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was there a knife in the closet?
b What type of knife did she find?
c What type of knife did she find?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Were the swords plain?
b What were the museum swords like?
c What were the museum swords like?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Is my roommate’s furniture different from mine?
b How was the roommate’s furniture?
c How was the roommate’s furniture?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did Anne like the restaurant?
b What was the restaurant like?
c What was the restaurant like?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does the company try to prevent accidents?
b What are the workers supposed to do with the crane?
c What are the workers supposed to do with the crane?
d Which of these words did you read?
(Appendices continue)
Option 1
Yes
Closed
Closed
Closed
Yes
Opened
Opened
Opened
Yes
Arrive
Arrive
Arrive
Yes
Depart
Depart
Depart
Yes
Victory
Victory
Victory
Yes
Failure
Failure
Failure
Yes
Loud
Loud
Loud
Yes
Soft
Soft
Soft
Yes
Salty
Salty
Salty
Yes
Bland
Bland
Bland
Yes
Sharp
Sharp
Sharp
Yes
Blunt
Blunt
Blunt
Yes
Fancy
Fancy
Fancy
Yes
Plain
Plain
Plain
Yes
Raise
Raise
Raise
Option 2
No
Opened
Broken
Banana
No
Closed
Broken
Banana
No
Depart
Refuel
Turtle
No
Arrive
Refuel
Turtle
No
Failure
Quarrel
Polygon
No
Victory
Quarrel
Polygon
No
Soft
Cute
Leap
No
Loud
Cute
Leap
No
Bland
Clear
Shine
No
Salty
Clear
Shine
No
Blunt
Shiny
Chair
No
Sharp
Shiny
Chair
No
Plain
Dirty
Drink
No
Fancy
Dirty
Drink
No
Lower
Drive
Table
27
SEMANTIC AND PLAUSIBILITY PREVIEW BENEFIT
Appendix C (continued)
Item
92
93
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
Question
a Did Jacob remember the instructions?
b What was he supposed to do with the plow?
c What was he supposed to do with the plow?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was the boulder on the road?
b What are they trying to do with the boulder?
c What are they trying to do with the boulder?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Is the light green?
b What is supposed to be done with the lever?
c What is supposed to be done with the lever?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Is there a large sign in the lab?
b Which area in the lab was marked?
c Which area in the lab was marked?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Is his mother concerned?
b What issues is his mother concerned with?
c What issues is his mother concerned with?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Was the class looking at sculptures?
b What was repeated in the paintings?
c What was repeated in the paintings?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did Jenna win a prize?
b What costume did Jenna wear?
c What costume did Jenna wear?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does Amy have a brother?
b What doesn’t he do with his parents?
c What doesn’t he do with his parents?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Is the couple well known?
b What does the couple always do with each other?
c What does the couple always do with each other?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Were the kids wearing sandals?
b What did the kids do about their untied laces?
c What did the kids do about their untied laces?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did the sink overflow?
b What shouldn’t the janitor do about the toilet?
c What shouldn’t the janitor do about the toilet?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does the emperor give the orders?
b What does the emperor allow court officials to do?
c What does the emperor allow court officials to do?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Are the patrons urged rudely?
b How do patrons use the side door?
c How do patrons use the side door?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does the artist hate landscapes?
b What kind of landscapes does the artist paint?
c What kind of landscapes does the artist paint?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Are the newlyweds moving?
b What kind of place did they move to?
c What kind of place did they move to?
d Which of these words did you read?
(Appendices continue)
Option 1
Yes
Lower
Lower
Lower
Yes
Pull
Pull
Pull
Yes
Push
Push
Push
Yes
Danger
Danger
Danger
Yes
Safety
Safety
Safety
Yes
Angel
Angel
Angel
Yes
Devil
Devil
Devil
Yes
Argues
Argues
Argues
Yes
Agrees
Agrees
Agrees
Yes
Ignore
Ignore
Ignore
Yes
Notice
Notice
Notice
Yes
Enter
Enter
Enter
Yes
Leave
Leave
Leave
Yes
Rural
Rural
Rural
Yes
Urban
Urban
Urban
Option 2
No
Raise
Drive
Table
No
Push
Drop
Blue
No
Pull
Drop
Blue
No
Safety
Office
Easily
No
Danger
Office
Easily
No
Devil
Daisy
Crawl
No
Angel
Daisy
Crawl
No
Agrees
Drives
Dancer
No
Argues
Drives
Dancer
No
Notice
Scream
Laptop
No
Ignore
Scream
Laptop
No
Leave
Drink
Tiger
No
Enter
Drink
Tiger
No
Urban
Green
Stare
No
Rural
Green
Stare
28
SCHOTTER AND JIA
Appendix C (continued)
Item
107
108
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
109
110
111
112
Question
a Is everyone looking at a bridge?
b What is everyone looking at on the bridge?
c What is everyone looking at on the bridge?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Is the PTA talking about a zoo?
b What is happening at school?
c What is happening at school?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does Lucy want to go to the dance?
b What would her parents do about Lucy going to the dance?
c What would her parents do about Lucy going to the dance?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Does the girl want to go to a museum?
b What would David do about the girl going out?
c What would David do about the girl going out?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Are the kids going on vacation?
b Which vacation were the kids leaving for?
c Which vacation were the kids leaving for?
d Which of these words did you read?
a Did they have to play inside?
b When did the children play inside?
c When did the children play inside?
d Which of these words did you read?
Option 1
Yes
Damage
Damage
Damage
Yes
Repair
Repair
Repair
Yes
Forbid
Forbid
Forbid
Yes
Permit
Permit
Permit
Yes
Summer
Summer
Summer
Yes
Winter
Winter
Winter
Option 2
No
Repair
Dances
Stifle
No
Damage
Dances
Stifle
No
Permit
Escort
Jagged
No
Forbid
Escort
Jagged
No
Winter
School
Change
No
Summer
School
Change
Note. Item numbers correspond to those used in Experiment 1 (antonym stimulus set; note that Items 67 and 68 were
excluded for Experiment 2 and therefore there are no questions with those item numbers). Question Version A was
presented in the identical condition, Version B was presented in the antonym condition, Version C was presented in the
plausible unrelated condition, and Version D was presented in the implausible unrelated condition.
Received November 2, 2015
Revision received March 7, 2016
Accepted March 10, 2016 !