This collection of essays examines how our visual and language systems interact in relationship to reading. Addresses four important questions concerning the role of vision in reading Presents recent findings from neuroimaging literature along with important recent work concerning how letters and letter strings are processed Investigates what constraints the visual system and eye movement control set on visual word recognition Discusses the role of the left and right visual field, together with the right and left hemispheres in visual word recognition Evaluates what information the brain computes when we read a word questions the contribution of the visual system on reading disability
Over the last 25 years, reading processes have been the focus of an enormous amount of research in experimental psychology as well as in other disciplines. The theories and models emerging from this research have greatly advanced understanding of both normal acquisition and of reading disabilities. Although great progress has been made, there are certain aspects that have been relatively neglected in the current understanding. Specifically, the role of visual factors has received less attention than that of other component processes. This is particularly surprising since reading and writing are distinct from the other language processes of speaking and listening in large part by virtue of the fact that a visual dimension is involved. Relevant research is broadly scattered both geographically and in terms of disciplines, and there have been no major reviews or books concerned with the visual dimension of reading and reading disabilities. The purpose of this book is to bring together a broad range of evidence that concerns the role of visual information in reading and reading disabilities. Because reading processes are of central interest to cognitive scientists, neuropsychologists, psycholinguists, clinicians, and educators, this book should draw a very broad readership.
Eye Movements in Reading: Perceptual and Language Processes focuses on eye movement and cognitive processes as a way to study the reading process. This book also discusses the different aspects of reading. Organized into seven parts encompassing 26 chapters, this book begins with a discussion on the perceptual and psychophysical factors essential to eye movement during reading. This book then explains how some psychophysical factors, such as type size and masking, affect the reading performance. Other chapters consider the role of transient and sustained cells, as well as their possible effects on reading. This text also examines the size of the perceptual span in reading and the integration of information across eye movement. Finally, this book explains the eye movement abnormalities, general eye movement parameters, and the cognitive processes within the reading disabled group. This book is a valuable resource to optometrists, scientists, field researchers, and readers who are interested in the reading process.
This book provides an overview of the research surrounding the relevance of visual factors for those who struggle with reading. Visual interventions that have been advocated as helping with reading include spectacles that simply correct refractive errors (e.g., long-sightedness), coloured overlays (sheets placed on the page) and coloured lenses, vision therapy, and computer games. This book explains the rationale behind these interventions and discusses the evidence supporting them. Clear advice is given in plain English to those wondering if these interventions will be helpful. Vision, Reading Difficulties, and Visual Stress, 2nd Edition draws together disparate research findings in a range of neurological disorders where vision is compromised by cortical hyperexcitability. Optometrists, orthoptists, ophthalmologists, educational psychologists, teachers, and vision scientists will find this book to be an interesting resource as well as students in these disciplines and parents of children who struggle with reading.
Written by a leader in the field, this book discusses the role of vision in reading. The author describes the influence of physical properties of text on reading performance and the implications for information processing in the visual pathways. He explores different forms of low vision that affect reading, text characteristics that optimize reading for those with low vision, principles underlying the legibility of text, and guidelines for displaying text. Special topics include the role of the magnocellular pathway in reading and dyslexia, Braille reading, and fonts for highway signs. An accompanying CD contains reprints of the seminal series of articles by Gordon E. Legge and colleagues published between 1985 and 2001.
In reading, word frequency is commonly regarded as the major bottom-up determinant for the speed of lexical access. Moreover, language processing depends on top-down information, such as the predictability of a word from a previous context. Yet, however, the exact role of top-down predictions in visual word recognition is poorly understood: They may rapidly affect lexical processes, or alternatively, influence only late post-lexical stages. To add evidence about the nature of top-down processes and their relation to bottom-up information in the timeline of word recognition, we examined influences of frequency and predictability on event-related potentials (ERPs) in several sentence reading studies. The results were related to eye movements from natural reading as well as to models of word recognition. As a first and major finding, interactions of frequency and predictability on ERP amplitudes consistently revealed top-down influences on lexical levels of word processing (Chapters 2 and 4). Second, frequency and predictability mediated relations between N400 amplitudes and fixation durations, pointing to their sensitivity to a common stage of word recognition; further, larger N400 amplitudes entailed longer fixation durations on the next word, a result providing evidence for ongoing processing beyond a fixation (Chapter 3). Third, influences of presentation rate on ERP frequency and predictability effects demonstrated that the time available for word processing critically co-determines the course of bottom-up and top-down influences (Chapter 4). Fourth, at a near-normal reading speed, an early predictability effect suggested the rapid comparison of top-down hypotheses with the actual visual input (Chapter 5). The present results are compatible with interactive models of word recognition assuming that early lexical processes depend on the concerted impact of bottom-up and top-down information. We offered a framework that reconciles the findings on a timeline of word recognition taking into account influences of frequency, predictability, and presentation rate (Chapter 4).
