Introduction

Understanding how we process linguistic information is a fundamental issue in cognition and cognitive neuroscience. Research on reading and reading disorders links to the College of Medicine, Biological Sciences and Psychology key research themes of Neuroscience and behaviour and Research Underpinning Learning and Teaching. Also, many of the projects are undertaken in collaboration with researchers at other institutions within the UK (e.g. University of Nottingham, University of Southampton) and internationally (e.g. University of Pittsburgh, University of Massachusetts, Amherst).

Topics

• Research with implications for reading disorders
• Word processing and sentence comprehension
• Parafoveal processing and eye movement control during reading

Research with implications for reading disorders

A fundamental aim of research in this area concerns identifying what visual cues present in text are highly important to good readers but more difficult to process by adults with reading impairments.

Research on this topic uses a range of techniques, including the study of isolated word recognition and eye movements during reading, to establish the types of visual cue that are present in the text and to assess the use of these cues by readers of varying ability (e.g. Webb, Beech, Mayall, & Andrews, 2006). Recent research in this area has investigated the influence of the anatomical structure of the human foveae and control of fixation location on word recognition (e.g., Jordan & Paterson, Kurtev, & Xu, 2010a, 2010b; Jordan, Paterson, & Stachurski, 2008, 2009) and the role of inter-letter and inter-word spaces during reading (Paterson & Jordan, 2009).

Word processing and sentence comprehension

Researchers in the Vision and Language group are interested in visual language processing at a wide range of different levels, from understanding how the letters within words are processed, to how words are recognised, to how words are integrated and comprehended in relation to other words.

Much of this research utilises eye movement methodology, using eye movement behaviour as an index of what is being processed when. For example, recent work on visual word recognition has examined how processing of words like “blue” is influenced by other similar words like “blur” (Paterson, Liversedge, & Davis, 2009) and how words can be recognised even when some of the letters are in the wrogn psoition (White, Johnson, Liversedge, & Rayner, 2008). Other recent work focuses on the mechanisms underlying sentence comprehension, for example, how words like “only” and “even” (Filik, Paterson, & Liversedge, 2009) and the presence of a full stop (Warren, White, & Reichle, 2009) influence how sentences are processed. Other research has looked at reading of words in languages that differ fundamentally from English, including Arabic (Jordan, Paterson, & Almabruk, 2010), Chinese (Xu & Jordan, 2009) and Japanese (White, Hirotani, & Liversedge, under review).

Parafoveal processing and eye movement control during reading

Eye movements have a central role in natural reading. At any one time, we can only view a small part of the text (one or two words) in detail, so we move our eyes in order to provide a series of visually detailed snapshots of the text that we then cleverly integrate together. Researchers in the Vision and Language group are interested in how we process text before it is fixated (parafoveal processing) and the mechanisms underlying what controls the movements of our eyes as we read. The research helps us understand how the visual, linguistic, attention control and oculomotor mechanisms are inter-related.

For example, recent research has investigated how we process the ends of long words (e.g. “board” in “blackboard”) when looking at the previous word or the beginning of the long word (Juhasz, White, Liversedge, & Rayner, 2008; White, Bertram, & Hyönä, 2008). Other recent work has focused on evaluating and developing models of eye movement control during reading, for example, understanding the mechanisms that cause frequent words (e.g. town) to be skipped over more often in the text than words that occur only rarely (e.g. cove) (White, 2008).