ABSTRACT

Eye fixations on six-letter target words were measured to determine effects of perceptual salience and of word structure on parafoveal word processing. Two types of target words were used; compound words (e.g. cowboy), which were composed of two morphological subunits (cow and boy), and pseudocompound words (e.g. carpet) which could not be separated into two three-letter morphological constituents (car and pet). Sentences containing the target words were read in a standard left-to-right direction or in a reversed right-to-left direction and readers either obtained a parafoveal preview of the word initial trigram or of the word final trigram prior to fixation. The results showed significant parafoveal preview benefits when the word initial trigram of a compound word was provided; no significant preview benefit was obtained, however, when the word initial trigram of a pseudocompound word was available prior to fixation. The results support a morphologically defined lexical access code. Specifically, parafoveal previews of a word may be used to initiate the lexical access of a word; lexical access may be completed after the word is being fixated.