On-line contextual influences during reading normal text: A multiple-regression analysis

On-line contextual influences during reading were examined in a series of multiple-regression analyses conducted on a large-scale corpus of eye-movement data, using Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) to assess the degree of contextual constraints exerted on a given target word by the immediately prior word and by the prior sentence fragment. A decrease in inspection time was observed as contextual constraints increased. Word-level constraints exerted their influence both forward (on both single-fixation and gaze durations) and backward (on gaze duration only). An independent sentence-level effect was only visible in the forward direction, and only for gaze duration. Gaze duration was also sensitive to the depth of embedding of the target word in the syntactic structure. We conclude that both low-level and high-level contextual constraints can translate in the eye-movement record.