m»— —»- - n , ‘ m‘:ozh , J _t ' < Fl Li", u h, . we J ;¢‘:fi‘.¢.;r:« - .I H ‘ .4.” . ‘ --- _‘ I «SJ 3&5?” L33?“ - .n 4.1% . 0V «— 4| ‘--I 0 \1. 1. 14“. 1| 4 “ 1 '1‘ J! '7 ..‘~ 0 g‘ ’ "'“ ‘41: .ngQ-Jl. .714.“be ,. Jr J. | - . o-'q | .H I 4“ U ‘ I 1 . u 1 A . J! .'- .u ' “’76-‘23 {NEE}; 3-: ‘4'. . a h". [‘t W.— .“x 5.1,4; vr‘ ' - k I“: _< u'Y‘ . ‘7... ‘3- ‘.. '.o 0‘ ' ' ‘ihl‘ ‘. .U‘; ' ‘I‘L‘ ¢mr v . V q .h,+"‘ v “mm Michigan 8n, ; .1. University This is to certify that the dissertation entitled A DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY OF THE VISUAL PROCESSING OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES IN RELATED DISCOURSE: A COMPARISON OF COMPETENT AND LESS COMPETENT HIGH SCHOOL READERS, COMPETENT MIDDLE SCHOOL READERS, AND COMPETENT ADULT READERS presented by JUDY LEA THOMAS has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for PH.D. Curriculum, Teaching 8 EducationaT Policy / V Mr Major degree in Date 7'2h’85 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771 MSU LIBRARIES “ RETURNING MATERIALS: Place in book drop to remove this checkout from your record. .FINES will be charged if book is returned after the date stamped below. A DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY OF THE VISUAL PROCESSING OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES IN RELATED DISCOURSE: A COMPARISON OF COMPETENT AND LESS COMPETENT HIGH SCHOOL READERS. COMPETENT MIDDLE SCHOOL READERS: AND COMPETENT ADULT READERS By Judy Lea Thomas A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Curriculum. Teaching. and Educational Policy 1985 ABSTRACT A DEVELOPMENTAL STUDY OF THE VISUAL PROCESSING OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES IN RELATED DISCOURSE: A COMPARISON OF COMPETENT AND LESS COMPETENT HIGH SCHOOL READERS. COMPETENT MIDDLE SCHOOL READERS. AND COMPETENT ADULT READERS By Judy Lea Thomas The purpose of the study was to obtain and analyze data concerning the visual processing of syntactic structures as a reflection of psycholinguistic processing. The groups studied and compared were competent and less competent high school readers. competent middle school readers. and competent adult readers. ‘The study focused on the effects of left- and right-embeddings. ability levels. and maturity levels on psycholinguistic processing. The materials used in the study consisted of related discourse using active voice and employing no dependent clauses with the excep- tion of the target embedding. The conditions were presented with the ELL/Biometrics Reading Eye II. an electronic instrument that employs a photoelectric method to record eye movements on heat-sensitive paper. The statistical tests showed. first. there were no significant differences in the visual processing of left- and right-embeddings by competent or less compent high school readers. .Second. there were Judy Lea Thomas significant differences in the visual processing of left- and right- embeddings between competent and less competent high school readers. competent middle school readers. and competent adult readers. These differences were in number of regressions and duration of regressions. This study highlights the developmental nature of information processing and the difference between competent and less competent readers when encountering specific psycholinguistic structures. The present study has established that competent adults and competent high school readers made significant behavioral adjustments to syntactic conditions. These adjustments are in regressions and regression dura- tions. which reflect a maturing inlnemory capacity and search strate- gies. The lack of adjustment in visual behaviors when encountering the more difficult/unfamiliar syntactic structures by middle school readers can now be viewed as part of a developmental pattern in psycholinguis- tic processing. The visual processing behaviors of less competent high school readers can be viewed partly as a lack of experience with difficult syntactic structures. coupled with an inadequate conceptual background. Portions of the data from this study also provide supportive evidence that the cognitive processes that underlie reading can successfully be analyzed during the reading act and that eye movements reflect these complex acts. To those women who reach their goal uncompromised and whole. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This is the culmination of a journey that has seemed at times compelled toward academia. The pursuit of knowledge has often been a shelter for a tattered soul. I would like to thank Dr. Lois Bader for providing the support and academic foundation for this doctoral program. Her keen insight into her students goes beyond their intellectual fulfillment to those needs that nurture and make them whole. I would also like to thank Drs. Larry Lezotte. Eugene Parnell. and Roy Wesselman for serving as members of the doctoral committee. A special thanks is extended to Drs. Dorsey Hammond and Richard Barron. who took the time to anwer the question. "What's next?" for a master's candidate. I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my colleagues. Jean Stewart. David Thompson. Sheila Wright. and Barbara Zynda. for their constant help and encouragement. Without their sup- port this would have been a lonely path. This degree would not be a reality without the love and strength of my parents. Lloyd and Mary Muse. Never deny that those tough years don't build character. Finally. I would to thank my husband and children for their patience. understanding. and sacrifices. There are no words to express the gratitude for knowing they were always there. iv TABLE OF LIST OF TABLES LIST OF FIGURES . Chapter BACKGROUND Introduction . Importance of the Study . Statement of Purpose . Research Questions . Definition of Terms . . Organization of Subsequent Chapters . . CONTENTS REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE . . . Introduction . . . . The Relationship Between Reading Comprehension and Syntactic Structures The Relationship Between Visual Processing Behavior and Reading Comprehension . . . . The Relationship Between Visual Processing Behavior and Syntactic Structures . . . The DeveIOpmental Nature of Syntactic Processing Chapter Summary . . . METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY Introduction . . . . Population . . . . . . Materials . . . Apparatus . Procedure . Design . . Hypotheses . Data Analysis . Summary . Page vii viii mounts»— lO IV. ANALYSIS OF THE DATA Introduction . . ..... Hypotheses and Statistical Tests Hypothesis l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hypothesis 2 Hypothesis 3 Hypothesis A Summary . . . . . . . . . V. SUMMARY, DISCUSSION, AND RECOMMENDATIONS Summary . . . . . . . Discussion Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . ..... Implications for Practice . . . Recommendations for Future Research . . APPENDICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... A. SAMPLES OF LEFT- and RIGHT-EMBEDDED STRUCTURES IN RELATED DISCOURSE . . . . . . . . . B. DIRECTIONS READ TO SUBJECTS BEFORE THE EXPERIMENT . BIBLIOGRAPHY vi Page 7] 73 75 LIST OF TABLES Table Page I. Multivariate Analysis of Variance of D's for Interaction . A9 2. Multivariate Analysis of Variance of D's for Main Effect . A9 3. Univariate Analysis of Variance of D's for Main Effect . . 50 h. Multivariate Analysis of Variance of D's for Interaction . SI 5. Univariate Analysis of Variance of D's for Interaction . . SI 6. Multivariate Analysis of Variance of D's for Main Effect . 52 7. Univariate Analysis of Variance of D's for Main Effect . . 53 vii Figure IO. LIST OF FIGURES Mean Scores for Forward Fixations on Left- and Right-Embeddings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mean Scores for Regressions on Left- and Right- Embeddings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mean Scores for Duration of Forward Fixations on Left- and Right-Embeddings . . . . . . . . Mean Scores for Duration of Regressions on Left- and Right-Embeddings . . . . . . . . . . . . Mean Scores for Duration of Gaze on Left- and Right- Embeddings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mean Scores for Forward Fixations on Left- and Right- Embeddings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .‘. . Mean Scores for Regressions on Left- and Right- Embeddings . . . ..... . . . . . . . . . . Mean Scores for Duration of Forward Fixations on Left- and Right-Embeddings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mean Scores for Duration of Regressions on Left- and Right-Embeddings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mean Scores for Duration of Gaze on Left- and Right- Embeddings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii Page 58 58 59 59 60 6A 6A 65 65 66 CHAPTER I BACKGROUND Intmductien Written language may be analyzed into various levels: letters. letter clusters. syllables. morphemes. words. phrases. sentences and discourse. A skilled reader takes advantage of the rules at the various levels. often in parallel. . . . Grammar provides the context for the subsidiary units. The evidence is massive that context narrows the alternatives among the lower-order units. ‘The contextual function of grammatical rules increases the efficiency of reading the subordinate units that these rules govern. The effi- ciency is realized by less attention to the units. implying reading in fewer fixations. briefer fixation pauses. and fewer regressions. (Gibson 8. Levin. 1975. p. 376) Gibson and Levin have made a statement encompassing the multi- tude of studies relating linguistics. comprehension. and eye movements. Focusing on these areas of psychological research. studies have shown that certain linguistic structures seem to deter comprehension. Read- ers attend longer to those structures that prevent their drive to "make senseJ' Aflthough there remains a great deal of disagreement among researchers regarding the actual components of "making sense." certain linguistic. sociological. physiological. and psychological factors seem to contribute to the process. Recent research on reading comprehension has focused on information-processing analysis and psycholinguistics to shed new light on this complex act (see Gibson. 1972; Gough. 1972; Hochberg. 1970; Laberge & Samuels. 1976; Norman. 1976; Smith. 1971; Trabasso. 1972L The skilled reader can be viewed as an information processor who combines his/her knowledge of the world with an awareness of the structure of language to make predictions about probable meaning of words. phrases. and sentences. The comprehension act is seen as a series of successive stages in which linguistic information is pro- cessed from its input until apprehension has occurred (Gough. 1972). It is suggested that less skilled readers do not sufficiently integrate text material through these stages. but instead process material word by word or sentence by sentence (see Canney & Ninograd. 1979; Garner. 1981; Markman. 1977. 1979). To study this difference in processing behavior. there has been an increase in the number of studies that have examined cognitive processes involved in acquiring knowledge from spe- cific written tasks as well as the apparent effects of surface vari- ables in combination with mental processes. These developments have also revived an earlier technique of comprehension assessment: the analysis of reading eye movements. Many of these studies have used eye movements to determine the relationship between inhibiting linguistic structures and reading efficiency. The study of eye movements in this case is not an end in itself. but a means to observe the process of comprehension in relation to language. Traditional studies of movements as a reflection of psycholinguistic processing date back to the beginning of this century and were primarily concerned with identification of the number and duration of fixations and the number of regressions. ‘These data were collected across variables such as skill of the reader. age of the reader. and difficulty of the material. Tinker (1958liconcluded that this type of research was not promising. but the shift toward analysis of reading comprehension through information-processing methods has changed Tinker's prediction. If the view that understanding a written message is not instantaneous. but involves successive stages that can be analyzed in real time. eye movement research has a future. Researchers can monitor an individual's eye movements over carefully controlled linguistic segments and gain insight into the cognitive processing behaviors of that individual. Furthermore. experiments can begin to examinerthe complex interaction between eye movements. characteristics of the reader. and characteristics of the text. Assessment of information-processing behaviors of readers through eye movement analysis procedures appears to have begun to shed new light on the relationship of language forms to successful process- ing. Studying eye movements as they reflect the interaction of these language forms with the age and ability level of the participants will further our understanding of the complexities of reading comprehension and lend a developmental aspect to the relationship of linguistics. comprehension. and eye movements previously implied by Gibson and Levin. WW Recent research on eye movements and language comprehension has advanced our understanding of the relationship between fixation dura- tion and processing time. the cause of regressive eye movements. the nature of the recognition span. and the effects of particular language structures on variables such as fixations. duration of fixations. and regressions. This study will lend further credence to the view that eye movements are a selective act and a reflectiOn of the cognitive processing behaviors of the reader. The majority of past eye movement studies have been restricted to ambiguous strings of words. list of words or brief phrases. and isolated sentences. In fact. few studies in this area have examined reading behavior using connected discourse. McKonkie (1974) spoke to this point when he noted that we must study individuals who are engaged in reading text to properly understand the way people read. This study will. therefore. pursue the cognitive processing behaviors of readers when they are presented with cohesive paragraphs. A third reason for the studyis importance is to advance our knowledge of the developmental aspects of cognitive processing in relationship to linguistic structures and visual processing. Cohen (1978) and Zynda (1980) have stated a need for investigating both the possibility of a hierarchy of information-processing stages and how that hierarchy applies developmentally to different stages of reading maturity. Finally. the investigation of the processing behaviors of different skill levels within the same age group may shed light on the relationship of ability levels and the developmental nature of reading. Wm Research has established that syntactic structures directly affect the reading and subsequent comprehension of a selection. Eye movement analysis procedures have furthered our knowledge of this relationship by enabling us to view the interaction of a written selection and the cognitive processing behaviors of the reader. An additional component of the reader. ability level. can be viewed interacting with linguistic structures through the use of eye movements. The purpose of this study is to examine the cognitive processing behaviors of competent and less competent high school readers when confronted with selected syntactic structures during the reading of connected discourse. Second. the processing behaviors of competent and less competent high school readers will be compared with competent middle school readers and competent adult readers to examine the developmental component of reading comprehension. W The following research questions were formulated to guide the investigation: » 1. Hill the visual processing behaviors of competent high school readers differ between left and right embedded structures? 2. Hill the visual processing behaviors of less competent high school readers differ between left and right embedded structures? 3. Hill the visual processing behaviors of competent high school readers differ from the visual processing behaviors of less competent high school readers when confronted with left and right embedded structures? 4. Hill the visual processing behaviors of competent high school readers differ from the visual processing behaviors of competent middle school readers when confronted with left and right embedded structures? 5. Hill the visual processing behaviors Of less competent high school readers differ from the visual processing behaviors of competent middle school readers when confronted with left and right embedded structures? 6. Hill the visual processing behaviors of competent high school readers differ from the visual processing behaviors of competent adult readers when confronted with left and right embedded structures? 7. Hill the visual processing behaviors of less competent high school readers differ from the visual processing behaviors of competent adult readers when confronted with left and right embedded structures? The preceding questions were expanded and restated in null hypothesis form for statistical testing. These are presented in Chapter III. Detin1t19n_et_lenms In order that the reader may better understand this study. an explanation of relevant terms is provided. .1nIQLm5I19n:nn9995&1ng_n§haxign§. Information-processing behaviors refer to the various encoding and comparing operations that interact to result in the comprehension of written material. .Qggn11lxe_pngces§1ng_behaxigns. Cognitive processing behaviors refer to those mental acts that occur during the comprehension act in reading. .11sual_nzgcessing_benaxigns. Visual processing behaviors refer to those eye movements that comprise the visual component in informa- tion processing: number of forward fixations. number of regressions. forward fixation duration. regression duration. and gaze duration. Syntax. Syntax refers to the manner in which words are ordered to form the phrases. clauses. or sentences in a language. W. A left embedded sentence contains a relative clause following and modifying the sentence subject. There- fore. L.E. = subject + relative clause + verb + object. W. A right embedded sentence contains a relative clause following and modifying the object of the sentence. Therefore. R.E. = subject + verb + object + relative clause. A prepositional phrase was added to each sentence so that the relative clauses would line up letter for letter. For example: L.E. sentence: A In the kitchen the cook that Martha trained hired the help. R.E. sentence: The cook hired the help that Martha trained in the kitchen. .Cohestxe_dlscguts§. Cohesive discourse refers to a paragraph written in such a manner that words and sentences are related and develop a common theme or story. WW. Competent high school readers are defined as tenth- and eleventh-grade students selected on the basis of teacher judgment and the attainment of a score falling between the 55th and the 75th percentiles on the Reading Comprehension section of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test (Level E. Form 1). WWW. Less competent high school readers are defined as tenth- and eleventh-grade students selected on the basis of teacher judgment and the attainment of a score falling between thel45th and 25th percentiles on the Reading Comprehension section of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test (Level E. Form 1). W. Competent middle school readers are defined as sixth-grade students selected on the basis of teacher judgment and the attainment of a score falling between the 50th and 75th percentiles on the Reading Comprehension Section of the Com- prehensive Test of Basic Skills (Level 2. Form S). W. Competent adult readers refers to graduate students in the Elementary and Special Education Department of a large midwestern university. WWW Chapter II contains a review of pertinent literature in the following areas: (1) the relationship between reading comprehension and syntactic structures. (2) the relationship between visual process- ing behavior and reading comprehension. (3) the relationship between visual processing behavior and syntactic structures. and (4) the devel- opmental value of syntactic processing. Chapter III presents a description of the materials and proce- dures employed in the study. The design of the study is presented. Chapter IV reports the results of the data collected. compared. and analyzed for this study. Chapter V includes a summary of the investi- gation. appropriate conclusions. implications. and recommendations for fu rth er research. CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE lntngductien The review of related literature is organized under four major headings: (l) The Relationship Between Reading Comprehension and Syn- tactic Structures. (2) The Relationship Between Visual Processing Behavior and Reading Comprehension. (3) The Relationship Between Visual Processing Behavior and Syntactic Structure. and (4) The Developmental Nature of Syntactic Processing. The findings of the research in these areas served as the basis for developing the hypotheses for this study. W W ‘ Reading is finding out what sentences say. For this reason. most first grade readers introduce words not as individual items but as parts of sentences . . . . To be able to read longer sentences intelligently. he [the reader] must be able to recognize (either consciously or unconsciously) the grammatical positions that the different words occupy. That is to say. he must be able to recog- nize the structure (or grammar) of such sentences. (Allen. 1964. p. 194) The skilled reader is viewed as an individual who contributes his or her conceptual knowledge of both the language of the world with the graphemic information of text in order to effectively extract mean- ing (Gibson & Levin. 1975; Goodman. 1970; Smith. 1971). This complex interaction between reader and text gained considerable attention during the early 19605 due to the transformational grammar*theory of IO 11 Noam Chomsky (1965). His theory is a formal description of the struc- tural relations of sentences and the manner in which words and senten- ces are related to one another. Every sentence can be represented on a surface level and a deep structure level. For readers to gain meaning from print. they must be able to decode words and understand their meaning. while at the same time be aware of the grammatical interrela- tionships which signify the underlying meaning of a particular sen- tence. Over the years Chomskyds linguistic theory has spurred researchers to investigate a number of crucial aspects of the relation- ship between language structures and comprehension. One area of con- centration has centered on research to establish the effects of specific syntactic structures on the comprehension abilities of the reader. Allen (1964) noted that for the student to be able to read longer sentences intelligently "he must be able to recognize the structure (or grammar) of such sentences" (p. 194). Fagan (1971) concurred: "For children to comprehend what they read. they must be able to understand the written language structures by which ideas. information. and concepts are conveyed" (p. 169L Marcus (1971) noted that a reader may find print material ambiguous if there is a discrepancy in the relationship involving decoding words. knowing the meanings of the words as dictated by the context. and understanding the mechanics of grammatical structures. He attempted to discover the relationship between syntactic complexity and 12 comprehension facility by developing a diagnostic tool to measure comprehension of syntactic structures for intermediate grade students. He reported that prepositional phrase modifiers and sentences which contained relative clauses in the subject-verb-object pattern of independent clauses were among the most difficult to comprehend. A hierarchy of difficulty was established concerning specific prepositions and semantic groups of prepositions by Foust (1973). Those prepositions denoting temporal and abstract relationships were identified as the most difficult. followed by those prepositions denoting directional and positional relationships. Fagan (1971) added to our information concerning levels of syntactic difficulty through his investigation of the effect that the number and types of transformations had on sentence comprehension. In his study. 440 fourth-. fifth-. and sixth-grade pupils read passages containing different transformations. He found that appoSitives. ing- nominalizations. pronouns. common elements deletion. and negatives were the most difficult structures to comprehend. In addition. Fagan reported that the complexity of the transformation rather than the number of transformations in a sentence had the greatest effect on reading comprehension. More supportive data were obtained by Stoodt (l970).*who found significant correlations between reading comprehen- sion and comprehension of various connectives. A related area that has received considerable attention in psycholinguistic and educational research has been the relationship of anaphoric structures to reading comprehension. Bormuth. Manning. Carr. 13 and Pearson (1970) presented fourth graders with short passages con- taining anaphoric structures. After reading each passage. the children answered a question based on the target syntactic structure. Bormuth et a1. derived a ranking of difficulty from their results indicating that structures such as personal pronouns (“Joe left the room. .fle haduufl) and semantic substitutes ("Those steel towers are antennas. These objegts arena") are more difficult to understand than pro-verbs with so ("Joe may go. If 59. we will...."). However. Lesgold (1974) disputed these findings and developed a different hierarchical arrange- ment. Among the variations Lesgold's students recorded were findings that pro-clauses and pro-verbs with so are more difficult to comprehend than personal pronouns. Lesgold attributed these differences to the influence of background knowledge in reading comprehension. Richek (1974) studied children's comprehension of anaphoric forms (noun. pronoun. and null) and the effects of contextual varia- tions on these forms. She found significant differences among the three forms with comprehension dropping to 60% in the null form. Con- sistent with Fagan's conclusions was the suggestion that the complexity of a sentence affects comprehension of the structures in that sentence. but Richek added that efficient methods of measuring complexity had not yet been defined. However. Fodor. Garrett. and Bever (1968) identified the main verb as a determiner of complexity in a sentence. since verbs limit the syntactic choices with which they can occur. In a more recent study. Barnitz (1980) examined the syntactic effects on reading comprehension of pronoun-referent structures by 14 children in grades two. four. and six. Although the findings have much to say regarding the order and directional influences of specific pronoun-referents. they also appear to clearly indicate that syntactic aspects of anaphora do contribute to children's success with comprehen- sion. Barnitz concluded that the role of syntax certainly plays an important role in children's acquisition of successful reading skills but concurred with Lesgold's (1974) finding that knowledge of the world can also affect the comprehensibility of a sentence. While the preceding discussion has emphasized the importance of syntax as a contributor to the comprehension act. researchers have also studied the manner by which the reader is influenced by grammatical structure. Levin and Kaplan (1970) commented. "Readers . . . do not attend equally to every element of the text. In fact. they sample the text. attending to some elements--letters. syllables. words. phrases. and so forth--sometimes in great detail. at other times less densely" (p. 119). Schlesinger's (1968) studies reported that people tend to read to the end of units. chains. or phrases. which are both syntactic and semantic wholes. Continuing this focus. Kolers (1970) and Miller and Coleman (1967) reported on the relationship between grammar and context. Kolers found that readers make fewer errors over the final three-fifths of sentences. and Miller and Coleman found more correct answers at the ends of sentences using a cloze procedure. They concluded in each case that the greater amount of syntactic data facilitated the readers' quest for understanding. 15 Using a technique that presented a sentence blurred in varying degrees. Sawyer (1971) reported that readers were able to recognize the existence of right embedding under poorer blurred conditions than left embeddings. Readers also found it easier to recognize "by + agent" phrases in passive sentences under more blurred conditions compared to similar prepositional phrases in active sentences. "By" phrases introducing locatives were more easily recognized than "by" phrases introducing agents in simple passive sentences. Levin. Grossman. Kaplan. and Yang (1972) studied right and left embedded sentences. Subjects were asked to read sentences with various portions deleted and to fill in the blank so as to form grammatical sentences. Their results indicated that readers anticipate an embed- ding more often after a main verb than before it. Also. the eye-voice span of these individuals supported the notion that an individual processes phrases in relation to the grammatical structure of the sentence. In order to study the phenomenon of organization into mean- ingful wholes. Cramer (1970) chose two groups of junior college readers who were poor in reading comprehension either because of vocabulary deficits or because of word-by-word reading. These groups. with a group of good readers. were presented stories in four different modes: sentences. single words. phrases. and fragmented groupings. The word- by-word readers comprehended better in the phrase mode than they did in any other mode. performing just as well as the good readers in that 16 mode. Remediation based on chunking information into constituents may prove to benefit the reading comprehension of word-by-word readers. In summary. there appears to be consensus among researchers that the successful reader must anticipate the structural properties of a sentence in order to comprehend the intended message. However. there is evidence to suggest that some syntactic structures are more diffi- cult to process and are likely to affect readers in a variety of ways depending on variables such as age and worldly knowledge. FUture investigations are necessary to clarify the role of syntax in language processing and passage comprehensibility. In the meantime.1any analy- sis Of the interplay between reader and text must acknowledge the potent role that syntax plays in reading. WW9 WOW The research on eye movements during reading is fairly extensive and dates back to the turn of the century (see Levy-Schoey a (”Regan. 1979. and Tinker. 1958. for reviews of research). Personal introspection into the reading experience would lead one to perceive that the eyes move smoothly and continuously along the line of print. To the contrary. the actual motor activity has been documented as being essentially discontinuous and featuring a succession of pauses and jumps. Huey (1908) conducted the initial full-scale investigations into the apparent nature of eye movements during reading. However. he credited the research of Emile Joval and a series of articles published 17 in 1878-1879 as being the earliest recorded documentation of eye movement behavior. Over the years a variety of methods have been employed to record and measure eye movements. Needless to say. recent technologi- cal advances have resulted in sophisticated instruments capable of gathering data under well-controlled experimental conditions. (See Young & Sheena. 1979. for a review of current eye movement recording methodsJ The literature on the characteristics of eye movements has also discerned several types of movements: 1. ,Ennnand_t13nt19n: The pause the eye makes while the reader recognizes letters. words. or phrases. The size of the pause (duration) is dependent on characteristics of the reading material as well as the reader and varies from about .22 seconds for easy reading material to .32 seconds for reading objective test items (Dechant & Smith. 1977). 2. .Begnessixe_t1xat19n: The pause the eye makes after a return to a previously fixated piece of material. It is a movement that goes in the opposite direction from the line of print and is likely to occur when the flow of thought has been interrupted or when perceptions are recognized as being inaccurate (Bayle. 1942). 3. Intenflzatlgmmments: The quick. short movement the eye makes as it travels between pauses. No information is taken in by the reader at this time. 4. ,Gaze_nnngt19n: The total amount of time a reader looks at a unit of text. Gaze duration is related to the difficulty of the 18 reading task and is likely to include numerous fixations. regressions. and interfixation movements (Carpenter & Just. 1977). 5. .Betnnn_sngep§: The movement theleye.makes after a line is read and the reader moves to the next line. Any survey Of the available research will reveal an abundance of data concerning the relationship of language—processing behaviors to the eye movements of readers. For example. Carmichael and Dearborn (1947) wrote: Reading involves patterning movements of the eyes and adjustments of the eyes themselves into appropriate view. in a suitable temporal order. symbols which are perceived as words or phrases. 'These words and processes which are related to them then evoke images. ideas and action and lead to states called by such names as comprehension and enjoyment. (p. 44) Moreover. earlier investigations (Anderson. 1937; Frandsen. 1934; Judd & Buswell. 1922; Walker. 1933) indicated that eye movements were responsive to the central processing operations of the reader. Judd and Buswell (1922) measured the eye movements of fifth-grade pupils reading a series of increasingly difficult passages. They found that the number of fixations and the length of fixations were affected by the difficult material. Some students tended to increase the number of fixation puses in an area recognized as being difficult due to the additional mental requirements. Other students simply compensated for the difficult material by lengthening the amount of time spent fixating on a particular word part or phrase. A third type of adjustment also occurred. Individual readers varied their strategy for the difficult passages between increased number of fixations and longer fixation pauses. Judd and Buswell attributed these variations among students to 19 the fact that "all of the more complex processes are highly individu- ated" (p. 13). , Walker (1933) studied the adaptive behaviors of good readers to alterations in the nature of the material being read. The duration Of each fixation increased with the difficulty of the reading material and the requirements of comprehension. In addition. regressive movements increased in more difficult passages leading Walker to conclude that the increased demands in comprehension were causing the subjects to make more rechecks on the material previously read. By documenting the eye movements of both good and poor readers confronted with the same reading task. Anderson (1937) showed that good readers differed from less skilled readers in the flexibility of their responses to difficult material. Although each group exhibited an increase in the number of fixations. the duration of the fixations. and the nUmber of regressions. the better readers made significantly greater adjustments to the difficult materiaL. The poorer readers. on the other hand. recorded negligible eye movement alterations regardless of the textual demands. Heiner and Henderson (1974) reported similar findings in a study which examined the eye movement behavior of skilled seventh-grade readers using material containing cloze deletions and nontreated materials. The good readers increased their fixations and regressions on the cloze materials. while poor readers made fewer fixations and regressions on the cloze materials. The researchers speculated that the poor readers did not adjust their visual processing strategies to 20 accommodate the demands of the cl oze material but merely intensified their effort by extending the duration of their fixations. The advent of modern computerized eye tracking equipment has allowed for a more thorough analysis of the processing behaviors of skilled and unskilled readers. A doctoral dissertation by Goltz (1975) reported on "competent" and "less competent" college students' eye movements during the reading of historical texts. 'The better readers used shorter fixation pauses regardless of the difficulty of the material or the comprehension requirements. ‘This same group adjusted to the increased processing demands of complex material by simply lengthening the duration of their fixations. In comparison. the less competent readers exhibited constant fixation pause duration but began to make a greater number of fixations as the material increased in difficulty. In the case of regressions. Goltz noted that the competent reader tended to make a regression immediately after shortening prior fixations. From this. he inferred that the skilled reader anticipates difficult conditions and begins to adjust processing behavior before a regression. The less competent reader. on the other hand. made a regression immediately after lengthening prior fixations. This was interpreted as an attempt to process the more difficult information through an expansion of regular fixation patterns. and having to regress as a result of cognitive difficulties. It should be noted that these results are likely to be somewhat restricted primarily due to the type of material being read. However. it would also seem evident that the research on the visual processing patterns of readers has yielded 21 different findings due to variables such as the individual. the text. the purpose for reading. and the measurement apparatus. Mackworth (1972) also compared poor and skilled readers in an experiment called the "missing word task)‘ The children. from second. fourth. and sixth grades. were asked to choose a word from a list of nouns and a list of verbs to fill in the blank of a sentence. The eye movements of the subjects were recorded. and the duration of time spent looking at the wrong list was computed. Good readers spent half as much time looking at the wrong category as the poor readers. Both groups made significant improvement between second and fourth grade; while the good readers continued to improve. the poor readers made very little change between fourth and sixth grade. Another area of concern to researchers of eye movements has been to determine the size of an area from which a person picks up information during a fixation in reading. Therefore. it only seems natural to inquire as to the amount of information available during a fixation pause and how that information is integrated by the reader from one fixation to the next. The region from which visual information is gathered is called the perceptual span. Determining the size and characteristic nature of this area has long intrigued researchers (see Huey. 1908). Somerof the earliest studies involved tachistoscopic presentations of letters or words to subjects and then testing to see how many of the items could be recalled. It was believed that since the material was presented very quickly. the subject would not be able to make an additional eye 22 movement. Therefore. the amount of material viewed during one exposure was analogous to a single fixation in reading. Critics have properly noted. however. that there is no available evidence to support his notion. and "it is very likely that the normal reading and tachisto- scopic reports vary enough to induce different strategies in subjects" (Raynor. 1975. p. 66). Taylor (1965) adopted another method to identify the size of the perceptual span. By studying the eye movement photographs of over 12.000 readers. he reported the average span Of vision in reading English to be about four or five letters around a fixation point. His calculations were based on the number of fixations per 100 words of text. and the subjects ranged from first grade to college age. Taylor's method of estimating the perceptual span. albeit an improve- ment on tachistoscopic research. was based on the assumption that successive fixations do not overlap or that they overlap the same amount. Subsequent research (Rayner & McConkie. 1977) has demonstrated that this assumption is probably false. A computer-based method has recently been developed that seems to allow subjects to»engage in the normal act of reading for meaning while data are extracted regarding the perceptual span. An eye move- ment monitor was attached to a computer that was programmed to record eye position data such as the locus of a fixation and its duration (Rayner & McConkie. 1977). A series of experiments have since been conducted with this equipment and extensively reported on in the 23 literature concerning perceptual processes in reading (McConkie. 1976. 1979; O'Regan. 1979; Rayner. 1975. 1979; Rayner 8. McConkie. 1977). The evidence suggests that word shape and specific letters can be distinguished as far out as 10 to 12 character spaces from a fixation. whereas the meaning of words can be identified no more than four letter positions to the left of the center of vision and no more than about 10 to 12 letter positions to the right. Such data have led Rayner and McConkie (1979) to conclude that reading takes place in a relatively linear fashion. with the reader rarely identifying more than two or three words per fixation. Information was also learned from these studies concerning the positioning of an eye fixation and the integration process over sepa- rate fixations. Readers seem to avoid fixating the last few letters of the last word in a sentence. the punctuation mark and space between sentences. and the first few letters in the next sentence (Rayner & McConkie. 1979L The word the tended to be skipped more often that several three-letter verbs occurring in the same context and resulted in fewer and shorter fixations (O'Regan. 1979). Also. there appears to be some relationship between fixations and word-length patterns. which has been interpreted as being reflective of the types of cognitive processes occurring at specific points in the text. (rRegan (1980) and Rayner (1979) have demonstrated that where the eye lands on words of different lengths is not haphazard or random. Rayner reported the eye tends to fixate the center of short words and slightly left of center for longer words. In a series of experiments 24 conducted by Rayner. Well. and Pollatsek (1980) to determine specifi- cally how much information was taken in to the left of the fixation point. they concluded that the effective visual field extends from the beginning of the currently fixated word (but no further than four characters to the left of fixation) up to about 15 characters to the right of the fixation. Rayner (1975) examined the reader's ability to integrate information from two separate fixations into a single repre- sentation. He attributed this occurrence to higher-order mental opera- tions and observed that certain visual or semantic discrepancies introduced between fixations would prohibit the integrative process. Apparently the decisions concerning where to direct the eye and how long it should remain for a fixation are connected to central process- ing abilities of the individual. Research of the type described here- tofore may be headed toward answering vital questions about the perceptual span in reading and the nature of fluent reading. A related study designed to provide evidence that the eyes reflect the internal processing abilities of the individual was conducted by Haber. Haber. and Furlin (1980). Subjects were presented with portions of a passage that ended in mid-sentence. 'The reader had to guess the next word. Additional portions of the text would then appear again ending in the middle of a sentence. and the subjects had to guess what the next word was. Sometimes the word to be guessed was merely indicated by blank spaces. sometimes by the number of letters in the correct word. and sometimes by both the number of letters and the shape of the word. Regardless of the difficulty of the text. the 25 reader's guessing accuracy was increased by knowledge of the correct number of letters and the shape of the word. The authors argued that the results are evidence of how readers can make use of word length information and to help them extract the meaning of the text. The evidence also seems to suggest that the eye picks up information beyond the center of a current fixation. This provided additional support to the conclusions reached by Rayner and McConkie regarding the nature of the perceptual span. In summary. the available eye movement research has indicated that the skilled reader's eye movements are flexible and adaptive to demands of the text being read. As the cognitive processing load increases. the reader responds by altering existing eye movement patterns and durations to accommodate the brain and to gain meaning from the printed materials. And. as Just and Carpenter (1976) aptly noted. "since eye fixations are sensitive to the structure of the internal representation being constructed or operated upon. they provide a valuable methodology for examining how linguistic material is interpreted" (p. 471). W W If eye movements are sensitive to specific features of text such as word length and shape. it is reasonable to assume that the linguistic structure of text can also influence visual processing behaviors. Moreover. a survey of the literature revealed that references to grammatical structure and eye movements are fairly 26 extensive and date back to someuof the earliest research efforts (Huey. 1908; Judd & Buswell. 1922). Bayle's (1942) inquiry into regressive eye movements attributed many of the right-left shifts to reader difficulties with word order. word groupings. the juxtaposition of certain words. the absence of punctuation. shifts in the meanings of words. and in the particulari- ties of key sentence units (p. 17). Mackworth. as reported by Miller and Isard (1964). found that self-embedded sentences increased both the number of fixations and the number of regressions for subjects. In addition. the area of processing difficulty was centered on the string of seemingly unrelated verbs that the reader encountered near the end of the self-embedding. Unfortunately. the embedded structures selected for use in this study were abnormally long and unreflective of normal reading material. Mehler. Bever. and Carey (1967) studied the relationship of surface phrase structure to eye fixation patterns of university students. Their attempt was to develop a precise rule that would explain eye fixation movements on the basis of surface syntactic structure. Subjects read sentences with varying types of ambiguity and the data indicated that the reader fixates on the first half of each immediate constituent. Initially the Mehler et a1. finding was hailed as an important step in the area of psycholinguistic research. Gradu- ally. however. limitations were discerned (Wanat. 1971). Mehler et a1. discarded approximately half of their data and failed to distinguish between forward fixations and regressions. 'Their procedures also 27 failed to take into account the duration of a fixation. making it impossible to determine which areas were the most ti me consuming to process. Finally. Mehler et al. used ambiguous sentences to test their subjects. which further limited the generalizability of their finding. Syntactic structures such as active versus passive and right- embedding versus left-embedding have been studied in terms of their comprehensibility and relative effects on eye movements. Wanat (1971). Klein and Kurkowski (1974). Bader. Pearce. and Thompson (1980). and Zynda (1980) looked for significant alterations in the way eyes are directed by reading such sentences. Wanat's subjects read varying syntactic structures in isolation. He found that the structurally less predictable left-embedding requires more visual attention. Although the numbers of fixations and regressions were equal between the left- and right-embeddings. the left-embedded forms required more total time to process. Moreover. in both structures the greatest fixation time was allocated to the main verb of the sentence. 0n the other hand. subjects were differentiated only in terms of regressions on the active and passive sentences. Wanat posited that this was because of the structural predictability within the sentence frame as contrasted to the immediate constituent differences of the left- and right- embeddings. Therefore. forward fixations were not affected. but when grammatical expectations were not confirmed. regressive fixations occurred. Klein and Kurkowski (1974) examined the total number of eye movements necessary to process right-branching and self-embedded 28 sentences in isolation. 0n half of their trials. subjects were also forewarned that questions would follow the sentence presentation. Their results showed a greater number of eye movements for the self- embedded sentences and for the trials on which questions were asked. Unfortunately. only total movements were reported and no attempt was made to differentiate forward fixations. regressions. or gaze dura- tions. .An additional limitation is that the self-embedded sentences used in this study were atypical and not representative of the types found in normal reading situations. Bader et a1. (1980) investigated the processing of left- and right-embedded sentences under conditions of related and unrelated discourse. Their subjects' eye movements were monitored while reading the embedded structures in unrelated sentences and in cohesive para- graphs. They found that both context. supplied by preceding discourse. and syntactic structure affect cognitive processing. Unrelated sen- tences were processed more slowly than those that were part of a para- graph. while the left-embedded structures were processed more slowly than the right-embedded structures in both conditions. They also found that the left-embedded constructions increased the number and duration of regressions regardless of the contextual condition. but that forward fixations did not significantly differ. These results are in general agreement with Wanat's (1971) findings concerning processing time and number of forward fixations for left-embedded constructions. The find- ings concerning regressive eye movements are not in agreement. which Bader et a1. attributed to differences in design. contextual elements. 29 and reader task. Further research seems warranted to clarify the role of syntactic structures in reading comprehension. In a more recent study. Zynda (1980) compared the abilities of sixth-grade competent readers and adult competent readers to process syntactic structures under conditions of related and unrelated discourse. Eye movements were recorded while these subjects read left- and right-embedded structures in conditions presenting unrelated sentences and in cohesive paragraphs. She found that the ability to process syntactic and semantic elements is not fully developed in children 11 or 12 years old. She speculated that these young readers were attending more to semantic rather than syntactic elements which may be an adaptive characteristic of normal growth toward reading maturity. It was noted that the younger readers seemed more like the adults in number of fixations and less like adults in duration of fixations. An interpretation that Zynda made is that the number of fixations may be related to linguistic chunking while duration of eye movement may be related more to memory and memory search. The role of Context in guiding eye movements was the subject of an earlier study by Morton (1964b). University students orally read ZOO-word passages of statistical approximations. and the results showed that greater contextual constraint decreased the number of both forward and regressive eye movements. Morton noted that the better readers were able to use more contextual constraints and thus read faster as the difficulty of the passage increased. The major limitation to his study. however. is that statistical approximations as opposed to 30 connected English text were used. Therefore. his results do not shed much light on contextual constraints and cognitive processing in normal reading. Carpenter and Just (1977) examined the rapid psychological processes that integrate information across the sentences of a paragraph. Specifically. their study was designed to determine if regressions are selective acts and indicative of the intersentence relations provided by pronoun referents. Subjects read short para- graphs with varying linguistic cues to the pronoun referents. The results suggest that regressive fixations are at least partially due to the reader's efforts to successfully integrate the linguistic elements of the paragraph. The pronoun referents. although frequently trigger- ing regressive eye movements. were judged to be one of many possible linguistic structures that play a role in the cognitive processing of connected discourse. Shebilske and Reid (1979) also studied integrative comprehen- sion processes through eye movement analysis. They asked college students to read a 1.888-word narrative text and recorded the total gaze duration per sentence. By converting their data to words per minute for each sentence. they were able to detect variations in pro- cessing time for sentences that had to be integrated with others to form higher-order conceptual units. Although their methodology was not concerned with numbers and locations of fixations or regressions. the data provide additional evidence that the cognitive processes that 31 underlie comprehension can be analyzed during reading. and the eye movements are reflective of these complex acts. Kennedy and Pidcock (1981) studied eye movements and variations in reading time by degrading text that had been "dovetailed" to facili- tate reading ease. They suggested that reading speed is not only helped by higher-order structural properties of text. like dovetailing. but also from local features. particularly word length and associative relationships between words. Using eye movements in the analysis of semantically biased sentences. Rayner. Carson. and Frazier (1983) looked into the question of whether syntactic and semantic information contribute independently to sentence understanding or whether they interact in the comprehension process. In their first experiment they showed that real-world knowledge (pragmatic) does not influence the reader's initial choice of a syntactic analysis. The second experiment in this study provided evidence that reading times were longer when the most likely analysis did not correspond to the analysis selected by the readers' prefer- ences. Even though readers pursue just one syntactic analysis of a sentence. they do eventually arrive at the semantically and pragmati- cally most plausible analysis of a sentence. Taken together. the two experiments argue for the existence of distant processors in the sentence-comprehension mechanism. In summary. as one review the research analyzing the effects of linguistic structure on visual processing behavior. the impression persists that a strong relationship exists. although the exact nature 32 of the relationship seems unclean. The different findings from one study to the next are partially due toIvariations in eye movement recording devices. but mostly due to the unusual number of approaches adopted by the researchers. Results obtained from ambiguous sentences or the reading of isolated sentences must differ from the more typical structures found in connected discourse. Additional variations can be attributed to differences in the individual. the structure of the text. and the purpose of the reader. Finally. a portion of the observed differences must reflect a problem inherent in any research on reading comprehension. ‘The absence of an agreed-upon model of the underlying processes. coupled with controversy over the nature and role of eye movement research. will not yield uniformity. Perhaps we are fortunate the interim search for solutions. albeit ponderous at times. has constantly shifted directions and seems a bit closer to unlocking the mysteries of the human language processon. There needs to be a continued effort to design studies that approximate natural reading conditions as a means of probing cognitive processing and reading comprehension. WW Huey (1908) agreed that depending on our reading purpose. we all at some time or another read by letters. words. or phrases. using whatever method will facilitate the extraction of meaning. However. in order not to mislead us. he added that "we see. too. that the reader's acquirement of ease and power in reading comes through increasing ability to read in larger units" q» 116). Just what do we know about 33 how the reader acquires the ability to process larger units of syntac- tic structure more efficiently? Chomskyis (1969) study revealed that children were still engaged in active syntactic acquisition up to age 9 and perhaps even beyond. It was also noted that while children vary in their rate of acquisition. they do not vary in the order of acquisition. Developmen- tal studies done by Levin and Turner (1966) indicated that effective use of syntactic structures increases with age and skill. which is interpreted to mean that the skilled reader is sensitive to the syntac- tic regularities of language and uses higher-order units to acquire meaning. Levin and Turner (1968) hypothesized that the phrase was the unit of decoding and attempted to test it developmentally by measuring the eye-voice span. They asked college undergraduates and students in second. fourth. sixth. eighth. and tenth grades to read phrase-embedded sentences in both active and embedded sentences in both active and passive voice. as well as unstructured word lists. Findings revealed that the eye-voice span increased with age and was significantly longer for sentences than for the unstructured word lists for all ages and sentence types. {An important finding of the study was that all of the age groups. except second graders. ended their eye-voice span at phrase boundaries. Readers as early as fourth grade chunked their oral reading into phrase units. but this tendency did not appear to grow stronger between fourth grade and adulthood. However. Resnick (1970) found this tendency to be stronger in adults. although also present in 34 children. Levin and Turner's (1968) findings are consistent with Tinker's (1965) research. which described eye movement patterns in reading as becoming adultlike at the fourth—grade level. Steiner. Weiner. and Cromer (1971) further corroborated the previous developmental findings when they examined the effect of a type of comprehension training on good and poor readers in fifth grade. When given a word-by—word presentation of a story. good readers made anticipation errors that were syntactically and semantically sound and often identified whole phrases rather than single words. This would suggest that the fifth graders were capable of structuring their reading into phrase units. This study supports a body of evidence demonstrating that the phrase is the major decoding unit for skilled readers. Rode (1974) studied the effects of different syntactic structures on the eye-voice span. using subjects in the third. fourth. and fifth grades. Consistent with other studies. the eye-voice span increased with age. The data also indicated that the type of phrase. noun or verb. had a powerful effect on the eye-voice span of the subjects at all age levels with the span expanding in noun phrases and constricting in verb phrases. The eye-voice span was also found to terminate at verb phrases significantly more often that at noun phrases. The last finding raises the possibility that the clause is the syntactic unit that readers use for decoding rather than the phrase. Rode also speculated that short-term memory development may be a determining factor in explaining why the third graders in her study 35 were able to chunk words into phrase units but not clause units. 'The fourth-grade subjects began to chunk clause units together. and Rode hypothesized that an increase in short-term memory enabled them to make more efficient use of language ability. Siler (1973) compared the effects of syntactic and semantic violations on the oral-reading performance of second and fourth graders. His findings. similar for both grade levels. indicated that the category of syntactic violations and the category of combined syntactic and semantic violations were more disruptive than the category of semantic violations. but no more disruptive than each separately. Syntax appeared to have a greater disruptive effect than semantics in oral-reading performance. On the other hand. syntactic complexity seems to be an aid to comprehension and recall. rather than a hindrance. according to a study done by Pearson (1974) using third- and fourth-grade readers. Students preferred cohesive. less heavily embedded forms. The finding of the aided-recall section of the experiment led to the conclusion that a causal relation cannot help but be stored in a unified. subordinated chunk. Children appeared to store causal relations in long-term memory in a cued form and retrieve it in that form (which may have been more natural and familiar to them). regardless of whether the initial input was cued or uncued. It may be proposed that the children in Pearson's study responded as they did because the forms they chose were more familiar to them. Hypothesizing that comprehension is aided by familiar syntac- 36 tic structures. Tatham (1970) prepared sentences on two levels of syntactic complexity and had second and fourth graders read them. Comprehension was better on those selections which coincided syntacti- cally with frequent patterns of oral language. However. as the reader matures. comprehension must expand to include written styles that are decidedly different from spoken patterns. Barnitz (1980) used children in grades two. four. and six to' determine the development in comprehension of selected pronoun referent structures. Three linguistic comparisons were made along the dimension of referent type. where the pronoun refers to a noun or noun phrase versus pronoun-referent structures in which the pronoun refers to a clause or sentence; referent order. where the pronoun follows its referent versus pronoun-referent structures where the pronoun precedes its referent; and referent distance. where the pronoun and referent are located within the same sentence versus structures where the pronoun and referent are in separate sentences. Analysis of the data demon- strated that: (l) noun phrase pronominals were easier to comprehend that sentential pronomials; (2) structures with forward reference were easier to comprehend than structures with backward reference; and (3) there was no difference between intrasentential and intersentential structures. A hierarchy of difficulty for each grade was also con— structed based on these findings. Barnitz concluded that except for a few isoteric structures. pronoun-referent structures are generally comprehensible by the time children reach sixth grade. 37 Sheldon (1974) studied the developmental aspects of language processing when she compared the strategies used by adults with those used by four- and five-year-olds when processing relative clauses. The clauses were inserted either after the subject or after the object and related either to the subject or to the object of the sentence. She found that children and adults used the same processing strategies but differed in the emphasis placed on the particular strategies which explained the particular types of sentences on which both groups made the most errors. Adults seemed to over-rely on the adjacency strategy. which caused them to make more errors in those sentences in which the relative clause directly followed the subject and in those sentences in which the relative clause followed the object. making the object of the sentence the object of the clause. _Children. however. relied on the parallel-function~strategy. and so made more errors in those sentences in which the noun phrases and the relative clauses did not have similar functions. The children also over-relied on the extra-position strategy when attempting to find the antecedent to the relative pronoun in object relatives. Huang (1983) continued Shel don's lead to study the development of children's comprehension of embedded structures in his study of embedded sentences with and without semantic constraint. Pairs of embedded sentences ([1] The apple that the boy is eating is red; [2] The wagon that the horse is pulling is green) are syntactically correct. but one is inconsistent with the subject's general knowledge 38 of the world (The wagon is pulling the horse and the horse is greenh By reducing the number of noun-verb-noun (adjective) pairings. the semantic constraints should aid in the correct reading of such sentences. The results of Huang's study showed that children can compre- hend embedded sentences with semantic constraints at an earlier age than they can understand embedded sentences without such constraints. The subjects could interpret correctly the former sentences from age seven onwards. but they are only able to comprehend the latter sen- tences after age 13. This would seem to underscore the developmental nature of syntax as a tool of comprehension. In summary. readers as early as third grade have demonstrated an ability to use syntactic structures to process reading material effectively. This processing ability increases with age and skill to include more demanding syntactic understanding. Reading material is processed into meaningful constituents. evidence having been presented for both the phrase and the clause as the main unit of decoding. Younger readers also seem to respond better to familiar syntactic structures and are aided by knowledge of the world in making predic- tions in the early stages of reading. In summary. comparatively little can be said concerning significant developmental stages in processing syntactic structures. There have been relatively few studies that have attempted such an investigation and even fewer that have studied high school students. The majority of experiments researched for this study did not go beyond 39 the intermediate grades. or jumped from young children to adults. missing the high school group. More investigators need to consider adding a development component to their design. Wu This chapter reviewed the related literature and research in four sections. In the first section. literature and research were summarized which identified syntactic structures that may contribute to reading-comprehension problems. The second section in this chapter cited research and litera- ture discussing the relationship between visual processing behaviors and reading comprehension. There was general agreement that the eye movements of a skilled reader reflect flexibility and adaptation to the demands of the material being read. More effective and mature readers make fewer fixations and fewer regressions. have a larger span of recognition than do less effective readers. and employ a dUration of fixation that is in proportion to their span of recognition. When the cognitive-processing load increases. the skilled reader will alter his/her eye movement patterns and durations to accommodate the brain and to gain meaning from the printed material. The research and literature in the third section of this chapter reported on the relationships between syntactic structure of text and the visual processing behaviors of the readers. There was strong evidence of a relationship between selected linguistic struc- tures and eye movement patterns such as forward fixations. regressive fixations. and gaze durations. Unfortunately. the exact nature of the 4O relationship is unclear due primarily to the variety of approaches researchers have adopted for the experiments. The fourth section of the chapter summarized literature and research on the developmental aspects of visual processing of syntactic structures. Those researchers who added a developmental component to their investigations usually compared children through the intermediate grades to adult readers. thus ignoring the high school readers or making the assumption that readers at that level were "adultelike" in their processing behaviors. Comprehensive examination of research concerning visual processing of syntactic structures seems to indicate that fourth grade is a key maturation point. at which time readers become able to take advantage of grammatical structures. Beyond that. it is difficult to synthesize the individual studies. each dealing with a particular aspect of syntactic processing and a particular age group. and to weave a coherent developmental thread through them. Since the majority of previous eye movement research on reading comprehension and the syntactic structure of text has been restricted to ambiguous strings of words or brief phrases and isolated sentences. it appears that there is a need for further research on visual process- ing behavior during the reading of connected discourse. Furthermore. there is also a need for a clearer understanding of the effects of selected syntactic structures on eye movement patterns and the cogni- tive processing behavior of the reader. This study was designed to 41 demonstrate that selected syntactic structures influence the visual processing behavior of skilled and less skilled readers and that these behaviors could be developmental in nature. CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY Intmductjpn This chapter explains the methodology employed in conducting the study. 'The data-collection procedures were similar to those used by Bader. Pearce. and Thompson (1980) in their study of the effect of connected discourse on the processing of left- and right-embedded syn- tactic structures. The content of this chapter is presented in seven major sections. First. a description of the sample subjects who par- ticipated in the experiment is given. Second. the materials used are described. Third. a description of the apparatus used to collect the data is given. The fourth section specifies the procedures used in data collection. The fifth section discusses the design of the study. The sixth section presents the hypotheses constructed for the study. The last section discusses the data analysis. A summary of the chapter is included. Winn Sixty tenth- and eleventh-grade students participated in the study. They were randomly chosen on the basis of teacher judgment. the attainment of a score falling between the 55th and 75th percentiles or the 25th and 40th percentiles on the Reading Comprehension section of the Gates MacGinitie Reading Test. Level E. Form 1. and parental I2 43 consent. The test scores were based on results obtained during the spring of the 1982-83 school year. All participants were native English speakers. Matsnials Materials developed by Bader. Pearce. and Thompson (1980) were used. These consisted of sentences using active voice and employing no dependent clauses with the exception of the target embedding. These were either left-embedded sentences that contained a relative clause that followed and modified the subject or right-embedded sentences that contained a relative clause that followed and modified the sentence object. Each structure was written into a paragraph extending over seven lines that was cohesive with regard to semantic context. Bader et a1. ran an analysis of variance to test for interaction with semantic content. There was no interaction. indicating the passages were eqUal in semantic difficulty. In each paragraph the embedded sentence appears on the sixth line. AppaLaIIIs The conditions were typed on IBM pica. single-spaced on 3-1/2" x 5" cards and presented with the EDL/Biometrics Reading Eye II. an electronic instrument that employs a photoelectric method to record eye movement on heat-sensitive paper. Emcedm The subjects were tested individually during the school day in the reading lab. Initially students were to be tested after school. 44 but because of the short time (approximately five to ten minutes) needed to complete the procedure. a change was made. ‘The principal agreed to allow the subjects to be tested during the school day. pro- vided they were taken from class during times that were not crucial. The subjects were given a prepared set of instructions informing them of the general Operation of the Reading Eye II. They were told that they would be asked to read several different selections during the recording process. They were instructed to read naturally and to pay attention to the material on the card so they might be able to paraphrase the selection afterwards. ‘The subjects were not asked to paraphrase; the instructions were used to focus the attention of the subjects on the task. After the subjects' eyes were properly aligned. they were instructed to close their eyes between selections and to keep their heads motionless throughout the experiment. The experiment included three reading selections: an EDL paragraph. a left-embedded paragraph. and a right-embedded paragraph. The subjects initially read an EDL paragraph so as to accustom their eyes to the apparatus and allow the experimenter to make final recording adjustments. At the conclusion of the experiment. subjects were asked if they encountered any reading difficulties or if they reread any portion of the three selections. Their responses were recorded. Design A two x two design was used in this study. First. the visual processing behaviors of competent and less competent high school 45 readers were compared as they read right— and left-embedded structures. Within the reading condition. subjects were assigned on a rotating basis one of two paragraphs containing a left-embedding and one of two paragraphs containing a right assigned to varying paragraph orders. NO subject received left- and right-embedded sentences in paragraphs from the same word source. Second. the visual processing behaviors of the high school groups were compared to competent middle school readers and competent adult readers. Ho 1: Ho 2: Ho 3: Ho 4: Database: There will be no interaction between ability and syntactic structure when competent and less competent high school readers process left- and right-embedded syntactic structures. There will be no main effect for syntactic structure when averaging across competent and less competent high school readers processing left- and right-embedded syntactic structures. There will be no interaction between ability and syntactic structure when competent and less competent high school readers. competent middle school readers. and competent adult readers process left- and right-embedded syntactic structures. There will be no main effect for syntactic structure when averaging across competent and less competent high school readers. competent middle school readers. and competent adult readers processing left- and right-embedded syntactic structures. W A multivariate analysis of variance was used to investigate the interaction between syntactic structures in related discourse and the visual processing behaviors of competent and less competent high school 46 readers. A multivariate analysis of variance was also used to investigate the difference in visual processing behavior of competent and less competent high school readers. competent middle school readers. and competent adult readers. The independent variables were the left-embedded and right- embedded structures. the competence levels of the high school groups. ‘T- and the maturity levels of the three groups (middle school. high school. and adult). The dependent variables were the visual processing I behaviors. which include gaze duration. forward fixation duration. regression duration. number of forward fixations. and number of E; regressions. Gunman This chapter described the methods and procedures used in the study. The eye movements of competent and less competent high school readers were recorded while the subjects read sentences with left and right embeddings in related discourse. Their performance was compared with competent middle school readers and competent adult readers. The eye movements were photographed with the EDL/Biometrics Reading Eye II. and the materials used in the machine were developed by Bader. Pearce. and Thompson (1980L The statistical procedures were designed in conjunction with the research consultants at Michigan State University. In Chapter IV. the data are presented. analyzed. and organized. CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS OF THE DATA IDILQQHQIIQD The purpose of the study was to obtain and analyze data concerning the visual processing of syntactic structures in related discourse by competent and less competent high school readers and to compare their performance to that of competent middle school and competent adult readers. The area of examination focuses on the effect of left- and right-embeddings on cognitive processing performance. The methodology of the collection and treatment of data was described in the preceding chapter. This chapter presents the statis- tical analysis of the findings as they relate to the hypotheses con- structed for the study. W The data concerning the visual processing behaviors of compe- tent and less competent high school readers were analyzed using a multivariate analysis of variance. The same statistical tests were used to test the data comparing the visual processing behaviors of competent middle school readers and competent adult readers to the competent/less competent high school readers. A7 48 The 5 percent C05) level was chosen as the level for rejection of the null hypothesis when being tested by a multivariate analysis of variance. A 1 percent C01) level was chosen as the level of rejection when the univariate analysis of variance was being used. The multi- variate tests need only a .05 level since all the variables are being tested simultaneously. The univariate tests are processing each vari- able separately. so a more precise measure is needed to prevent mis- taken interpretations. The hypotheses were presented in Chapter III in null form to make appropriate statistical hypotheses. These are restated with the findings for each one. HypothesisJ Ho 1: There will be no interaction between ability and syntactic structure when competent and less competent high school readers process left- and right-embedded syntactic structures. To test this hypothesis. a new set of variables had to be created. These new variables represent the variation within each of the ability groups. The new variables. called D's. were created by subtracting the visual processing variables on the right-embedded structure from the visual processing variables on the left-embedded structure for each subject in the experiment. A multivariate analysis of variance was carried out for each of the created D's to test for the interaction of ability and syntactic structure (see Table 1). This test did not reveal any significant difference in processing the 49 left- and right-embedding within the ability groups. Hypothesis 1 was not rejected. Table 1.--Multivariate analysis of variance of 0's for interaction. df Approx. F Signif. of F Wilks 5.54 1.09992 .371 p > .05. W Ho 2: There will be no main effect for syntactic structure when averaging across competent and less competent high school readers processing left- and right-embedded structures. To test this hypothesis. a multivariate analysis of variance of the created 0 variables was carried out to test for the effect of the syntactic structure across the ability groups (Table 2). There was no significant difference in processing the left- and right-embeddings across the ability groups. Hypothesis 2 was not rejected. Table 2.--Multivariate analysis of variance of D's for main effect. df Approx. F Signif. of F Wilks 5.54 1.99006 .095 p > .05. 50 A univariate analysis of variance was carried out for each of the visual processing variables to see if there were any significant differences (see Table 3). This test showed significant differences in the visual processing of left- and right-embeddings at the .05 level in regression and regression duration. Univariate analysis should use a .01 level of rejection. so these two variables were only approaching significance. Table 3.--Univariate analysis of variance of D's for main effect. Variable df MS F Signif. of F Differences in left & right forward fixations 1.58 4.81667 1.02696 .315 Regression 1.58 25.35000 3.99138 .015* Duration forward fixations 1.58 .57233 2.42675 .125 Duration regressions 1.58 4.23738 4.61925 .036* Duration of gaze 1.58 .42673 .57244 .452 *p < .05. 11mm Ho 3: There will be no interaction between ability and syntactic structure when competent and less competent high school readers. competent middle school readers. and competent adult readers process left- and right-embedded structures. To conform this hypothesis. a multivariate analysis of variance was carried out to test for the interaction of ability and syntactic structures (see Table 4). There was no significant difference in 51 processing the left— and right-embedded structures within the ability groups. Table 4.--Multivariate analysis of variance of D's for interaction. df Approx. F Signif. of F p > .05. A univariate analysis of variance was carried out on the visual processing variables individually (see TableIS). There was a signifi- cant difference in processing left- and right-embeddings within the four ability groups. The difference was in gaze duration. Therefore. Hypothesis 3 was rejected. Table 5.--Univariate analysis of variance of 0's for interaction. Variable df MS F Signif. of F Difference in left & right forward fixations 3.116 1.16389 .25595 .857 Regressions 3.116 12.09722 2.20630 .091 Forward fixations 3.116 .49527 2.11221 .102 Regression duration 3.116 1.51372 2.56636 .058 Gaze durations 3.116 3.85271 4.98841 .003* *p < .05. 52 W54 Ho 4: There will be no main effect for syntactic structure when averaged across competent and less competent high school readers. competent middle school readers. and competent adult readers processing left- and right-embedded structures. A multivariate analysis of variance was carried out on the 0 variables to test for the effect of the syntactic structure across the ability groups (see Table 6). There was a significant difference in processing left- and right-embeddings across the ability groups. Hypothesis 4 was rejected. Table 6.--Multivariate analysis of variance of 0's for main effect. df Approx. F Signif. of F Wilks 5.112 3.09653 .012* *p < .05. A univariate analysis of variance was carried out for each of the visual processing variables to see which were creating the signifi- cant differences (see Table 7). There was a significant difference in processing left- and right-embedded structures across the ability groups. These differences were in regressions and duration of regres- sions. 53 Table 7.--Univariate analysis of variance of 0's for main effect. Variable df MS F Signif. of F Difference in left & right forward fixations 1.116 8.00833 1.76107 .187 Regressions 1.116 54.67500 9.97165 .002* Duration of forward fixations 1.116 .40252 1.71667 .193 Duration of regressions 1.116 4.21500 7.14612 .009* Duration of gaze 1.116 1.07352 1.38997 .241 *p < .05. Gunman Hypotheses l and 2 were tested with a multivariate analysis of variance. The results were: Hypothesis l—-not rejected Hypothesis 2-—not rejected No significant differences were found between ability and syntactic structures. There was no main effect for syntactic structures across ability levels. A univariate analysis of variance indicated a significant difference at the .05 level in processing left- and right- embeddings in regressions and regression duration. Since this was not significant at the .01 level. the hypothesis was still accepted. Hypotheses 3 and 4 were tested with a multivariate analysis of variance. The results were: Hypothesis 3--rejected Hypothesis 4--rejected 54 There was a significant difference in the interaction between ability and syntactic structure. This interaction was in the area of gaze duration. There was a significant difference in the main effect of the syntactic structures averaging across the ability groups. These differences were in regressions and regression durations. CHAPTER V SUMMARY. DISCUSSION. AND RECOMMENDATIONS Sum The purpose of this study was to obtain and analyze data concerning the visual processing of syntactic structures by competent and less competent high school readers and to compare their performance to that of competent middle school readers and competent adult readers. The behaviors measured were number of forward fixations. number of regressions. duration of forward fixations. duration of regressions. and duration of gaze. A theoretical framework was established based on psycholinguis- tic theory and visual processing research in the areas of syntactic structures. including the developmental component. A review of the literature surveyed indicated that: 1. A successful reader must anticipate the structural properties of a sentence in order to comprehend the intended message. There is evidence to suggest that some syntactic structures are more difficult to process and are likely to affect readers in a variety of ways. depending on variables such as age and worldly knowledge. 2. Eye movements are sensitive to the structure of material being processed. so they provide a valuable methodology for studying how linguistic material is interpreted. 55 S6 3. A strong relationship exists between visual processing behavior and linguistic structure. The exact nature of the relation- ship is unclear due to the variations in eye movement recording devices and type of discourse used. A 4. Evidence suggests that significant developmental stages in processing syntactic structures could exist. There have been few studies that have investigated this area of research. and those investigators who included a developmental component did not go beyond the intermediate grades. The eye movements of 60 tenth- and eleventh-grade students. identified as competent or less competent readers. were recorded with the EDL/Biometrics Reading Eye 11. Materials and procedures developed by Bader et a1. (1980) were used. The subjects read an EDL paragraph. a left-embedded sentence in related discourse. and a right-embedded sentence in related discourse. Data concerning the visual processing behaviors of the competent and less competent high school readers were tested with a multivariate analysis of variance. No statistically significant differences were found in the interaction of ability and syntactic structure. nor were significant differences found for the main effect of syntactic structures across the competent and less competent high school readers. A multivariate analysis of variance was used to test the data concerning the visual processing behaviors of the four ability/age groups in the study. A statistically significant difference was found 57 in the interaction of ability and syntactic structure only in the area of gaze duration. If there was a difference in processing the left- and right-embedding on the other visual behaviors. the difference was the same within all the groups. Significant differences were found in the main effect of syntactic structure across the competent/less competent high school readers. competent middle school readers. and competent adult readers. ‘These differences were in regressions and regression duration. Discussion The rationale of this study in examining visual processing behaviors of different age and ability groups was to determine whether a pattern existed in the information-processing behaviors of the readers. Even though no significant differences in interaction or main effect,were found in the two ability levels of high school readers. a graphic representation of the mean scores for the visual processing variables within the syntactic conditions seems to illustrate patterns in processing. (See Figures 1 through 5.) Figures 2 and 4 indicate that the competent high school readers increased their regressions and regression durations in the left- embedded condition. When a univariate analysis of variance was carried out on the visual processing variables (see Table 3). a difference was found of .015 for regressions and .036 for duration of regressions. In univariate analysis. a .01 level of significance should be set to avoid a Type I error. Since the effect was relatively small. more subjects 58 might be needed to see differences in processing the syntactic structures. 1': 1. "1 -1 (I) In '7- 4: m 4: in In "1 I." m «I m ('2- '.q '1- n -.n '. .- h h) d Iii-Iii] .:.:.....: HC ' 4;... HLC ME Figure l.--Mean scores for forward fixations on left- and right-embeddings. (HLC = high school less competent readers. HC = high school competent readers. ME = main effect of syntactic structure averaging across ability levels.) F‘.‘ F! F.’ F.‘ o_.,. 7.; -. .1 d OJ .0 rd _: I’- ('3 r... N ; ITO 0:0) .9- HC 49- HLC 4%" ME Figure 2.--Mean scores for regressions on left- and right- embeddings. (HLC = high school less competent readers. HC = high school competent readers. ME = main effect of syntactic structure averaging across ability levels.) 59 "I f I _a _a .4 .0 .‘o J We 0'. f _. .gk HC 49-HLC Figure 3.--Mean scores for duration of forward fixations on left- and right-embeddings. (HLC = high school less competent readers. HC = high school competent readers. ME = main effect of syntactic structure averaging across ability levels.) '21 r_ I‘I I'I I'I .‘3 I‘I I'I l :3: f, {I 1:1 1:1 1:: 1:1 C' 1 _ :3 1:12:10!) 130C) 1 ‘ K 9 ' D . _o. I‘." ‘4. _‘. '91. III. t-i —- M r-.- m w m .g; m m m of" m -a O _g- HC 4;... HLC 4%” ME Figure 4.-Mean scores for duration of regressions on left- and right-embeddings. (HLC = high school less competent readers. HC = high school competent readers. ME = main effect of syntactic structure averaging across ability levels.) 60 0,3 ‘5. I... '7‘ F.’ £ 2.4 2.2; 2 1.? l.|-2- 1.4 1.2 1 .E. .‘I .2 (I _g—nHC _ngLc 49* MC Figure 5.--Mean scores for duration of gaze on left- and right- embeddings. (HLC = high school less competent read- ers. HC = high school competent readers. ME = main effect of syntactic structure averaging across ability levels.) The pattern in processing shown in the graphs (Figures 2 and 4) is discussed in the literature presented in Chapter II of this study. When the reader encounters difficult material. processing alterations occur which are reflected in eye movement patterns (Carpenter & Just. 1977; Goltz. 1975; Judd & Buswell. 1922; Walker. 1933). Moreover. left-embedded structures frequently result in an increase in the number and duration of regressions and the total processing time for the reader (Bader et a1.. 1980; Wanat. 1971). The competent high school readers seem to have made the appropriate adjustment necessary to comprehend the more difficult text. The adjustment for greater syntactic difficulty. increases in regression. and regression duration 61 indicate a definite adultlike processing pattern in the competent high school reader. Figures 1 through 5 indicate the less competent high school readers did not seem to make appropriate procesSing alterations when encountering the more difficult structures. Anderson (1937) showed that although good and poor readers exhibited an increase in processing behaviors. poor readers recorded negligible eye movement alterations regardless of the textual demands. Heiner and Henderson (1974) reported similar findings in that poorer readers made fewer fixations and regressions on the more difficult material. ‘The poor readers did not adjust their visual processing strategies to accommodate the demands of the harder c1 oze material used in the experiment. In a study conducted by Thompson (1980) on recall of sentences following left- and right-embedded structures. he found that adults with poor recall exhibited no flexibility in eye movements and appeared to process all the syntactic structures in a similar manner. Zynda (1980) found similar results in a comparison of competent middle school readers to competent adult readers on their processing of left- and right-embeddings. ‘The significant differences were found in the duration behaviors as opposed to the fixation behaviors. The middle school readers did not alter their regressions or regression durations as they encountered the more difficult structures. There was no significant difference in the forward fixation behaviors between the two groups in the study. 62 The fixation behaviors appear to be related to the reader's ability to chunk information into linguistic units (Buswell. 1920; Judd & Buswell. 1922; Stern. 1978L. Eye movement duration behaviors appear to be more related to memory and memory search. ‘This notion is related to Clark and Clarkus(l977) model of language processing. which employs short-term memory as one of its components. With this in mind. it seems evident that adultlike chunking behaviors have developed in the middle school readers. The memory-search behaviors have not developed to a level to allow middle school readers to use them as part of their processing strategies. The less competent high school readers in the current study may also be hampered by syntactic breakdown in short-term memory. which may decay faster for them due to lack of experience and reading maturity. Zynda posited that as short-term memory increases through experience. maturity. and practice. proficiency with the less predictable syntactic structure increases. The data seem to denote. within the limitations of the study. that language processing is not wholly developmental. Knowledge of the world and experience with the more difficult structures could be more important to successful processing than maturity. Lesgold (1974) and Pearson (1974-1975) demonstrated that knowledge of the world can affect the successful processing of syntactic structures. At some point the subject's knowledge of the world may override the difficulty in the structure of the passage. In the 16 years' experience of the investigator working with high school readers of many abilities. lack of experience with 63 difficult structures and a deprived knowledge of the world seem to characterize less competent and poor readers. Their reading strategy seems to be forward in direction. with little reflection. These inadequate readers seem to hope that some light will be shed on what they are reading by some outside interpretation of what they were supposed to learn. or they feel that if they read everything slowly. twice through. they will suddenly understand. These strategies seem to be reflected in the visual processing behaviors of the less competent high school readers. In the second part of the current study. significant differences were found in the interaction of ability and syntactic structures when competent/less competent high school readers. competent middle school readers. and competent adult readers processed left- and right-embedded structures. 'The areas of significance were gaze duration for interaction of ability and syntactic structures and regressions and regression durations for the main effect of syntactic structure across ability/maturity levels. Regressions and regression durations did not reach the .05 level of significance in the multi- variate analysis of variance used to test the high school readers separately because there were not enough subjects in the sample. When all four age/ability groups were tested. the sample size was large enough to show the small differences in processing the syntactic struc- tures. A graphic representation of the means for the visual processing variables indicates the patterns and directions in processing the syntactic structures. (See Figures 6 through 10.) 64 v .J .— lit mmmu v3. 0‘!- -J m '1" in «a in 03' .C '1'? '31 k‘.‘ -.~.- n 4; l‘ '31 '."I P.’ --J . DI. o.) "I .- 'i HLC 4%“ MC Figure 6.--Mean scores for forward fixations on left- and right- embeddings. (HLC = high school less competent readers. HC = high school competent readers. MC = middle school competent readers. AC = adult competent readers.) '.\' '2' F" «a ..-I a .4 u “I .: n!- 0:.) _a f.) I; If. (I) f... r.) J: 0". IV! I_I L -%PAC J?‘HC 4"" HLC .Ié-l'.‘ MC Figure 7.--Mean scores for regressions on left- and right- embeddings. (HLC = high school less competent readers. HC = high school competent readers. MC = middle school competent readers. AC = adult competent readers.) 65 r '3? 0.. h) 1.5 T.» 1.2 1 .e .‘l' U L F .5? AC 4;. HC 4.... HLC 43' MC Figure 8.--Mean scores for duration of forward fixations on left- and right-embeddings. (HLC = high school less competent readers. HC = high school competent readers. MC = middle school competent readers. AC = adult competent readers.) ~350000001 .sCDCODeDI .Etf-L'ICIC'L'ICIIZII .300000001 .75 _‘. 031. 1". \n’ - . .J. pg. an '.'1 - an N m w \‘1 4: m m '31 0.1" in «I .9 AC #HC 49* HLC -£s'M5 Figure 9.--Mean scores for duration of regressions on left- and right-embeddings. (HLC = high school less competent readers. HC = high school competent readers. MC = middle school competent readers. AC = adult competent readers.) 66 'I.‘ N J l.“ '33 \Q '.-.‘ ‘.‘.‘ '2.‘ a —J .u [-3 no f-‘O n. _a u:v h' _‘ 0:?- ufl, _a f.) .‘ cf. (I) f... ftp _‘ ['0 ((0 I? At 5.7.. HC HLC 435‘ m (R Figure 10.--Mean scores for duration of gaze on left- and right- embeddings. (HLC = high school less competent readers. HC = high school competent readers. M0 = middle school competent readers. AC = adult competent readers.) Figures 6 through 10 suggest a developmental pattern in information-processing behaviors. Those visual processing behaviors that were not significantly different when processing the syntactic structures are most closely related to chunking strategies (see Figures 6 and 8). .As previously mentioned. these behaviors seem to develop ahead of those related to short-term memory (see Figures 7 and 9). These behaviors seem to indicate a conscious decision of the competent 16- and 17-year-old readers to examine the less familiar structures in order to more fully comprehend. ‘Thus. they are beginning to become more like the competent adult readers. The strategy of the 11- and lZ-year-old readers seems to be to read less familiar 67 structures faster so that the ideas beyond the structure can contribute to comprehension. With more practice in reading unfamiliar syntactic structures and greater conceptual knowledge. readers seem to be able to more slowly examine the syntactic structure without losing awareness of the hierarchy of ideas. Some of the less experienced and/or poorer readers may skim more rapidly over portions of text they do not understand in order to avoid the discomert of struggling with unfamiliar. more difficult structures. Depending on the text and the nature of the reader. either of the strategies may be employed. W This study has contributed to our knowledge of information- processing analysis and psycholinguistics. Specifically. this study highlights the developmental nature of information processing and the difference between competent and less competent readers when encountering specific psycholinguistic structures. The present study has established that competent adults and competent high school readers made significant behavioral adjustments to syntactic conditions. ‘These adjustments are in regressions and regression durations. which reflect a maturing in memory capacity and search strategies. The lack of adjustment in visual behaviors when encountering the more difficult/ unfamiliar syntactic structures by middle school readers can now be viewed as part of a developmental pattern in psycholinguistic pro- cessing. The visual processing behaviors of less competent high school readers can be viewed partly as a lack of experience with difficult 68 The visual processing behaviors of less competent high school readers can be viewed partly as a lack of experience with difficult syntactic structures. coupled with an inadequate conceptual background. The experimenter viewed their processing behaviors as consistent with other studies of poor readers who lack the ability to adjust to the demands of the text. Portions of the data from this study also provide supportive evidence that the cognitive processes which underlie reading can successfully be analyzed during the reading act and that eye movements reflect these complex acts. Information of this nature can signifi- cantly advance our knowledge of the relationship between properties of the text and processing strategies of the reader. WOW These findings suggest that middle school and high school teachers should be made aware that their students are still developing their abilities to process left-embedded structures and probably other less familiar syntactic structures as well. This means that the teach- ers should highlight and explain the structures. In those cases where students appear to have inordinate difficulty with the structures. the teachers may provide some direct instruction. However. attention should not be directed to a specific psychological skill to the detri- ment of wholistic processing. 69 WW Findings of this study justify further investigation into the effects of selected syntactic structures on paragraph comprehension in psycholinguistic processing behavion. It is recOmmended that further research be conducted in directions that were suggested by the present study. 1. Research should be conducted to replicate the findings of this study using a larger number of subjects. The purpose of this research would be to confirm the directional tendencies noted in the competent/less competent high school readers. 2. Research should be conducted to replicate the findings of this study using a wider span of abilities among high school readers. 3. A measure of experience in reading more difficult syntactic structures should be devised to study the relationship of experience to successful psycholinguistic processing across middle- and high-school- age children. APPENDICES 7O APPENDIX A SAMPLES OF LEFT- AND RIGHT-EMBEDDED STRUCTURES IN RELATED DISCOURSE 71 72 Samples of Left- and Right-Embedded Structures in Related Discourse Left-Embedded Syntactic Structure in Related Discourse: Jack was physically handicapped and wanted to earn some spending money. He went to see an acquaintance, Marta, who trained the handicapped. Marta also managed a new hotel that had an opening for an assistant cook. To Jack's dismay, the position was no longer available. In the kitchen the cook that Marta trained hired the help. He had hired a former MacDonalds' employee. Right-Embedded Syntactic Structure in Related Discourse: Dan, Dave, and Judy needed money to take a vacation over Easter. They heard that the dormitory cafeteria was hiring part-time employees. Consequently, they went to see Marta the cafeteria manager and employee trainer. A few days later, Marta introduced them to the cook. The cook hired the help that Marta trained in the kitchen. They were given the responsibilities of dishwashing and food preparation. APPENDIX B DIRECTIONS READ TO SUBJECTS BEFORE THE EXPERIMENT 73 7h Directions Reagto Subjects Beiore the Experiment You are going to be asked to read several different cards, one at a time, while your eye movements are being recorded by this machine. The machine is called a Reading Eye II, and it makes a record of your eye movements on the graph paper. Please read naturally and pay attention to the material on the card. You may be asked questions about a particular selection after- wards, so it is important to concentrate on reading and to ignore the machine. 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