AN EYE-MOVEMENT ANALYSIS OF TOPIC-SHIFT EFFECT DURING REPEATED READING



: HYONA J

Publisher: AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC

: 1995

: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition

: JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-LEARNING MEMORY AND COGNITION

: J EXP PSYCHOL LEARN

: 21

: 5

: 1365

: 1373

: 9

: 0278-7393

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.21.5.A


This study replicated previous reading time studies that have observed increased reading times for sentences introducing a new subtopic in a text, compared with sentences that are continuations of a subtopic. This topic-shift effect was obtained for the initial reading but not when the same text was reread. The absence of topic-shift effect was taken to suggest that readers construct a mental representation of the text's topic structure during the initial reading. The topic-shift effect was primarily due to regressive fixations, which tended to land in the first half of sentences. Regressions were typically launched al the end of sentences, with topic-shift sentences also well before the sentence end was reached. These findings are interpreted as evidence for the integrative nature of regressive fixations.



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