Being able to read is an enjoyable skill that usually begins to be taught between the ages of five and seven. Most people can recall what it was like in the early stages of reading. You start off slowly trying to pronounce and string the words together into one fluent sentence. As you progress you move on to more complex sentences and pretty soon you\u2019re trying to read everything everywhere! It\u2019s a skill\u00a0you’ve\u00a0become so comfortable with that you probably find yourself reading at a faster pace and only stumble on words that\u00a0aren’t\u00a0familiar. A common phrase used\u00a0amongst\u00a0students is \u201cOh, I just skimmed through it.\u201d This phrase has lead to many psychological experiments that try and pinpoint how efficient we are at \u2018skipping\u2019 through sentences and our ability to fill in the missing content.<\/p>\n
There are a couple of different models that explain the processes that occur while we read. One is called the EZ Reader model, which occurs when attention is fixated on one word and shifts to the next word in peripheral view. The ability to process the next word begins in advance because our attention is shifted even before the initial movement of the eye to the next word. Processing of the peripheral word is complete when they eye fully fixates on it. For example, when reading the sentence \u2018Her name is Appalonia\u2019 your able to process \u2018Her name is\u2019 quickly and as you reach the word \u2018is\u2019 your already trying to process \u2018Appalonia.\u2019 Grant it my name is irregular and unfamiliar, so you would have to slow down to process it fully. Skipping occurs when recognition of the peripheral word is immediate during peripheral preview. Our eyes then skip over the just recognized word to the next word to the right.<\/p>\n
The SWIFT model is a parallel process where the resources we use to read reach full capacity when focused on a string of words, instead of a singular word. Instead of being fixated on one particular word, you would also be fixated on the adjacent words on the right and left. In total someone could process a total of four words at the same time. In this model, words that are highly predictable are skipped because their identity can be guessed with minimal visual input. This model depends heavily on context and the frequency of information.<\/p>\n
In 2012 four psychologists named, Gordon, Patrick, Plummer, and Choi conducted an experiment to analyze if people skip over words that\u00a0they’ve\u00a0seen previously within the same passage.\u00a0 They followed this question up with another, asking if people would be able to recognize a change in spelling in the word they keep skipping in the passage. An example of this would be, \u2018Last week Cynthia and Lillian joined protests because\u00a0Llilian<\/i>\u00a0wanted fair wages.\u2019 Lillian is the target word and when it\u2019s presented for the second time the spelling is slightly different. Participants were given forty passages and some had a change in spelling and some did not. This experiment is along the lines of the SWIFT model because word predictability increases skipping through a mix of guessing and minimal visual input.<\/p>\n
The results from this experiment supported the hypothesis that the processing of single words, using visual\u00a0recognition, is based on skipping. This finding only occurs when strings of letters in the peripheral view are recognized as complete words. As the target word becomes more familiar with the context, skipping will increase as the target comes into peripheral view. However, skipping\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0occur when the target word has a slight change in spelling. So in the example above, the word \u2018Lillian\u2019 would not have been skipped, because the reader would not have been able to process it fully. We are able to process that the word in our peripheral vision is not a word and that it demands more fixation to process fully.<\/p>\n
Even though reading may seem like an effortless task you do everyday as a student, it actually requires a lot more than you think. Your eyes are constantly moving and your brain is busy processing. From this assignment I have learned that there isn\u2019t really such a thing as skimming. My advice is next time you have an assignment for class and someone asks if you\u2019ve done the reading, you should respond with \u201cI skipped through it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Resources<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n PC Gordon, Patrick, Plummer, Wonil Choi, (2012), See before you jump: full recognition of parafoveal words precedes skips during reading.\u00a0Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition.10,\u00a0<\/i>633-41.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Being able to read is an enjoyable skill that usually begins to be taught between the ages of five and seven. Most people can recall what it was like in the early stages of reading. You start off slowly trying to pronounce and string the words together into one fluent sentence. As you progress you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3588,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80216,80217],"tags":[272],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}