TY - JOUR

T1 - Nonlinear analyses of self-paced reading

AU - Wallot, Sebastian

AU - Van Orden, Guy

PY - 2011/8/15

Y1 - 2011/8/15

N2 - Nonlinear methods of fractal analysis and recurrence quantification analysis are becoming more commonplace in the cognitive and behavioral sciences. These methods are illustrated here in a tutorial style using self-paced reading data. Self-paced reading was performed in which each spacebar press revealed a story word-by-word or else sentence-by-sentence. Participant readers were either Ph.D. candidates in English literature or undergraduates from an introductory psychology course and the same story was read by all, either one time only or reread another time on another occasion. The nonlinear analyses revealed crucial differences between the word unit and sentence unit conditions. Performance in the word unit condition was dominated by a task specific strategy, yielding data patterns more like those observed in tapping tasks. Nonlinear analyses of the sentence unit condition, however, discriminated between graduate and undergraduate readers, and first readings of the story from re-reading. From these analyses, the repeated reading of the same story reveals a kind of uber-fluency, in a manner of speaking, of the Ph.D. candidates in English literature, whose performance stayed at or closer to a performance ceiling in both readings.

AB - Nonlinear methods of fractal analysis and recurrence quantification analysis are becoming more commonplace in the cognitive and behavioral sciences. These methods are illustrated here in a tutorial style using self-paced reading data. Self-paced reading was performed in which each spacebar press revealed a story word-by-word or else sentence-by-sentence. Participant readers were either Ph.D. candidates in English literature or undergraduates from an introductory psychology course and the same story was read by all, either one time only or reread another time on another occasion. The nonlinear analyses revealed crucial differences between the word unit and sentence unit conditions. Performance in the word unit condition was dominated by a task specific strategy, yielding data patterns more like those observed in tapping tasks. Nonlinear analyses of the sentence unit condition, however, discriminated between graduate and undergraduate readers, and first readings of the story from re-reading. From these analyses, the repeated reading of the same story reveals a kind of uber-fluency, in a manner of speaking, of the Ph.D. candidates in English literature, whose performance stayed at or closer to a performance ceiling in both readings.

KW - Psychology

KW - Complexity

KW - Fractal analysis

KW - Nonlinear methods

KW - Reading

KW - Recurrence quantification analysis

KW - Time series

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80051518066&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1075/ml.6.2.02wal

DO - 10.1075/ml.6.2.02wal

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:80051518066

VL - 6

SP - 245

EP - 274

JO - The Mental Lexicon

JF - The Mental Lexicon

SN - 1871-1340

IS - 2

ER -