Date of Award
Spring 5-5-2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Dr. Martin Chodorow
Second Advisor
Dr. Sandeep Prasada
Academic Program Adviser
Martin Chodorow
Abstract
Proofreading, or reading with the purpose of finding and correcting errors, has been used in psycholinguistic research to study the relationship between bottom-up and top-down cognitive processes. The current study examined the effects of word predictability on reading time using a word-by-word self-paced reading (SPR) task. A sample of 102 native English speakers read sentences containing letter transposition errors in predictable and unpredictable contexts. Half of the sentences were followed by a question asking if there was an error in the sentence they had just read. Participants’ accuracy in detecting the errors and the time they spent reading the error-bearing words were measured. Results indicated that participants were able to detect more errors when the context was lower in predictability as measured by surprisal (negative log probability) of the target word. Target word reading times also increased as surprisal increased, suggesting a logarithmic relationship between predictability and reading time.
Recommended Citation
Prasad, Sam, "The Effect of Word Predictability on Proofreading Accuracy and Reading Time" (2023). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/1005
Included in
Cognition and Perception Commons, Cognitive Science Commons, Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Commons