Different sources of predictions during natural reading: an EEG and Eye-Tracking co-registration study

TITUS VON DER MARLSBUR; BIANCHI, BRUNO; JUAN E. KAMIENKOWSKI; D. E. SHALOM

Congreso; Vision Science Society; 2020

VSS

During reading our brain predicts upcoming words. If predictions are correct, words can be processed fasterwhen they are finally fixated. It has been amply shown that Predictability (the variable that estimates theprobability of guessing the next word) have an impact on how we move our eyes across the text and that itmodulates brain potentials associated with word processing. On the one side, more predictable words arefixated for shorter periods of time than less predictable words. On the other side, more predictable wordscorrespond to less N400 amplitude. This knowledge comes from separated EEG and eye movementexperiments, but in the last few years, co-registration experiments enabled us to test these hypothesestogether in more natural contexts.With the aim of investigating different sources of predictions during reading, in previous studies, we showedthat mnemonic predictions (i.e. predictions performed purely on long term memory, like when reading aproverb or a song lyric) and predictions done purely on the linguistic context have different impact, both ongaze duration and on the N400.Here, we asked participants to read proverbs and common sentences while we recorded EEG and eyemovements simultaneously. Firstly, we analysed brain activity aligned to fixation onset (fixation-relatedpotential, FRPs) showing differences between Proverbs and Common sentences in late potentials evoked bylow- and high-Predictable words. Secondly, we analysed oscillations aligned to fixation onset (fixation-relatedspectral perturbations, FRSPs) showing differences between sentence type only in low-frequency bands after200ms. These results extend our knowledge of the differences between the mechanisms involved in theprediction of the following word