The perceptual span and eye–hand span of pianists were examined while they played and read single-line melodies (with four beats per measure). The perceptual span was measured by the use of a moving-window technique with four window conditions: two beats, four beats, six beats, or no window. It was found that pianists need to see no more than the whole measure that they are fixating in order to...

Models of eye guidance in reading rely on the concept of the perceptual span-the amount of information perceived during a single eye fixation, which is considered to be a consequence of visual and attentional constraints. To directly investigate attentional mechanisms underlying the perceptual span, we implemented a new reading paradigm-parafoveal magnification (PM)-that compensates for how vis...

Eye movements are now widely used to investigate cognitive processes during reading, scene perception, and visual search. In this article, research on the following topics is reviewed with respect to reading: (a) the perceptual span (or span of effective vision), (b) preview benefit, (c) eye movement control, and (d) models of eye movements. Related issues with respect to eye movements during s...

There exists considerable variation, at the level of the individual, in human sentence processing performance. Here, we aim to illuminate the degree to which experience with language can account for these individual differences. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that subtle interactions between specific verbs and preceding linguistic context can drive reading times on complex sentences, but only ...

An event-related fMRI paradigm was used to investigate brain activity during the reading of sentences containing either a lexically ambiguous word or an unambiguous control word. Higher levels of activation occurred during the reading of sentences containing a lexical ambiguity. Furthermore, the activated cortical network differed, depending on: (1) whether the sentence contained a balanced (i....

visual memory (1) Non-verbal 0.45 (.26) 1.73 Animal test (1) Verbal 0.43 (.23) 1.87 Arithmetic task (2) Verbal 0.65 (.16) 4.05*** Auditory digit sequence (6) Verbal 0.55 (.16) 3.46** Auditory serial addition task (1) Verbal 1.41 (.40) 3.53*** Backward digit span (14) Verbal 0.63 (.12) 5.34*** Backward letter span (1) Verbal 0.83 (.26) 3.19** California Verbal Learning Test (1) Verbal 0.18 (.16)...

a r t i c l e i n f o The present studies directly test the usefulness of two English-language working memory capacity (WMC) assessments with two samples of students whose native language was not English. Participants completed two widely used complex span tasks, Reading Span (RSpan) and Operation Span (OSpan), in English. To determine whether the well-established relationship between WMC and R...

Abstract This research was carried out to comparatively study the impacts of portfolio-based assessment, self-assessment, and scaffolded peer assessment on reading comprehension, vocabulary learning, grammatical accuracy Afghan English as a foreign language learners. To accomplish this, 172 learners enrolled at institute, through an Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT), 120 lower-intermediate 5 h...

Working memory capacity is thought to underlie many higher cognitive processes including sentence comprehension. Sentences that contain object-extracted relative clauses are more complex and impose higher demands on working memory than comparable sentences that contain subject-extracted relative clauses. We report two experiments examining the role of the central executive component of working ...