Auditory perceptual simulation during silent reading: effects on language processing and comprehension
Auditory perceptual simulation (APS) during silent reading refers to situations in which the reader actively simulates the voice of a character or other person depicted in a text. In three eye-tracking studies and one Event-related Potentials (ERP) study, APS effects were investigated as people read utterances attributed to a native English speaker, a non-native English speaker, or no speaker at all. APS effects were measured via online eye movements and offline comprehension probes. Results from Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that inducing APS during silent reading resulted in observable differences in reading speed when readers simulated the speech of faster compared to slower speakers, and compared to silent reading without APS among native English speakers. Social attitude survey results indicated that readers’ attitudes towards native and non-native speech did not consistently influence APS-related effects. APS of both native speech and non-native speech increased native English speakers’ reading speed, facilitated deeper, less good-enough, sentence processing, and improved comprehension compared to normal silent reading. Study 3 revealed that APS of native and non-native speech affects L2 English speakers’ reading speed similarly to the APS effects among native English speakers in Studies 1 and 2; however, APS of non-native speech decreased L2 English speakers’ comprehension accuracy of implausible sentences. Study 4 showed that when readers engage in APS during silent reading, they had smaller ERP amplitudes than normal silent reading, suggesting that APS requires extra attention and effort. It also demonstrated that APS of native and non-native speech is similar to “listening” to non-native speech, where readers tend to forgive the minor ungrammatical errors (e.g. subject-verb disagreement) when they simulate the non-native speech.
Reading, Auditory perceptual simulation, Relative clause, Plausiblity, P600, Eye-tracking, Event-related potentials (ERPs)
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign