| Description |
Previous research suggests that words with higher Sensory Experience Ratings (SER) are associated with faster processing speeds. The goal of the current research was to determine if such SER effects are observed in more naturalistic reading contexts and, if they are, when in the time course of processing do the effects appear. Seventy-six words with varying SER were embedded in neutral sentence contexts. Words were also compared on length, frequency, contextual diversity, age of acquisition (AOA), concreteness, and number of features (NOF). Reading measures were recorded using eye movement tracking and analyzed using multilevel modeling methods. Results did not support the original hypothesis that SER effects would appear in later measures of processing. However, other variables did have significant effects during the time course of processing. Reasons for these results and future directions are discussed. |
