Orthographic learning of novel words in adults: effects of exposure and visual attention on eye movements

Abstract

Eye movement monitoring was used to explore the time course of orthographic learning in adult skilled readers while they read novel words presented in isolation one, three or five times. Offline measures of spelling-to-dictation and orthographic decision were used to measure orthographic memorisation. Further, the participants' visual attention span was estimated. Results showed better memorisation of new words' orthography with additional exposures. An exposure-by-exposure in-depth analysis of eye movements revealed an early sharper decrease for the number of fixations and most measures of processing time. Participants with a higher visual attention span showed better performance in orthographic decision and processing times. The overall findings suggest that orthographic learning occurs from the first exposure and that top-down effects from the newly acquired orthographic knowledge would facilitate processing from the second exposure. Further, time needed for bottom-up information extraction appears to be modulated by visual attention span.