An Eye Movement Corpus Study of the Age of Acquisition Effect

The current study investigated the effects of word-level age of acquisition on natural reading. Previous studies, using multiple language modalities, found that earlier learned words are recognized, read, spoken and responded to faster than words learned later in life. Until now, in visual word recognition, experimental materials were limited to single word or sentence studies. We analyzed data of the Ghent Eye-tracking COrpus (GECO; Cop, Dirix, Drieghe, & Duyck, in press), an eye-tracking corpus of participants reading an entire novel, resulting in the first eye movement megastudy of AoA effects in natural reading. We found that the age at which specific words are learned indeed influences reading times, above other important (correlated) lexical variables such as word frequency and length. Shorter fixations for earlier learned words were consistently found throughout the reading process in early (single fixation durations, first fixation durations, gaze durations) and late measures (total reading times). Implications for theoretical accounts of AoA effects and eye movements are discussed.

Dirix, N., & Duyck, W. (in press). An Eye Movement Corpus Study of the Age of Acquisition Effect. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. Impact Factor: 2.606. Ranking Q1 (top 10%). PDF available here