Using Eye Movements to Investigate the Impact of Childhood and Recent Frequency of Occurrence on Word Identification During Reading in College

ABSTRACT During reading, high-frequency words consistently receive shorter fixation durations relative to low-frequency words. However, how frequently a given word is experienced can vary across an individual’s education. In the current study, the effects of both childhood and college-level word frequency on fixation durations were examined to assess the relative role of early childhood and recent frequency of occurrence on word identification during reading. Eye movements were recorded as 40 college students read neutral sentences containing 96 target words. The words varied on childhood and college-level frequency. Length of the sentences and pre-target and post-target characteristics were controlled across the four frequency conditions. Data were analyzed via linear mixed models fit to log-transformed fixation duration measures. Three fixation duration measures were examined to explore the time course of processing. Clear effects of college-level frequency were observed on fixation durations on the target words. The frequency with which a word is recently experienced during college affects word identification time in context. This suggests that the effect of word frequency on fixation durations during sentence reading is experience dependent and further supports the need for eye movement experiments to employ age-appropriate recent frequency estimates.