Contextual Constraint and Preview Time Modulate the Semantic Preview Effect: Evidence from Chinese Sentence Reading.

Word recognition in sentence reading is influenced by information from both preview and context. Recently, semantic preview effect (SPE) was observed being modulated by the constraint of context, indicating that context might accelerate the processing of semantically related preview words. Besides, SPE was found to depend on preview time, which suggests SPE may change with different processing stages of preview words. Therefore it raises the question of whether preview-time-dependent SPE would be modulated by contextual constraint. In the current study, we investigated the impact of contextual constraint on SPE in Chinese reading, but also examined its dependency on preview time. The preview word and the target word were identical, semantically related, or unrelated to the target word. The results showed a significant three-way interaction: The SPE depended on contextual constraint and preview time. In separate analyses for low and high contextual constraint of target words, the SPE significantly decreased with an increase in preview duration when the target word was of low constraint in the sentence. The effect was numerically in the same direction, but weaker and statistically non-significant when the target word was highly constrained in the sentence. The results indicate that word processing in sentences is a dynamic process of integrating information from both preview (bottom up) and context (top down).