Hyona, J. (1995). An eye movement analysis of topic-shift effect during repeated reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21(5), 1365-1373.

Hyona, J.

1995

Hyona, J. (1995). An eye movement analysis of topic-shift effect during repeated reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21(5), 1365-1373.

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This study replicated previous reading time studies that have observed increased reading times for sentences introducing a new subtopic in a text, compared with sentences that are continuations of a subtopic. This topic-shift effect was obtained for the initial reading but not when the same text was reread. The absence of topic-shift effect was taken to suggest that readers construct a mental representation of the text's topic structure during the initial reading. The topic-shift effect was primarily due to regressive fixations, which tended to land in the first half of sentences. Regressions were typically launched at the end of sentences, with topic-shift sentences also well before the sentence end was reached. These findings are interpreted as evidence for the integrative nature of regressive fixations.

This study demonstrated that the processing of topic shifts is notably facilitated during repeated reading. Sentences that introduced a new subtopic in the text were given extra processing time during the initial reading compared with sentences that continued an already initiated subtopic; however, in repeated reading, the processing of these topic-shift sentences that facilitated to the extent that topic shifts no longer required an additional processing effect. This finding lends support for the notion that readers construct a mental representation of the text's topic structure in the initial reading and make use of it to guide subsequent reading.

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