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- When the eyes no longer lead: familiarity and length effects on eye-voice spanPublication . Silva, Susana; Reis, Alexandra; Casaca, Luís; Petersson, Karl Magnus; Faísca, LuísDuring oral reading, the eyes tend to be ahead of the voice (eye-voice span, EVS). It has been hypothesized that the extent to which this happens depends on the automaticity of reading processes, namely on the speed of print-to-sound conversion. We tested whether EVS is affected by another automaticity component - immunity from interference. To that end, we manipulated word familiarity (high-frequency, low-frequency, and pseudowords, PW) and word length as proxies of immunity from interference, and we used linear mixed effects models to measure the effects of both variables on the time interval at which readers do parallel processing by gazing at word N + 1 while not having articulated word N yet (offset EVS). Parallel processing was enhanced by automaticity, as shown by familiarity x length interactions on offset EVS, and it was impeded by lack of automaticity, as shown by the transformation of offset EVS into voice eye span (voice ahead of the offset of the eyes) in PWs. The relation between parallel processing and automaticity was strengthened by the fact that offset EVS predicted reading velocity. Our findings contribute to understand how the offset EVS, an index that is obtained in oral reading, may tap into different components of automaticity that underlie reading ability, oral or silent. In addition, we compared the duration of the offset EVS with the average reference duration of stages in word production, and we saw that the offset EVS may accommodate for more than the articulatory programming stage of word N.
- Too little or too much? Parafoveal preview benefits and parafoveal load costs in dyslexic adultsPublication . Silva, Susana; Faísca, Luís; Araújo, Susana; Casaca, Luis; Carvalho, Loide; Petersson, Karl Magnus; Reis, AlexandraTwo different forms of parafoveal dysfunction have been hypothesized as core deficits of dyslexic individuals: reduced parafoveal preview benefits ("too little parafovea") and increased costs of parafoveal load ("too much parafovea"). We tested both hypotheses in a single eye-tracking experiment using a modified serial rapid automatized naming (RAN) task. Comparisons between dyslexic and non-dyslexic adults showed reduced parafoveal preview benefits in dyslexics, without increased costs of parafoveal load. Reduced parafoveal preview benefits were observed in a naming task, but not in a silent letter-finding task, indicating that the parafoveal dysfunction may be consequent to the overload with extracting phonological information from orthographic input. Our results suggest that dyslexics' parafoveal dysfunction is not based on strict visuo-attentional factors, but nevertheless they stress the importance of extra-phonological processing. Furthermore, evidence of reduced parafoveal preview benefits in dyslexia may help understand why serial RAN is an important reading predictor in adulthood.
- Viés de manutenção da atenção na ansiedade socialPublication . Fernandes, Catarina; Silva, Susana; Pires, Joana; Reis, Alexandra; Jiménez-Ros, Antonia María; Janeiro, Luís; Faisca, Luis; Martins, A.The role of attentional bias in social anxiety is not yet fully understood. Social anxiety individuals can show deliberate avoidance of socially threatening stimuli or, on the contrary, be hypervigilant, persistently allocating attention to those stimuli. Our main purpose was to test whether social anxiety is preferably associated with mechanisms of hypervigilance, avoidance, vigilance-avoidance or maintenance of attention towards socially relevant stimuli. Our secondary goal was to explore the modulating role of personality traits in these attention bias mechanisms. Participants with high vs low social anxiety and different personality structures were exposed to pairs of faces representing different emotions (anger, happiness and neutrality) while their eye movements were continuously recorded. Comparisons between participants with high and low levels of social anxiety showed that participants with high social anxiety were slower in disengaging their attention from happy faces, suggesting that positive emotions can be perceived as a threatening stimuli for social anxious individuals. Preliminary results indicated that depressive personality structure may favour manifestations of hypervigilance bias toward threat faces.