Independent effects of collocation strength and contextual predictability on eye movements in reading

Collocations are commonly co-occurring word pairs, such as “black coffee”. Previous research has demonstrated a processing advantage for collocations compared to novel phrases, suggesting that readers sensitive the frequency words co-occur in phrases. However, further question concerns whether this occurs independently from effects of contextual predictability. We examined issue an eye movement experiment using adjective-noun pairs strong (e.g., coffee”) or weak “bitter coffee”), based on co-occurrence statistics. These were presented sentences where shared concept they expressed coffee) was predictable unpredictable prior sentence context. observed clear collocation strength, with shorter reading times collocations. Moreover, these occurred The findings therefore provide evidence is not driven by expectations.