Reassessing cumulative self-paced reading (SPR): Testing three variants shows cumulative SPR can be more useful than standard non-cumulative SPR for sentence-processing research, depending on presentation format
Hiroki Fujita · 2026
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Description
Fujita re-examined a standard psycholinguistics method in this 2026 Behavior Research Methods paper. In self-paced reading, people read sentences word by word at their own speed, and researchers time each press to see where comprehension gets hard. Most labs hide earlier words as new ones appear, fearing that leaving words visible lets readers cheat the timing by revealing several at once.
Fujita compared the standard hidden-word version with three visible-word variants, testing whether each could detect known effects like garden-path sentences. All four worked, and the variant that keeps words visible without marking upcoming positions gave the strongest effects and the best statistical power. The result challenges a long-standing assumption and may simplify future experiments.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Hiroki Fujita |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 61 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |