Inference and Error Detection in Reading: Cognitive and Linguistic Mechanisms

About the Project

Can you spot the grammatical error this in sentence? Many readers initially fail to detect small disruptions in a sentence, such as an omitted word, an unintended repetition, or a swap of adjacent words. These oversights are important to our theoretical understanding of the brain processes underlying reading, because they show that readers often do not perceive text exactly as it appears.

One theory proposes that this occurs because readers make educated guesses about what they are reading by combining imperfect input with prior knowledge. For example, when trying to read a road sign saying “stop” at night, we may struggle to identify the letters and therefore rely on our knowledge to guess that the sign likely says “stop” rather than another similar-looking word (e.g., “shop” or “step”). According to this theory, what we read is often distorted or ambiguous, and recovering the intended meaning requires inferring what the input should have been. As a result, what you think you have read might differ from what was printed.

This PhD project aims to advance our understanding of these inference processes during reading, which may be informative about why reading can be slower or more difficult for some readers. Key open questions include:

What cognitive processes underpin inference during reading?

When and how do readers engage in inference?

How does reliance on inference vary across individuals and populations?

The project may focus on skilled adult readers or extend to other groups, such as beginning readers, dyslexic readers, older adults, or people reading in a second language. A central theme will be identifying how visual, cognitive, and linguistic abilities shape a reader’s tendency to make inferences, exploring why some readers readily reconstruct meaning, whereas others rely more strictly on the literal input.

The PhD student will contribute to designing and conducting experiments examining how readers detect (or fail to detect) textual errors and how they reinterpret ambiguous or imperfect input. Classic paradigms will test detection of insertions, deletions, repetitions, and swaps, alongside text-interpretation tasks involving implausible sentences (e.g., “The mother handed the candle the daughter”). There will also be scope to develop novel paradigms designed to pinpoint specific inference processes.

Eye-tracking will be a core method, providing fine-grained insight into the cognitive mechanisms underlying reading. We will recruit a large and diverse set of participants for our experiments, enabling detailed analyses of individual differences in working memory, reading skill, and language experience.

Training opportunities

The PhD student will play a leading role in refining research questions and selecting target populations; designing and running experiments; recruiting and testing participants; analysing data using advanced statistical methods; interpreting findings within theoretical frameworks; and disseminating results through conference presentations and journal publications.

Training will be provided in programming eye-tracking experiments, analysing data using linear mixed-effects models in R, applying machine-learning approaches such as random forests for individual-differences analysis, and developing open-science workflows. The student will join an experienced eye-tracking research group with regular lab meetings, providing a supportive environment for development, and regular opportunity to discuss their work.

Outputs

In addition to writing their thesis, the candidate will have opportunities to present their findings at major conferences in the field, including meetings of the Experimental Psychology Society and the European Conference on Eye Movements. We will initially target poster presentations, building toward oral presentations as the project develops. We will also aim to publish the work in leading cognitive psychology journals (e.g., Cognition, Journal of Memory and Language, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition). The lab has extensive experience with these venues and will provide clear guidance throughout.