Fluent Rereading: Repetition, Automaticity, and Discrepancy

Six experiments examined readers' sensitivity to discrepancies introduced into familiar texts. Across 4 or 5 trials, Ss crossed out misspellings as they read. Reading times decreased across repeated readings, and even though misspellings differed on every reading, their detection remained constant or improved across readings. Thus reading became fluent but remained accurate across experiences. On the final reading small discrepancies were unexpectedly introduced into the familiar texts. Results showed clear sensitivity to discrepancies in visual features (Experiments 1, 2, and 5) and in lexical and semantic characteristics (Experiments 3, 4, and 6) of familiar texts. Experiments 5 and 6 showed that this sensitivity was on-line, occurring in the interval in which the discrepancy was encountered. The findings are discussed in terms of episodic transfer across repetitions.