Abstract

In the present study, we investigated how sentence context effects were affected by the visual quality and sentence difficulty in reading Korean sentences. Participants read sentences or randomly ordered words (non-sentences) in good or poor visual quality and in high or low difficulty. Sentence context effects were measured as the ratio of the speed of reading sentences to the speed of non-sentences. The results from the experiment showed that sentence context effects increased in poor visual quality compared to good visual quality, and increased in low difficulty compared to high difficulty. More importantly, there was an interaction between visual quality and sentence difficulty. Sentence context effects increased in poor visual quality compared to good visual quality at both difficulty levels, but the magnitude of the increase was greater in low difficulty than high difficulty. These results suggest that sentence context may make a greater contribution in the reading of visually degraded sentences, and that this contribution may be amplified when the sentences are easier.