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Evidence for Prosody in Silent Reading

2013; Wiley; Volume: 49; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/rrq.67

1936-2722

Jennifer Gross, Amanda L. Millett, Brian Bartek, Kyle Hampton Bredell, Bo Winegard,

Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

English speakers and expressive readers emphasize new content in an ongoing discourse. Do silent readers emphasize new content in their inner voice? Because the inner voice cannot be directly observed, we borrowed the cap-emphasis technique (e.g., "toMAYto") from the pronunciation guides of dictionaries to elicit prosodic emphasis. Extrapolating from linguistic theories of focus prosody in spoken English, we predicted and found that silent readers in experiment 1 preferred cap-emphasized, newsworthy content ("James stole the BRACELET") when the just-read story left them wondering what was stolen (compared with control trials). Readers preferred "JAMES stole the bracelet" when left wondering who the thief was. Experiment 2 generalized our findings to newsworthy function words and to a new behavioral measure, reaction time. As predicted, "He CAN" was judged more quickly and accurately following "Can he swim," whereas "HE can" was judged more quickly and accurately following "Who can swim?" Our results suggest that readers engage focus prosody when they read silently. 讲英语的人和表情朗读者,均强调话语进行中的新内容。默读时,在读者的内心声音是否强调新内容?由于内心的声音不能直接观察得到,本文作者借鉴词典的发音指南,用大写强调表示法(例如"toMayto")去引发语音中的重音。本文作者从英语口语焦点语音的语言学理论的推断,在实验研究(1)中预测及发现:读者刚默读完一个故事后,正在猜想什么东西被偷去时,他们(与对照实验测试相比)较喜欢具有以大写强调新闻价值的故事内容("詹姆斯偷了那手镯","James stole the BRACELET")。当默读者正在猜想谁是小偷时,却较喜欢"詹姆斯偷了那手镯"("JAMES stole the bracelet")。在实验研究(2)中,本文作者把实验研究(1)的结果,归纳推演到有新闻价值的虚词及一个新的行为量度方法(反应时间)。正如所料,当默读者在猜想"他能否游泳?"("Can he swim?")后,便能较迅速和准确地判断出"他能"("He CAN");当默读者在猜想"谁能游泳?"("Who can swim?")后,便能较迅速和准确地判断"他能"("HE can")。本研究结果显示,阅读者默读时会考量焦点语音。 Los que hablan inglés y los lectores expresivos enfatizan contenido nuevo en un discurso continuo. Al leer en silencio, ¿enfatizan los lectores en su mente el contenido nuevo también? Ya que no es posible observar la mente directamente, usamos la técnica de enfatizar con mayúsculas (por ejemplo: "toMAte") de los guías de pronunciación en los diccionarios para conseguir el énfasis prosódico. Aplicando conclusiones de las teorías lingüísticas enfocadas en la prosodia del inglés hablado, predecimos y encontramos que los lectores en silencio en el experimento 1 prefirieron contenido de interés periodístico enfatizado con mayúsculas (James se robó la PULSERA) mientras que el cuento sin el énfasis les dejaba preguntándose quién fue el ladrón. El experimento 2 se amplió en base a nuestros resultados a palabras funcionales y a una nueva medida de comportamiento: el tiempo de reacción. Como predicho, "El SABE" fue interpretado más rápida y certeramente después de "¿Sabe nadar?", mientras que "EL sabe" fue interpretado más rápida y certeramente después de "¿Quién sabe nadar?". Nuestros resultados sugieren que los lectores usan prosodia al leer en silencio. يؤكد متحدثو الإنجليزية وكذلك القراء المعبرون محتوى جديداً في خطاب مستمر. هل يؤكد القراء الصامتون محتوى جديدأ في صوتهم الداخلي؟ وبالاعتبار أن الصوت الداخلي لا يمكن مرابقته مباشراً، فأننا اقتبسنا طريقة تأكيد الحروف الكبيرة (مثلاً: بنـدورة) من أدلة النطق في المعاجم لاستجلاب التركيز التطويحي. وانطلاقاً من استقراء النظريات اللغوية المتعلقة بالتركيز التطويحي في الإنجليزية المحكية، فتبنأنا واكتشفنا بأن القراء الصامتين في التجربة الأولى فضلوا محتوى ذا القيمة الأخبارية المؤكدة بواسطة الحروف الكبيرة (سرق جايمز الـسوار) حين القصة المقروءة الآنية تركتهم يتسألون ماذا انسرق (بالمقارنة مع التجارب الضابطة). وقد فضل القراء (سرق جايمز السوار) حين لم يتأكدوا ممن كان اللص. وعممت التجربة الثانية نتائجنا في الكلمات الوظيفية ذات القيمة الأخبارية وفي مقياس أسلوبي جديد، وقت ردة الفعل. وكما كان المتوقع، "هو يستطيع" كان مفهوماً بشكل أسرع وأدق حين تبعت "هل يستطيع السباحة" بينما "هو يستطيع" كان مفهوماً بشكل أسرع وأدق حين تبعت "من يستطيع السباحة؟". وتقترح نتائجنا أن القراءة يقومون بالتركيز التطويحي حين يقرؤون بصمت. Пpи гoвopeнии и выpaзитeльнoм чтeнии вcлyx люди иcпoльзyют эмфaтичecкиe вoзмoжнocти интoниpoвaния. Пpoиcxoдит ли интoниpoвaниe пpи чтeнии пpo ceбя? (Peчь идeт oб aнглийcкoй фpaзe, гдe лoгичecкoe yдapeниe нeльзя oбecпeчить измeнeниeм пopядкa cлoв и нeльзя yбpaть ни пoдлeжaщee, ни cкaзyeмoe. – Пpим. пep.) Пocкoлькy нeпocpeдcтвeннo нaблюдaть зa чтeниeм пpo ceбя и внyтpeннeй peчью нeвoзмoжнo, aвтopы иcпoльзoвaли зaглaвныe бyквы, кoтopыe пpимeняютcя в нeкoтopыx cлoвapяx для выдeлeния yдapнoгo cлoгa. Ha ocнoвe лингвиcтичecкиx тeopий пpocoдии в paзгoвopнoй peчи aвтopы пpeдcкaзaли и зaтeм oпытным пyтeм пoдтвepдили, чтo, пoзнaкoмившиcь c нoвocтнoй зaмeткoй, читaтeли выбиpaли "James stole the BRACELET?", ecли иx зaинтepecoвaлo, чтo имeннo былo yкpaдeнo. Ecли жe иx зaинтepecoвaлa личнocть вopa, oни выбиpaли "JAMES stole the bracelet?" Bтopoй экcпepимeнт пoмoг oбoбщить пoлyчeнныe peзyльтaты пo выдeлeнию cлoв, нecyщиx нoвyю инфopмaцию, и пpивнec в иccлeдoвaниe нoвый пapaмeтp: вpeмя peaкции. Кaк и oжидaлocь, oтвeт "He CAN" – был выбpaн быcтpo и cooтвeтcтвoвaл вoпpocy: "Oн yмeeт плaвaть?", тoгдa кaк "HE can" был быcтpo и тoчнo oтнeceн к вoпpocy "Ктo yмeeт плaвaть?" Peзyльтaты cвидeтeльcтвyют o тoм, чтo пpи чтeнии пpo ceбя пpoиcxoдит интoниpoвaниe и paccтaвляютcя лoгичecкиe yдapeния. Les Anglophones et les lecteurs expressifs mettent l'accent sur ce qui est nouveau quand ils parlent. En lecture silencieuse, les lecteurs mettent-ils l'accent sur un contenu nouveau dans leur auto langage ? Du fait qu'il n'est pas possible d'observer directement l'auto langage, nous avons utilisé la technique consistant à mettre l'accent sur les capitales (par exemple "toMAYto") en nous basant sur les guides de prononciation des dictionnaires pour indiquer l'accent dans la prosodie. Partant des théories linguistiques de ce qui est accentué dans la prosodie de l'anglais parlé, nous avons prédit et vérifié que les lecteurs silencieux de l'expérienc e 1 préfèrent que le contenu nouveau soit souligné (« James a volé le BRACELET ») quand l'histoire qu'ils viennent juste de lire les font s'interroger sur ce qui a été volé (par rapport à des essais témoin) et préfèrent « JAMES a volé le bracelet » quand ils se demandent qui est le voleur. L'expérience 2 permet de généraliser cette conclusion aux mots outils nouveaux et avec une autre mesure comportementale, le temps de réaction. Comme prévu, « He CAN » (« Il sait ») est évalué plus vite et avec moins d'erreurs après « Can he swim ? » (« Sait-il nager ? »), tandis que « HE can » (« Il sait ») est évalué plus vite et avec moins d'erreurs quand il vient après "Who can swim?"(« Qui sait nager ? »). Nos résultats suggèrent que les lecteurs s'appuient sur ce qui est accentué dans la prosodie quand ils lisent silencieusement. The science of reading has persuasively shown that a to-be-recognized word in print is influenced by detailed knowledge of phonology (Van Orden & Kloos, 2005). In contrast, the extent to which silent reading represents prosody, the rhythm and melody of language, is less-well understood. The impetus for our investigations into the role of prosody in skilled, adult reading stems from the central role that prosody plays in speech. Prosody is a universal feature of all languages (Endress & Hauser, 2010). Prosodic speech acoustically varies in duration, frequency, amplitude, and tempo (Selkirk, 1986). The singsong quality of infant-directed speech is an exaggerated example (Bryant & Barrett, 2007). In American Sign Language, the physical correlates of prosody involve variation in displacement, velocity, jerk, and facial features (Wilbur & Martínez, 2002). Prosody serves diverse functions in speech. Prosodic variations reveal features of the speaker (e.g., emotional state, intentions) as well as the form of the utterance (e.g., statement, request) that may not be captured by word selection, sentence construction, or punctuation. For example, the expression "Brian bought a book" would bear different prosodic qualities to signal a statement, question, exclamation, or sarcasm (Nespor & Vogel, 1986). Additionally, prosody resolves polysemy (Schafer, Speer, Warren, & White, 2000), reduces ambiguity (e.g., DeDe, 2010; Kjelgaard & Speer, 1999; Snedeker & Trueswell, 2003), flags irony (Nakassis & Snedeker, 2002), influences online parsing decisions (DeDe, 2010), and signals turn taking in a conversation (Oliveira & Freitas, 2008). Prosodic cues are redundantly present when other cues offer disambiguation (Schafer et al., 2000; Snedeker & Trueswell, 2003). As a testament to its central role in speech comprehension, prosody is inextricably part of remembered speech, such that "old" words with new prosody are rarely falsely recognized (Speer, Crowder, & Thomas, 1993). The absence of prosody can extract a toll on the listener, as spoken utterances lacking rich prosody are harder to understand (Cutler, Dahan, & van Donselaar, 1997). Like speech, expressive reading is rich in prosody. Reading aloud "with appropriate speed, accuracy, and proper expression" is a hallmark of fluency among nascent readers according to the National Reading Panel (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000, p. 11). Expressive reading necessitates deciphering the correct pronunciations of the individual words on the printed page (segmental phonology) as well as rendering the appropriate pattern of undulating stress and pulsating beat across connected text (suprasegmental prosody). Written English is based on an alphabetic system that maps graphemes to phonemes. Becoming a fluent reader is linked to fast and efficient decoding of the letter–sound correspondences in English (Schwanenflugel, Hamilton, Kuhn, Wisenbaker, & Stahl, 2004). Decoding speed also forecasts prosodic reading and better reading comprehension (Miller & Schwanenflugel, 2008; Schwanenflugel et al., 2004). Miller and Schwanenflugel (2008) suggest that young readers apply their understanding of spoken prosody to oral reading first and then internalize these prosodic codes later as an expressive inner voice. Prosodic reading has many communicative benefits. When reading aloud, natural prosody facilitates sentence organization in memory and increases recall (Koriat, Greenberg, & Kreiner, 2002). By comparison, nonprosodic reading compromises comprehension (National Research Council, 1999). Early versions of synthetic speech (text-to-speech assistive technologies) yielded unnatural, monotonous renderings of spoken text, causing cognitive processing costs, such as fatigue (Paris, Thomas, Gilson, & Kincaid, 2000). Although prosodic reading is a hallmark of fluency, the exact role of suprasegmental prosody in the translation of print to speech is a nascent field of investigation. The term prosody appears five times in The Science of Reading: A Handbook (Snowling & Hume, 2005), and most of these entries mention its omission from the field of reading research. As Treiman and Kessler (2005) noted, the omission of prosody is unsurprising given that distinctions of length, tone, pitch, stress, and intonation are largely ignored by writing systems. Punctuation and syntax assist but underspecify a prosodic rendering of connected text. The lack of prosodic transparency in written English means few cues for expressive reading. Struggling readers produce oral readings that are prosodically ill formed (Levy, di Persio, & Hollingshead, 1992). Repeated readings foster prosody development in good readers but not necessarily in poor readers (Levy, Nicholls, & Kohen, 1993). In two studies, we sought to understand whether the inner voice of skilled, adult readers preserves the prosodic richness of speech and expressive reading. Adult readers typically report the phenomenological experience of an expressive "voice in the head" that seemingly captures the nuances of lively speech (Huey, 1908/1968). In support of an expressive inner voice in adult readers, reading research has persuasively shown that printed word recognition is influenced by detailed knowledge of segmental phonology. Just as tongue twisters are notoriously difficult to articulate properly, visual tongue twisters trick the silent reader. Readers are significantly slower in judging the semantic acceptability of visual tongue twisters (e.g., "The detective discovered the danger and decided to dig for details") compared with control sentences (McCutchen, Bell, France, & Perfetti, 1991). The tongue-twister effect has generalized to deaf readers (Hanson, Goodell, & Perfetti, 1991) as well as to tongue twisters comprised of legal nonwords when spoken, typed, recalled, or recognized (Acheson & MacDonald, 2009). In a critical test of the phonological nature of the tongue-twister effect in working memory, McCutchen and colleagues (1991) found that the phonetic content of digit names held in working memory interacted with the phonetic content of the sentences being read, suggesting interference at the level of sound-based codes used in working memory. Neuroimaging research revealed that the tongue-twister effect implicates cortical areas involved in articulatory-phonological processing as well as speech programming (Keller, Carpenter, & Just, 2003), a finding that is consistent with the idea that the voice in the head exploits the broader language system (Mattingly, 1972). Phonological features of the inner voice emerge in adult readers when performing a range of visual word recognition tasks. In lexical decision tasks, target words with phonetically longer vowels (e.g., plead) or consonant clusters take longer to respond to than targets with respectively shorter vowels (e.g., pleat) or consonant clusters, when orthographic lengths are controlled (Abramson & Goldinger, 1997; Lukatela, Eaton, Sabadini, & Turvey, 2004). Observing eye movements, Ashby and Clifton (2005) found that polysyllabic words with two stressed syllables (e.g., fundamental) were read 36 ms more slowly and received more fixations than did polysyllabic words with one stressed syllable (e.g., significant), a finding that is consistent with the longer pronunciation times for stressed compared with unstressed vowels (Selkirk, 1986). Recent brain activation research reveals that skilled, adult readers activate phonological features during the initial moments of visual word recognition (i.e., by 80 ms), suggesting that phonological codes may be guiding (rather than a by-product of) lexical access (Ashby, Sanders, & Kingston, 2009). To establish the time course of phonological processing of vowels in word recognition, Ashby, Treiman, Kessler, and Rayner (2006) observed the eye movements of skilled readers who were presented with parafoveal previews of the vowel for a to-be-read target word embedded in a sentence. Shorter reading times were observed when readers received congruous, compared with incongruous, vowel previews, suggesting that phonological processing of vowels begins early (before foveal fixation; Ashby et al., 2006). Even though written English is based on an alphabetic system, skilled readers extract phonological units larger than single phonemes when computing the relations between print and speech. Onsets (the initial consonant or consonant cluster) and rimes (the vowel and any following consonants) play a special role in mapping letters to sounds (Treiman, 1994). Orthographic rimes, in particular, are phonologically reliable and guide the pronunciation of written words (Treiman, Mullennix, Bijeljac-Babic, & Richmond-Welty, 1995). Orthographic rimes are further divisible into two phonological units—a vocalic nucleus and syllable-final coda—as demonstrated by their cohesiveness in a Reicher (1969) and Wheeler (1970) letter detection task (Gross, Treiman, & Inman, 2000). Suggesting that phonological units as large as syllables may be guiding lexical access, neurophysiological evidence reveals that skilled, adult readers prelexically activate syllable-level information during the initial moments of visual word recognition (Ashby, 2010). When syllables are previewed parafoveally, compared with incongruous previews (with one letter more or less), the reading of low-frequency words is benefited in particular (Ashby, 2006; Ashby & Rayner, 2004). Thus, the English orthography has a lexical level (represented by the spaces between words), a graphemic level where a letter or a group of letters represents a single sound, and an intermediate level such that readers use large phonological units (e.g., syllables, rimes) when recognizing words in print. When translating the relations between print and speech, emerging evidence suggests that adult readers extract suprasegmental prosodic features, including lexical stress, metrical stress, prosodic phrasing, punctuation, and acoustic features of the implied author. By observing readers' eye movements when reading stress-alternating homographs, Breen and Clifton (2011) evaluated the influences of lexical and metrical stress. In homographs, unique meanings correspond to the different pronunciations (e.g., ABstract [noun] vs. abSTRACT [verb]; caps have been used to signal stress assignment in these examples, although no such aid was available to participants in the study). In the experiment, readers experienced a "cost" (e.g., longer reading times) when homographs were syntactically biased to have a noun interpretation (e.g., ABstract) yet had to be prosodically disambiguated as a verb (e.g., "The brilliant abSTRACT the…"), a garden path phenomenon. To explore metrical stress across phrases, Breen and Clifton embedded stress-alternating homographs (e.g., PRESent vs. preSENT) in limericks, noted for their catchy, predictable rhymes (e.g., "There once was a clever, young gent who had a nice talk to present"). When silent readers encountered a mismatch between the predicted meter and actual stress pattern of a homograph, they experienced difficulty (i.e., lower probability of skipping the critical word, longer fixations times). Implicit prosodic phrasing plays a role in silent reading (Bader, 1998; Hwang & Schafer, 2009; Swets, Desmet, Hambrick, & Ferreira, 2007). According to the implicit prosody hypothesis (Fodor, 2002), silent readers project prosody onto written sentences to aid syntactic parsing decisions. The ambiguous sentence "The old man the boat" may cause the silent reader to stumble if "old man" is mistakenly parsed as the subject of the sentence. Proper phrasal parsing of this garden path sentence requires "man" to be parsed as the verb. Garden path sentences seemingly require the reader to reanalyze both the syntactic structure and the prosodic structure of the sentence (Bader, 1998). The ambiguous phrase "the maid of the princess who scratched herself in public" has two plausible interpretations concerning who did the scratching: the maid or the princess. Swets et al. showed that individual differences in working memory capacity among adults affect syntactic ambiguity resolution. Participants with low working memory tended to insert a prosodic break between "maid of the princess" and "who scratched herself," rendering the conclusion that the maid did the scratching—a high attachment preference. In contrast, participants with high working memory were more likely to interpret the princess as the self-scratcher—a low attachment preference. The prosodic breaks created on the fly influence attachment preferences (Bader, 1998), and working memory seems to play a role in prosodic chunking strategies (Swets et al., 2007). Punctuation guides emphatic oral reading (e.g., Stop!) as well as silent reading. Punctuation in text and altered prosody in speech were found to affect word recognition and comprehension in a similar fashion (Cohen, Douaire, & Elsabbagh, 2001). Moreover, commas and speech boundaries were found to reliably elicit a similar online brain response (event-related brain potential), suggesting a correspondence between punctuation and an inner prosodic voice (Steinhauer, 2003). The "voices" of the story characters influence silent reading times (e.g., Alexander & Nygaard, 2008; Kurby, Magliano, & Rapp, 2009). After being familiarized to the authors' voices, reading rates were slower for texts "written" by slower talking speakers than faster talking ones (Alexander & Nygaard, 2008), suggesting that silent readers impose an author's pronunciation rate onto their voice in the head. Building on recent research, we explored whether the inner voice of skilled, adult readers represents focus prosody when translating the relations between print and speech. Fodor (2002) notes that the role of implicit prosody in silent reading is easily overlooked and difficult to substantiate and that a manipulation of implicit prosody often requires a manipulation of another linguistic feature. To subtly manipulate implicit prosody without compromising interpretative clarity, we exploited stylistic emphasis of print (e.g., caps) to elicit prosodic prominence in the silent reader's inner voice. We borrowed the usage of caps as a marker for prosodic emphasis from the pronunciation guides of dictionaries (e.g., for aioli, /ahy-OH-lee/), comic strips (e.g., POW!, OUCH!), and the phenomenological impression when reading an e-mail message typed in all caps (e.g., CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?), which seems as though the sender has raised his or her voice. E-mail etiquette forums caution writers to restrict the use of caps because "typing in all caps is considered yelling, screaming or at the very least adding emphasis to the word you type" (Kallos, n.d., para. 3). Experiments 1 and 2 investigated whether silent readers represent focus prosody in their inner voice. If silent readers internalize the prosody of their spoken language, then linguistic theories of focus prosody in spoken English should apply to the voice in the head. We extrapolated from Selkirk's (1986, 1996) theory of focus marking in spoken English, which postulates that speakers prosodically emphasize new or important content in an ongoing discourse. In theory, silent readers should give higher helpfulness ratings for the final sentences of a paragraph when new or important content is cap-emphatic and previously given information is not stylistically emphatic, compared with incongruously matched stimuli. For example, the cap-emphatic text in "JAMES stole the bracelet" should be preferred by silent readers when the paragraph builds up to the question, "Who stole the bracelet?" In contrast, the cap-emphatic text in "James stole the BRACELET" should be preferred when the just-read story leaves the reader wondering, What did James steal? Experiment 2 used a reaction time task to augment the preference judgments used in experiment 1 and additionally explored whether typically elusive function words could bear prosodic prominence when contextually new. For example, "He CAN" should be judged more quickly and accurately following "Can he swim?" "HE can" should be judged more quickly and accurately following "Who can swim?" Focus prosody plays an important role in speech production, speech perception, and expressive reading. Experiment 1 investigated whether silent readers represent focus prosody when translating print to a speech-based code. Across a range of speech perception studies, acoustically salient (longer, louder) information is understood as new or important content in the ongoing discourse, whereas de-accented constituents are understood as given information (Bolinger, 1978; Rooth, 1992; Speer et al., 1993; Warren, 1996). New content is not derivable from the story or the implied context (Halliday, 1967). For example, the question, "Did John read Don Quixote?" implies the noun book. Because book is implied, Ladd (1980) contends that the fitting response emphasizes the new information, "No, John doesn't READ books." (John may read journal articles.) Consistent with linguistic theories, English speakers responded to pragmatic needs in an ongoing discourse by placing the main stress on the most newsworthy content (Nava & Zubizarreta, 2010; Rooth, 1992). Speakers were engaged in a scripted question-and-answer dialogue. When asked, "What's been happening?" 81% of the speakers placed the main stress on the unexpected verb ("A dog is SINGING"), rendering the verb as highly noteworthy (Nava & Zubizarreta, 2010). When answering the question, "Why are you buying that old stamp?" the majority (82%) of speakers responded by narrowly placing emphasis on the newsworthy verb ("because I COLLECT stamps"). When asked, "What was that crashing sound," which implies something broke, 97% of the speakers emphasized the new subject ("A GLASS broke"). Complementary research reveals that listeners of English appreciate when contrastively focused content is prosodically marked by speakers. In question-and-answer dialogues, listeners rate focus marked by pitch-accenting and the de-accenting of the nonfocused contents of the sentence as more appropriate than other intonational patterns (Welby, 2003). Focal pitch accenting is used by listeners to both encode and remember contextually prominent words in spoken discourse, and better memory for pitch-accented words persists at least one day later (Fraundorf, Watson, & Benjamin, 2010). Focus prosody is present in the expressive reading of children and adults. Burgeoning readers in the third grade are sensitive to linguistic focus. When reading aloud, these early readers marked contrastive focus with higher pitch and greater intensity compared with the same words appearing in noncontrastively focused contexts (Schwanenflugel, Westmoreland, & Benjamin, 2013). Skilled, adult readers dynamically responded to the context that established given information and produced the same sentence with different intonational patterns that emphasized the contrastive information (Cooper, Eady, & Mueller, 1985; Eady & Cooper, 1986). In Cooper et al.'s (1985) study, readers first heard one of four prerecorded questions (e.g., "Did William or Chuck like the present that Shirley sent to her sister?"). Afterward, readers read aloud a declarative sentence: "Chuck liked the present that Shirley sent to her sister." Across a range of speakers and stimuli, the acoustical analysis consistently showed that the focal words (i.e., Chuck, present, Shirley, sister) in stressed compared with nonstressed contexts was much longer in duration and perceptually distinctive because declination occurred on either side of the focused content (Cooper et al., 1985; Eady & Cooper, 1986). According to the implicit prosody theory, the prosody of sentences read aloud (e.g., those in Cooper and colleagues' studies) perfectly matches the prosody projected onto a silently read sentence in a similar context (Fodor, 2002). Just as new information is pitch accented and old information is de-accented in an ongoing discourse and in sentences read aloud, we investigated whether new information receives prominence in the reader's inner voice in experiment 1. Selkirk's (1986, 1996, 2002) theory of focus marking in spoken English stipulated a precise, testable framework for how contextual newness might implicitly influence our silent readers. In the following examples from Selkirk (1986, 1996), focus is marked by caps, and the boundaries of focus marking (which necessarily contain the most prominent word in that phrase) are marked by [F]. When answering the question, "What did Mary buy a book about?" the appropriate response is narrowly focused on the new content that receives heavy stress: "Mary bought a book about [F BATS]." If the question was, "What did Mary buy?" the appropriate response, "Mary bought [F a book about BATS]," pitch-marks the new content, and focus propagates up the syntactic tree to the phrasal level. Prosodic prominence can be contrastive, and focus is narrowly restricted to the contrasting information (e.g., "I don't think she [F SNIFFLED], she [F SNEEZED]." Similarly, a fitting response to the question, "Why don't you eat French [F TOAST]?" is "I've forgotten how to [F MAKE] French toast," where heavy stress is narrowly focused on the contrasting information (Ladd, 1980). Focus prosody presupposes that the speaker and hearer agree on shared information, and the speaker prosodically highlights new or important content (Halliday, 1967). In experiment 1, participants silently read short stories in which the final sentence of each featured new content in light of the just-furnished details of the story. To avoid reliance on our subjective sense of newness when writing short stories, we morphed examples from Selkirk (1986, 1996, 2000, 2002) and drew on the degree of givenness theory (Baumann & Grice, 2006; Baumann, Grice, & Steindamm, 2006). The degree of givenness theory postulates that givenness systematically varies along a continuum from most accessible to least accessible. In theory, immediate repetition of a given referent yields low newsworthiness (e.g., "Sam stood up in the canoe. Sam fell out"). Textually displaced repetition yields increased newsworthiness (e.g., "Sam and Sally went canoeing. The river was turbulent. The canoe rocked back and forth and someone fell out. Sam fell out"). Therefore, when writing our short stories, we exploited novelty and textual displacement to yield new or important content, and immediate repetition to yield old information. If the inner voice captures the prosodic liveliness of focus prosody according to Selkirk's theory (1986, 1996, 2002) of spoken English, we reasoned that our silent readers should give higher helpfulness ratings when new or important content is cap-emphatic and previously given information is not stylistically emphatic (focus congruous condition), compared with matched, incongruous stimuli. For example, the reader first learned about the family's two dogs, Rover and Fido. Next, the reader learned a hole was dug under the fence, allowing one dog to squirm away. "[FROVER] escaped" as the story-final sentence should receive higher preference ratings compared with "[F Rover] ESCAPED" because cap-emphasis congruently maps onto the prosodic focus in the former sentence but not in the latter one. If the silent reader instead learned about the family's (only) pet d