Theories of learning and attention predict a positive relationship between reading times on unfamiliar words and their learning; however, empirical findings of contextual learning studies range from a strong positive relationship to no relationship. To test the conjecture that longer reading times may reflect different cognitive and metacognitive processes, the need to infer novel word meanings from context was deliberately manipulated. One hundred and two adult first– and second–language English language speakers read sixty passages containing pseudowords while their eye movements were recorded. The passages were either preceded or followed by pseudoword definitions. After reading, participants completed posttests of cued meaning recall and form recognition. Meaning recall was positively associated with (i) individual cumulative reading times and (ii) participants’ general vocabulary knowledge, but not when definitions were provided before reading. Form recognition was unaffected by cumulative reading times. Our findings call for a cautious approach in making causative links between eye–movement measures and vocabulary learning from reading.

Bilinguals experience processing costs when comprehending code-switches, yet the magnitude of the cost fluctuates depending on numerous factors. We tested whether switch costs vary based on the frequency of different types of code-switches, as estimated from natural corpora of bilingual speech and text. Spanish–English bilinguals in the U.S. read single-language and code-switched sentences in a self-paced task. Sentence regions containing code-switches were read more slowly than single-language control regions, consistent with the idea that integrating a code-switch poses a processing challenge. Crucially, more frequent code-switches elicited significantly smaller costs both within and across most classes of switch types (e.g., within verb phrases and when comparing switches at verb-phrase and noun-phrase sites). The results suggest that, in addition to learning distributions of syntactic and semantic patterns, bilinguals develop finely tuned expectations about code-switching behavior – representing one reason why code-switching in naturalistic contexts may not be particularly costly.