Informational structural markers in Spanish and their cognitive reflection during reading

Speakers use resources to facilitate information processing. Structural markers are information regulators that signal the start and end of information blocks, place them in an order within a sequence, and make it possible to anticipate processing. Their role is especially important in expository textual discourse and in specialized texts where there is a special need to prioritize information to non-specialist audiences. We propose an eye-tracking study of the Spanish structural markers en primer lugar (Eng. ‘firstly’) , en segundo lugar (Eng. ‘secondly’) and por último (Eng. ‘finally’) to verify if their semantic and pragmatic features influence how native speakers process the structures on which they operate. Our starting hypothesis was that their presence may lead to a reduction of the cognitive effort during reading compared to an equivalent text where they are absent. Data analysis from a reading eye-tracking experiment with Spanish native speakers confirmed that the presence of structural markers in enumerative fragments has an accelerating effect on processing during the first reading. However, during the rereading phase this facilitative effect was not found. From this it follows that marking the information structure in an enumeration in specialized texts hardly represents a quantitative advantage for the native reader.