Preview frequency effects in reading: evidence from Chinese.

Studies about sentence reading have shown that visual and lexical information beyond the currently fixated word can be integrated across fixations. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm has been used widely to explore the extent to which parafoveal information can be processed before a word is fixated on. However, a critical review of the current literature suggests that unrelated mask previews are an unlikely baseline control with zero lexical activation, blurring the nature of experimental effects observed in the paradigm. The present study, therefore, aimed at shedding light on the effect of parafoveal mask properties through a manipulation of preview word frequency. Low-frequency preview words that are unrelated to target words elicited a larger interference than high-frequency preview words. We discuss implications of the preview frequency effect for computational models of eye-movement control in reading.

The Beijing Sentence Corpus: A Chinese sentence corpus with eye movement data and predictability norms.

This report introduces the Beijing Sentence Corpus (BSC). This is a Chinese sentence corpus of eye-tracking data with relatively clear word boundaries. In addition, we report predictability norms for each word in the corpus. Eye movement corpora are available in alphabetic scripts such as English, German, and French. However, there is no publicly available corpus for Chinese. Thus, to study predictive processes during reading in Chinese, it is necessary to establish such a corpus. Also, given the clear word boundaries in the sentences, BSC is especially useful to provide evidence relevant to the theoretical debate of saccade target selection in Chinese. With the large-scale predictability norms, we conducted new analyses based on 60 BSC readers, testing the influences of launch word and target word properties while controlling for visual and oculomotor constraints, as well as sentence and subject-level individual differences. We discuss implications for guidance of eye movements in Chinese reading.

On the relationship between phonological awareness, morphological awareness and Chinese literacy skills: evidence from an 8-year longitudinal study.

The present study reported data on phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and Chinese literacy skills of 294 children from an 8-year longitudinal study. Results showed that mainland Chinese children's preliterate syllable awareness at ages 4 to 6 years uniquely predicted post-literate morphological awareness at ages 7 to 10 years. Preliterate syllable awareness directly contributed to character reading and writing at age 11 years, while post-literate phonemic awareness predicted only character reading at age 11 years. In addition, preliterate syllable and morphological awareness at ages 4 to 6 years had indirect effects on character reading and writing, reading fluency, and reading comprehension at age 11 years, through post-literate morphological awareness at ages 7 to 10 years. Findings underscore the significant role of syllable awareness in Chinese character reading and writing, and the importance of morphological awareness in character-level processing and high-level literacy skills. More importantly, our results suggest the unique relation of syllable awareness and morphological awareness in Chinese as they focus on the same unit, which is also likely to map directly onto a character, the basic unit for high-level Chinese reading skills.

Parafoveal activation of sign translation previews among deaf readers during the reading of Chinese sentences.

In the present study, we manipulated the different types of information available in the parafovea during the reading of Chinese sentences and examined whether deaf readers could activate sign translations of Chinese words during reading. The main finding was that, as compared to unrelated previews, the deaf readers had longer fixation durations on the target words when sign-phonologically related preview words were presented; this preview cost effect due to sign-phonological relatedness was absent for reading-level-matched hearing individuals. These results indicate that Chinese deaf readers activate sign language translations of parafoveal words during reading. We discuss the implications for notions of parafoveal processing in reading.

Direction-specific reading experience shapes perceptual span.

Perceptual span in reading, the spatial extent for effective information extraction during a single fixation, provides a critical foundation to all studies for sentence reading. However, it is not understood fully how the perceptual span is influenced by direction-specific reading experience. Traditional Chinese sentences can be written horizontally from left to right or vertically downward, offering the best opportunity to explore readers' perceptual span in different text directions, free of possible confounding with language proficiency and cross-participant differences. Using a within-item and within-subject design, eye movements of traditional Chinese readers were recorded during their reading of horizontally and vertically presented sentences. Additionally, regardless of text direction, a gaze-contingent moving-window technique was adopted to restrict visible texts within a virtual window that moved in synchrony with the reader's eye gaze, while characters outside the window were masked. Among several critical results, most importantly, asymptotic reading performance was observed in a smaller window condition for vertical reading than for horizontal reading, suggesting an overall smaller perceptual span in the former case. In addition, the size of the vertical perceptual span increased as a function of the readers' familiarity with vertical text. We conclude that factors beyond orthographic complexity and readers' language proficiency can influence the way in which humans read. Readers' direction-specific perceptual experiences can influence their perceptual span. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Printing words in alternating colors facilitates eye movements among young and older Chinese adults.

It is well known that the Chinese writing system lacks visual cues for word boundaries, such as interword spaces. However, characters must be grouped into words or phrases for understanding, and the lack of interword spaces can cause certain ambiguity. In the current study, young and older Chinese adults' eye movements were recorded during their reading of naturally unspaced sentences, where consecutive words or nonwords were printed using alternating colors. The eye movements of both the Chinese young and older adults were clearly influenced by this explicit word boundary information. Across a number of eye-movement measures, in addition to a general age-related slowdown, the results showed that both groups benefited overall from the explicit color-based word boundary and experienced interference from the nonword boundary. Moreover, the manipulations showed stronger effects among the older adults. We discuss implications for practical application.

Eye-voice span during rapid automatized naming of digits and dice in Chinese normal and dyslexic children.

We measured Chinese dyslexic and control children's eye movements during rapid automatized naming (RAN) with alphanumeric (digits) and symbolic (dice surfaces) stimuli. Both types of stimuli required identical oral responses, controlling for effects associated with speech production. Results showed that naming dice was much slower than naming digits for both groups, but group differences in eye-movement measures and in the eye-voice span (i.e. the distance between the currently fixated item and the voiced item) were generally larger in digit-RAN than in dice-RAN. In addition, dyslexics were less efficient in parafoveal processing in these RAN tasks. Since the two RAN tasks required the same phonological output and on the assumption that naming dice is less practiced than naming digits in general, the results suggest that the translation of alphanumeric visual symbols into phonological codes is less efficient in dyslexic children. The dissociation of the print-to-sound conversion and phonological representation suggests that the degree of automaticity in translation from visual symbols to phonological codes in addition to phonological processing per se is also critical to understanding dyslexia.

Parafoveal processing efficiency in rapid automatized naming: a comparison between Chinese normal and dyslexic children.

Dyslexic children are known to be slower than normal readers in rapid automatized naming (RAN). This suggests that dyslexics encounter local processing difficulties, which presumably induce a narrower perceptual span. Consequently, dyslexics should suffer less than normal readers from removing parafoveal preview. Here we used a gaze-contingent moving window paradigm in a RAN task to experimentally test this prediction. Results indicate that dyslexics extract less parafoveal information than control children. We propose that more attentional resources are recruited to the foveal processing because of dyslexics' less automatized translation of visual symbols into phonological output, thereby causing a reduction of the perceptual span. This in turn leads to less efficient preactivation of parafoveal information and, hence, more difficulty in processing the next foveal item.

Joint effects of individual reading skills and word properties on Chinese children's eye movements during sentence reading.

Word recognition during the reading of continuous text has received much attention. While a large body of research has investigated how linguistic properties of words affect eye movements during reading, it remains to be established how individual differences in reading skills affect momentary cognitive processes during sentence reading among typically developing Chinese readers. The present study set out to test the joint influences of word properties and individual reading skills on eye movements during reading among Chinese children. We recorded eye movements of 30 grade 3 (G3) children and 27 grade 5 (G5) children when they read sentences silently for comprehension. Predictors of linear mixed models included word frequency, visual complexity, and launch site distance, in addition to the participants' offline psychometric performances in rapid naming, morphological awareness, word segmenting, and character recognition. The results showed that word properties affected word recognition during sentence reading in both G3 and G5 children. Moreover, word segmenting predicted the G3 children's fixation durations and the G5 children's fixation location, whereas rapid naming predicted the G5 children's fixation duration. Implications are discussed based on the current findings, in light of how different literacy skills contribute to reading development.

Accessing Semantic Information from Above: Parafoveal Processing during the Reading of Vertically Presented Sentences in Traditional Chinese.

As traditional Chinese readers are familiar with reading texts both horizontally rightwards and vertically downwards, the traditional Chinese script provides us a chance to investigate the influence of reading direction on preview benefits by ruling out the confounding factor of different familiarities with reading directions. The present study examines whether parafoveal information can be obtained when reading Chinese sentences in the vertical direction. We manipulated semantic and phonological relatedness between parafoveal preview words and target words. Results showed that traditional Chinese readers could obtain semantic information from preview words; however, there was no phonological preview benefit. Our findings agree with the notion that Chinese characters are well-optimized for semantic access.

Developmental trajectories of reading development and impairment from ages 3 to 8 years in Chinese children.

BACKGROUND: Early prediction of reading disabilities in Chinese is important for early remediation efforts. In this 6-year longitudinal study, we investigated the early cognitive predictors of reading skill in a statistically representative sample of Chinese children from Beijing. METHOD: Two hundred sixty-one (261) native Chinese children were administered seven language-related skills over three years between the ages of 3 and 6 years. Performances on these skills were then examined in relation to subsequent word reading accuracy and fluency. Individual differences in developmental profiles across tasks were then estimated using growth mixture modeling. RESULTS: Four developmental trajectories were classified - the typical (control), catch-up (with low initial cognitive performances but adequate subsequent reading), literacy-related-cognitive-delay (with difficulties in morphological awareness, phonological awareness, and speeded naming and subsequent word recognition), and language-delay (relatively low across all tasks) groups. CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that the combination of phonological awareness, rapid naming and morphological awareness are essential in the early prediction of later reading difficulties in Chinese children.

Semantic preview benefit and cost: Evidence from parafoveal fast-priming paradigm.

How is semantic information in the mental lexicon accessed and selected during reading? Readers process information of both the foveal and parafoveal words. Recent eye-tracking studies hint at bi-phasic lexical activation dynamics, demonstrating that semantically related parafoveal previews can either facilitate, or interfere with lexical processing of target words in comparison to unrelated previews, with the size and direction of the effect depending on exposure time to parafoveal previews. However, evidence to date is only correlational, because exposure time was determined by participants' pre-target fixation durations. Here we experimentally controlled parafoveal preview exposure duration using a combination of the gaze-contingent fast-priming and boundary paradigms. We manipulated preview duration and examined the time course of parafoveal semantic activation during the oral reading of Chinese sentences in three experiments. Semantic previews led to faster lexical access of target words than unrelated previews only when the previews were presented briefly (80 ms in Experiments 1 and 3). Longer exposure time (100 ms or 150 ms) eliminated semantic preview effects, and full preview without duration limit resulted in preview cost, i.e., a reversal of preview benefit. Our results indicate that high-level semantic information can be obtained from parafoveal words and the size and direction of the parafoveal semantic effect depends on the level of lexical activation.

Shared Neural Substrates Underlying Reading and Visual Matching: A Longitudinal Investigation.

The role of visual skills in reading acquisition has long been debated and whether there is shared neurobiological basis between visual skills and reading is not clear. This study investigated the relationship between Visual Matching and reading and their shared neuroanatomical basis. Two hundred and ninety-three typically developing Mandarin-speaking children were followed in a longitudinal study from ages 4 to 11 years old. A subsample of 79 children was further followed up at 14 years old when the MRI data were collected. Results showed that the development of Visual Matching from ages 6 to 8 predicted reading accuracy at age 11. In addition, both the development of Visual Matching and reading accuracy were associated with cortical surface area of a cluster located in fusiform gyrus. These findings suggested that the mapping from visual codes to phonological codes is important in learning to read and that left fusiform gyrus provided neural basis for such mapping. Implications of these findings in light of a new approach toward the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying reading development are discussed.

Eye movement control in Chinese reading: A cross-sectional study.

The present study explored the age-related changes of eye movement control in reading-that is, where to send the eyes and when to move them. Different orthographies present readers with somewhat different problems to solve, and this might, in turn, be reflected in different patterns of development of reading skill. Participants of different developmental levels (Grade 3, N = 30; Grade 5, N = 27 and adults, N = 27) were instructed to read sentences for comprehension while their eye movements were recorded. Contrary to previous findings that have been well documented indicating early maturation of saccade generation in English, current results showed that saccade generation among Chinese readers was still under development at Grade 5, although immediate lexical processing was relatively well-established. The distinct age-related changes in eye movements are attributable to certain linguistic properties of Chinese including the lack of interword spaces and word boundary uncertainty. The present study offers an example of how human eye movement adapts to the orthographic environment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Parafoveal processing in silent and oral reading: Reading mode influences the relative weighting of phonological and semantic information in Chinese.

We examined how reading mode (i.e., silent vs. oral reading) influences parafoveal semantic and phonological processing during the reading of Chinese sentences, using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm. In silent reading, we found in 2 experiments that reading times on target words were shortened with semantic previews in early and late processing, whereas phonological preview effects mainly occurred in gaze duration or second-pass reading. In contrast, results showed that phonological preview information is obtained early on in oral reading. Strikingly, in oral reading, we observed a semantic preview cost on the target word in Experiment 1 and a decrease in the effect size of preview benefit from first- to second-pass measures in Experiment 2, which we hypothesize to result from increased preview duration. Taken together, our results indicate that parafoveal semantic information can be obtained irrespective of reading mode, whereas readers more efficiently process parafoveal phonological information in oral reading. We discuss implications for notions of information processing priority and saccade generation during silent and oral reading. (PsycINFO Database Record

Chinese deaf readers have early access to parafoveal semantics.

In the present study, we manipulated different types of information available in the parafovea during the reading of Chinese sentences and examined how deaf readers make use of the parafoveal information. Results clearly indicate that although the reading-level matched hearing readers make greater use of orthographic information in the parafovea, parafoveal semantic information is obtained earlier among the deaf readers. In addition, a phonological preview benefit effect was found for the better deaf readers (relative to less-skilled deaf readers), although we also provide an alternative explanation for this effect. Providing evidence that Chinese deaf readers have higher efficiency when processing parafoveal semantics, the study indicates flexibility across individuals in the mechanisms underlying word recognition adapting to the inputs available in the linguistic environment.

Saccade-target selection of dyslexic children when reading Chinese.

This study investigates the eye movements of dyslexic children and their age-matched controls when reading Chinese. Dyslexic children exhibited more and longer fixations than age-matched control children, and an increase of word length resulted in a greater increase in the number of fixations and gaze durations for the dyslexic than for the control readers. The report focuses on the finding that there was a significant difference between the two groups in the fixation landing position as a function of word length in single-fixation cases, while there was no such difference in the initial fixation of multi-fixation cases. We also found that both groups had longer incoming saccade amplitudes while the launch sites were closer to the word in single fixation cases than in multi-fixation cases. Our results suggest that dyslexic children's inefficient lexical processing, in combination with the absence of orthographic word boundaries in Chinese, leads them to select saccade targets at the beginning of words conservatively. These findings provide further evidence for parafoveal word segmentation during reading of Chinese sentences.

Parafoveal load of word N+1 modulates preprocessing effectiveness of word N+2 in Chinese reading.

Preview benefits (PBs) from two words to the right of the fixated one (i.e., word N + 2) and associated parafoveal-on-foveal effects are critical for proposals of distributed lexical processing during reading. This experiment examined parafoveal processing during reading of Chinese sentences, using a boundary manipulation of N + 2-word preview with low- and high-frequency words N + 1. The main findings were (a) an identity PB for word N + 2 that was (b) primarily observed when word N + 1 was of high frequency (i.e., an interaction between frequency of word N + 1 and PB for word N + 2), and (c) a parafoveal-on-foveal frequency effect of word N + 1 for fixation durations on word N. We discuss implications for theories of serial attention shifts and parallel distributed processing of words during reading.