| Word familiarity,which refers to how familiar readers are with a word,not only reflects the lexical storage in readers’ mental lexicon but also is the core concept of the eye movement model in reading.According to the eye movement model,readers need to preprocess the information in parafovea before fixation to evaluate the word familiarity(Angele et al.,2016;Reichle et al.,2006;Zang et al.,2013).Word familiarity is highly correlated with word frequency,researchers found that word familiarity influenced the lexical processing in low frequency.There are a lot of differences between Chinese and alphabetic languages,such as information density,could word familiarity effect also be observed in Chinese reading? The present question could not answer this question.Since word familiarity and preview processing play an important role in reading,the present study mainly investigated the effect of word familiarity on parafoveal information processing with eye-movement study.Theoretically,the present study will help to understand deeply the mechanism of parafoveal word identification,and further provide data support for the Chinese Reading Model to simulate the phonological and semantic information processing in the parafovea.With two experiments,the first study mainly investigated whether there was a word familiarity effect on high-frequency and low-frequency words,respectively.Experiment 1explored the word familiarity effect on high-frequency words.Adopted with one factor two levels experiment design,the result showed that there was no word familiarity effect on all the eye movement measures.Experiment 2 explored the word familiarity effect on low-frequency words.Using the same experimental design as Experiment 1,the result showed that the word familiarity effect was on both the early and late word identification stage,readers spent longer time on unfamiliar words than on familiar words.When controlling the word familiarity to investigate the word frequency effect,the result showed that there was no significant word frequency effect on first fixation duration,single fixation duration,and total reading time.The result from the first study indicated that word familiarity did not influence the processing time on high-frequency words,but significantly influenced the processing time on low-frequency words.Based on the first study,the second study focused on the effect of word familiarity on parafoveal information processing on high-frequency and low-frequency words,respectively.Experiment 3 mainly investigated the effect of word familiarity on preview information processing on high-frequency words.Using 2(familiarity: familiar words,less familiar word)× 2(preview:identical,inconsistent)within-participant experimental design,the result only showed the preview effect,neither the word familiarity effect nor interactions were significant on early and late word processing stage.Experiment 4 mainly investigated the effect of word familiarity on preview information processing on low-frequency words.Using 2(familiarity: familiar words,unfamiliar word)× 2(preview: identical,inconsistent)within-participant experimental design,the result showed the effect of word familiarity and preview,there was also a significant interaction between word familiarity and preview on the measure of first fixation duration and single fixation duration,suggesting that the preview effect was more robust on familiar words compared with unfamiliar words.The second study indicated that word familiarity influenced the preview information processing on low-frequency words instead of high-frequency words.Based on Experiment 4,the third study further investigated what type of preview information is extracted by readers on low-frequency words through 3 experiments with boundary paradigm.Experiment 5 explored whether lexical familiarity influenced readers to extract orthographic information from parafovea.Using 2(familiarity: familiar,unfamiliar)× 3(preview: identical,orthographic similar,unrelated)within-participant experimental design,readers were required to read sentences that contains different target words,the result showed the main effect of familiarity and preview,also the reading time on the orthographic similar condition was significantly shorter than that in unrelated conditions.However,there was no significant interaction between familiarity and preview.Readers could extract the orthographic information from familiar and unfamiliar words,suggesting that word familiarity did not influence the extraction of orthographic information from parafovea.Experiment 6 mainly explored whether word familiarity influenced readers to extract phonological information in parafovea.With 2(familiarity: familiar,unfamiliar)× 3(preview:identical,phonological similar,unrelated preview)within-participant experimental design,readers were required to read sentences that contains different target words,the result showed a significant lexical familiarity,as well as the reading time on identical condition were significantly shorter than both of phonological and unrelated conditions,we also found that on the measure of first fixation duration,single fixation duration,and gaze duration,readers spent longer time on unrelated conditions than on phonological similar condition,suggesting an early phonological preview effect;on top of that,readers could not acquire the phonological preview effect on any measures from familiar words,while could obtain the phonological preview information from unfamiliar words on the measure of first fixation and single fixation durations,suggesting that word familiarity influenced readers to extract phonological information from parafovea.Experiment 7 further investigates the effect of word familiarity on semantic information from parafovea.With 2(familiarity: familiar,unfamiliar)× 3(preview: identical,semantic related,unrelated preview)within-participant experimental design,readers were required to read sentences that contains different target words,the result showed the main effect of familiarity,we also found the fixation time on the identical condition was significantly shorter than that of on semantic related and unrelated conditions,readers spent shorter time on semantic related and unrelated conditions on the measure of single fixation duration and go-past time,suggesting semantic preview effect.On the familiar word,readers spent shorter first fixation duration in the semantically related condition than that in the unrelated condition,while there was no significant difference between the two conditions on the unfamiliar word.On the measure of go-past time,there was no significant difference between semantic-related and unrelated conditions on familiar words,while the time was significantly shorter on semantically related and unrelated conditions on unfamiliar words.The result suggested that word familiarity influenced readers to extract semantic information from parafovea.From the three studies,we could conclude that:Firstly,on the foveal word identification,word familiarity did not influence readers’ process of high-frequency words,but there was a word familiarity effect on low-frequency words,the processing time on the familiar word was shorter than on unfamiliar words.Secondly,on the parafoveal word identification,word familiarity did not influence the preview information processing for high-frequency words,however,it influenced the parafoveal information processing for low-frequency words,mainly reflected in the early stage of word identification.Thirdly,for low-frequency words,word familiarity did not influence readers to obtain orthographic information from parafovea,but influenced readers to extract deeper preview information processing,such as phonological and semantic information.Fourth,based on the previous word identification model,the present study tentatively put forward that readers adopt a direct route on familiar words while using the phonological mediated route on unfamiliar words. |
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