The Load Of Foveal Can Influence Preview Effects In Chinese Reading

Many researchers have indicated that during the Chinese reading readers can obtainsome information from the word to the right of the fixated word located in the perceptual spanat the same time. The information which readers previewed from parafoveal can influence thereading efficiency directly. And, information extracted from parafoveal facilitates processingon the subsequent fixation. This is called parafoveal preview effect. As a basic attribute ofwords, word frequency is a very important factor on the processing of word recognition.Numerous studies have demonstrated the delayed effects of word frequency, this refers to thefrequency effect of the word N could spillover to the next word. Therefore, the relationship ofthe foveal load with the preview effect has become the focus of the researchers at home andabroad. In order to ascertain this issue there are already many research on alphabetic scripts,but because Chinese reading is a more complicated and dynamic process (the script does notphysically marked by word boundaries) there are little similar research about Chinese. Sowhether the load of foveal (word frequency) will affects the processing of parafoveal words?And it will affect which kind information will be acquired? These are all we want to exploreand also the main purpose of this research.Present study used eye movement experiment method combined with the boundaryparadigm (Rayner,1975) to explore the delayed effects of word frequency and parafovealpreview effect and focus on their relationship. The eye movements’ data were recorded byEyelink1000eye tracking system.Two experiments were conducted in present study:In Experiment1, there were34graduate students taking part in the experiment. Theexperimental paradigm is normal reading paradigm, to explore whether there are effects ofword frequency and delayed effect of word frequency in Chinese reading. Experimentalmaterials are all two characters words about the foveal and parafoveal word target word. Theword frequency of the foveal word as factor (high frequency, low frequency), there are twointerest areas, use one experiment could examine two issues: the effects of word frequencyand the delayed effects of word frequency.Experiment2using42subjects, eye movement experiment method combined with theboundary paradigm are used to explore whether the load of foveal (use word frequency) willaffects the processing of parafoveal words, and it will influence which kind information(phonological, orthographic, semantic) be acquired. The experimental materials are same asthe experimental one, but be improved based on experimental one’s material. The experimentis2(frequency of the foveal word: high frequency, low frequency)×2(preview: same,phonological, orthographic, unrelated) within-subject designs. Exam whether there are difference when the word of foveal is high frequency and low frequency.Based on the analysis of the two experiments’ dates, we concluded that:(1) In the Chinese reading, word frequency played a very important role in theprocessing of word recognition, which influences the efficiency of sentence reading,moreover the high frequency promote the lexical processing(2) The effects of word frequency were delayed on the following word it means that, thedelayed effects of word frequency could appear during Chinese reading.(3) During the Chinese normal reading, readers can obtain available phonological andorthographic information from parafoveal; the preview effect is similar between andalphabetic scripts. Moreover the load of foveal word could affect the parafoveal previeweffect; there are differences when the word of foveal is high frequency and low frequency.(4) The findings from the experiment1and experiment2all supported the E-Z readermodel’s hypothesis about the parallel processing of parafoveal.