Processing Of Chinese Character Shape, Phonetic And Semantic Information At The N+2 And N+3 Positions Of The Parafove

Readers could obtain lexical information not only from foveal words but also from the words to the right of the fixation during reading.Parafoveal pre-processing efficiency may be one of the important factors in fluent reading.The spatial extent that readers extract useful information during a single fixation is termed as perceptual span.Eye movements studies have shown that the perceptual span for skilled Chinese readers extends 1 character to the left and 3 characters to the right side of the fixation.As the basic unit of written Chinese,a character covers all information about orthography,phonology,semantics which readers ought to process.It raises a question about what kinds of preview information could Chinese readers obtain from each character within the right side of perceptual span?Previous studies have focused more on the acquisition of preview information from the first character(character N+1,the current fixated one referred to as character N),but fewer studies have examined as to what type of preview information could be obtained from the second character(character N+2)and the third character(character N+3)to the right of the fixation.The type and the depth of lexical information readers could exact during parafoveal processing play an important role in efficient reading.Therefore,the experiments to be reported in this article are to explore native Chinese readers’ parafoveal processing of orthographic,phonological,and semantic information from the character located on N+2 and N+3 position to reveal the preview mechanism of Chinese characters.Study 1,with the participation of 108 undergraduate and graduate students,we aimed to investigate native Chinese readers’ parafoveal processing of orthographic,phonological and semantic information from the character located on N+2 position by using parafoveal priming paradigm.In Experiment 1,conditions mapped onto 2 orthogonal factors within subjects,preview type(identical vs.orthographically similar vs.unrelated preview)and preview duration(60 vs.100 vs.145ms).Results revealed that readers were able to obtain orthographic preview effect of characters on N+2position when preview duration were 60 ms,100ms,and 145 ms.In Experiment 2,conditions mapped onto 2 orthogonal factors within subjects,preview type(identical vs.homophonic vs.unrelated preview)and preview duration(60 vs.100 vs.145ms).Results showed that only error rates supported readers could extract phonological preview effect,but not the response time.In Experiment 3,conditions mapped onto 2 orthogonal factors within subjects,preview type(identical vs.semantically related vs.unrelated preview)and preview duration(60 vs.100 vs.145ms).Results showed that readers were able to obtain semantic preview effect of characters on N+2 position when preview duration was 145 ms.Study 2,with the participation of 108 undergraduate and graduate students,we aimed to investigate native Chinese readers’ parafoveal processing of orthographic,phonological and semantic information from the character located on N+3 position by using parafoveal priming paradigm.In Experiment 4,conditions mapped onto 2 orthogonal factors within subjects,preview type(identical vs.orthographically similar vs.unrelated preview)and preview duration(60 vs.100 vs.145ms).Results revealed that readers were able to obtain orthographic preview effect of characters on N+3position when preview duration were 100 ms,and 145 ms.In Experiment 5,conditions mapped onto2 orthogonal factors within subjects,preview type(identical vs.homophonic vs.unrelated preview)and preview duration(60 vs.100 vs.145ms).Results showed that readers cannot obtain phonological preview effect of characters on N+3 position.In Experiment 6,conditions mapped onto 2 orthogonal factors within subjects,preview type(identical vs.semantically related vs.unrelated preview)and preview duration(60 vs.100 vs.145ms).Results showed that readers were able to obtain semantic preview effect of characters on N+3 position under all preview duration conditions.Conclusion was made as follows based on the results of the 6 experiments:(1)Chinese readers are able to extract orthographic and semantic information from Chinese characters on N+2 position.However,it need a further discussion about whether readers could obtain phonological information from characters on N+2 position.(2)Chinese readers are able to extract orthographic and semantic information instead of phonological information from Chinese characters on N+3 position.Results in the present study thus reflect Chinese readers’ reading capability not only on preprocessing orthographic information,but also on high-level information like semantics.Our findings reveal the characteristics of parafoveal Chinese processing and provide a reference to enriching model of Chinese reading.