Parafoveal preview effect refers to when readers are fixating on one word (parafoveal word n), they can obtain some information from the words on the right of their fixation (parafoveal word n+1 or word n+2) at the same time. And those previewed information can influence the reading efficiency directly. Therefore, to explore the necessary conditions, the influencing factors and the mechanism of the parafoveal preview during reading has become a significant focus in Reading Psychology. This paper systematically reviews the prior researches on parafoveal preview effects in English and Chinese reading. It mainly contains the paradigm of parafoveal preview effects, what kind of information readers can obtain, the time course of lexcial processing, and the spatial extent of preview benefit. At last, this paper further discusses several critical problems of parafoveal preview effects to be resolved.

With the development of eye movement，researchers have put forward some new models on the basis of many experiments，in which the SWIFT model is the most representative. These models are affected by the theory that is the guidance by attentional gradient. The SWIFT model has three principles: (1)lexical information processing is spatially distributed over an attentional window. (2)saccade timing is separated from saccade target selection. (3)saccade generation is an autonomous process with inhibition by foveal targets. The model has two parts: lexical processing and saccade programming

自然语言的产生和理解具有高度的实时性。眼动和ERP技术具有很高的时间分辨率,可以在线测查语言认知加工过程。然而,两种技术手段都各有利弊,可以在一定程度上进行互补,从而为揭示语言加工的特点和机制提供行为和电生理证据。在文献梳理的基础上,详细分析了语言认知中眼动和ERP技术结合的必要性,即注视和加工的耦合程度以及眼睛和大脑的加工速度;准确阐述了眼动和ERP结合的技术路径,即眼动和ERP单独记录、ERP结合眼电分析、眼动和ERP同步记录,比较了不同方法的优缺点;具体介绍了眼动和ERP结合在语言认知研究中的应用。最后,对眼动和ERP结合在未来研究中需解决的问题进行了展望。

Parafoveal-on-foveal effects occur when lexical properties of word n+1 influence processing on word n during reading. This paper reviewed the researches about parafoveal-on-foveal effects in recent 10 years from following four aspects. Firstly, the parafoveal-on-foveal effects contained concurrent effect, inverted effect and effect. Secondly, the research paradigms involved boundary paradigm, normal sentence reading and word pairs reading. Thirdly, the different assumptions and predictions about the parafoveal-on-foveal effects in reading from two basic eye movement control models, serial model and parallel model, were introduced here. Fourthly, the influential factors parafoveal-on-foveal effects containing lexical characteristics of word n+1, word n and misallocated saccades were interviewed. After analyzing the above factors, the future studies about parafoveal-on-foveal effects should pay more attention to the research paradigm and analyzing methods in details.

文章阐述了SWIFT模型的最新进展-SWIFT-Ⅱ模型的基本观点。SWIFT-Ⅱ模型能 够在更为详细的水平上分析模型的模拟结果，也较好地解释了词长和词频效应、注视时间的分布、回视、再注视、初次登陆位置等眼动现象。最后对SWIFT-Ⅱ 模型与E-Z Reader模型进行了比较。

阅读的眼动控制理论不断发展，其中有两个眼动控制模型对阅读的影 响最大，分别是代表串行加工模式的E-Z 读者模型和代表并行加工模式的SWIFT模型。总结中文阅读相关的眼动研究，发现了许多中文阅读研究中串行与并行眼动理论模型的研究证据，主要涉及中文阅 读的知觉广度、副中央凹-中央凹效应、副中央凹的预视效应等几个方面的内容。未来中文阅读研究中需要注意的问题是：（1）词频不光有语义特性，也存在字形 上的特性，因此词频不适合成为研究语义加工阶段的自变量；（2）研究中字形、字号的平衡十分重要；（3）位于中央凹左侧的词也可以作为研究对象；（4）应 更加注重中文阅读模型的完善与建立。

本研究以小学五年级学生和大学生为被试,采用眼动技术,从阅读知觉广度和副中央凹预视效益相结合的角度考察读者在阅读过程中一次注视获得信息的情况。实验一采用呈现随眼动变化技术探讨了不同年级学生一次注视获取信息的范围,即阅读知觉广度。实验二采用边界范式进一步考察不同年级学生在知觉广度范围内,副中央凹预视获取信息的类型。研究发现,大学生读者知觉广度范围较大,能够在副中央凹预视中获取字形和语音的信息,而小学生读者的知觉广度范围较小,在副中央凹预视中仅能获取字形的信息。上述结果表明,不同年级学生在注视时,获取信息的范围及在副中央凹预视时获取信息的类型上均存在一定差异。

The E-Z Reader 10 model of eye movements in reading (Reichle, Warren, & McConnell, 2009) posits that the process of word identification strictly precedes the process of integration of a word into its syntactic and semantic context. The present study reports a single large-scale (N=112) eyetracking experiment in which the frequency and plausibility of a target word in each sentence were factorially manipulated. The results were consistent with E-Z Reader’s central predictions: frequency but not plausibility influenced the probability that the word was skipped over by the eyes rather than directly fixated, and the two variables had additive, not interactive, effects on all reading time measures. Evidence in favor of null effects and null interactions was obtained by computing Bayes factors, using the default priors and sampling methods for ANOVA models implemented by Rouder, Morey, Speckman, and Province (2012). The results suggest that though a word’s plausibility may have a measurable influence as early as the first fixation duration on the target word, in fact plausibility may be influencing only a post-lexical processing stage, rather than lexical identification itself.

One of the words that readers of English skip most often is the definite article the. Most accounts of reading assume that in order for a reader to skip a word, it must have received some lexical processing. The definite article is skipped so regularly, however, that the oculomotor system might have learned to skip the letter string t-h-e automatically. We tested whether skipping of articles in English is sensitive to context information or whether it is truly automatic in the sense that any occurrence of the letter string the will trigger a skip. This was done using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to provide readers with false parafoveal previews of the article the. All experimental sentences contained a short target verb, the preview of which could be correct (i.e., identical to the actual subsequent word in the sentence; e. g., ace), a nonword (tda), or an infelicitous article preview (the). Our results indicated that readers tended to skip the infelicitous the previews frequently, suggesting that, in many cases, they seemed to be unable to detect the syntactic anomaly in the preview and based their skipping decision solely on the orthographic properties of the article. However, there was some evidence that readers sometimes detected the anomaly, as they also showed increased skipping of the pretarget word in the the preview condition.

In a previous gaze-contingent boundary experiment, Angele and Rayner (2013) found that readers are likely to skip a word that appears to be the definite article <xh:i xmlns:search="http://marklogic.com/appservices/search" xmlns="http://apa.org/pimain" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xh="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">the even when syntactic constraints do not allow for articles to occur in that position. In the present study, we investigated whether the word frequency of the preview of a 3-letter target word influences a reader decision to fixate or skip that word. We found that the word frequency rather than the felicitousness (syntactic fit) of the preview affected how often the upcoming word was skipped. These results indicate that visual information about the upcoming word trumps information from the sentence context when it comes to making a skipping decision. Skipping parafoveal instances of <xh:i xmlns:search="http://marklogic.com/appservices/search" xmlns="http://apa.org/pimain" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xh="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">the therefore may simply be an extreme case of skipping high-frequency words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)

Previous evidence suggests that grammatical constraints have a rapid influence during language comprehension, particularly at the level of word categories (noun, verb, preposition). These findings are in conflict with a recent study from Angele, Laishley, Rayner, and Liversedge (2014), in which sentential fit had no early influence on word skipping rates during reading. In the present study, we used a gaze-contingent boundary change paradigm to manipulate the syntactic congruity of an upcoming noun or verb outside of participants' awareness. Across 3 experiments (total N = 148), we observed higher skipping rates for syntactically valid previews ("The admiral would not confess" . . .), when compared with violation previews ("The admiral would not surgeon" . . .). Readers were less likely to skip an ungrammatical continuation, even when that word was repeated within the same sentence ("The admiral would not admiral" . . .), suggesting that word-class

78 We aligned the EEG to eye fixations during saccadic reading. 78 Parafoveal preview for the next word was manipulated with the Boundary Technique. 78 Correct previews altered occipitotemporal brain responses after a word was fixated. 78 But no evidence that readers retrieve semantic information from parafoveal words. 78 Gaze-contingent manipulations and EEG can be combined to study extrafoveal vision.

Word features in parafoveal influence eye movements during reading. The question of whether readers extract semantic information from parafoveal words was studied in 3 experiments by using a gaze-contingent display change technique. Subjects read German sentences containing 1 of several preview words that were replaced by a target word during the saccade to the preview (boundary paradigm). In the 1st experiment the preview word was semantically related or unrelated to the target. Fixation durations on the target were shorter for semantically related than unrelated previews, consistent with a semantic preview benefit. In the 2nd experiment, half the sentences were presented following the rules of German spelling (i.e., previews and targets were printed with an initial capital letter), and the other half were presented completely in lowercase. A semantic preview benefit was obtained under both conditions. In the 3rd experiment, we introduced 2 further preview conditions, an identical word and a pronounceable nonword, while also manipulating the text contrast. Whereas the contrast had negligible effects, fixation durations on the target were reliably different for all 4 types of preview. Semantic preview benefits were greater for pretarget fixations closer to the boundary (large preview space) and, although not as consistently, for long pretarget fixation durations (long preview time). The results constrain theoretical proposals about eye movement control in reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

Word features in parafoveal influence eye movements during reading. The question of whether readers extract semantic information from parafoveal words was studied in 3 experiments by using a gaze-contingent display change technique. Subjects read German sentences containing 1 of several preview words that were replaced by a target word during the saccade to the preview (boundary paradigm). In the 1st experiment the preview word was semantically related or unrelated to the target. Fixation durations on the target were shorter for semantically related than unrelated previews, consistent with a semantic preview benefit. In the 2nd experiment, half the sentences were presented following the rules of German spelling (i.e., previews and targets were printed with an initial capital letter), and the other half were presented completely in lowercase. A semantic preview benefit was obtained under both conditions. In the 3rd experiment, we introduced 2 further preview conditions, an identical word and a pronounceable nonword, while also manipulating the text contrast. Whereas the contrast had negligible effects, fixation durations on the target were reliably different for all 4 types of preview. Semantic preview benefits were greater for pretarget fixations closer to the boundary (large preview space) and, although not as consistently, for long pretarget fixation durations (long preview time). The results constrain theoretical proposals about eye movement control in reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

Two very reliable influences on eye fixation durations in reading are word frequency, as measured by corpus counts, and word predictability, as measured by cloze norming. Several studies have reported strictly additive effects of these 2 variables. Predictability also reliably influences the amplitude of the N400 component in event-related potential studies. However, previous research suggests that while frequency affects the N400 in single-word tasks, it may have little or no effect on the N400 when a word is presented with a preceding sentence context. The present study assessed this apparent dissociation between the results from the 2 methods using a coregistration paradigm in which the frequency and predictability of a target word were manipulated while readers' eye movements and electroencephalograms were simultaneously recorded. We replicated the pattern of significant, and additive, effects of the 2 manipulations on eye fixation durations. We also replicated the predictability effect on the N400, time-locked to the onset of the reader's first fixation on the target word. However, there was no indication of a frequency effect in the electroencephalogram record. We suggest that this pattern has implications both for the interpretation of the N400 and for the interpretation of frequency and predictability effects in language comprehension.

In some theories of sentence comprehension, linguistically relevant lexical knowledge, such as selectional restrictions, is privileged in terms of the time-course of its access and influence. We examined whether event knowledge computed by combining multiple concepts can rapidly influence language understanding even in the absence of selectional restriction violations. Specifically, we investigated whether instruments can combine with actions to influence comprehension of ensuing patients of (as in Rayner, Warren, Juhuasz, & Liversedge, 2004; Warren & McConnell, 2007). Instrument-verb-patient triplets were created in a norming study designed to tap directly into event knowledge. In self-paced reading (Experiment 1), participants were faster to read patient nouns, such as hair, when they were typical of the instrument-action pair (Donna used the shampoo to wash vs. the hose to wash). Experiment 2 showed that these results were not due to direct instrument-patient relations. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 1 using eyetracking, with effects of event typicality observed in first fixation and gaze durations on the patient noun. This research demonstrates that conceptual event-based expectations are computed and used rapidly and dynamically during on-line language comprehension. We discuss relationships among plausibility and predictability, as well as their implications. We conclude that selectional restrictions may be best considered as event-based conceptual knowledge rather than lexical-grammatical knowledge.

Examines the time courses for processing constituent structure relations, subcategorization restrictions and thematic role relations during sentence comprehension. Reaction time and speed-accuracy trade-off variants of a grammatically judgement task; Delay of thematic role processing; Suggestion of a model of sentence compreshension.

Abstract During reading, the parafoveal processing of an upcoming word n +1 can influence word recognition in two ways: It can affect fixation behavior during the preceding fixation on word n (parafovea-on-fovea effect, POF), and it can facilitate subsequent foveal processing once word n +1 is fixated (preview benefit). While preview benefits are established, evidence for POF effects is mixed. Recently, it has been suggested that POF effects exist, but have a delayed impact on saccade planning and thus coincide with preview benefits measured on word n +1. We combined eye movement and EEG recordings to investigate and separate neural correlates of POF and preview benefit effects. Participants read lists of nouns either in a boundary paradigm or the RSVP-with-flankers paradigm, while we recorded fixation- or event-related potentials (FRPs/ERPs), respectively. The validity and lexical frequency of the word shown as preview for the upcoming word n +1 were orthogonally manipulated. Analyses focused on the first fixation on word n +1. Preview validity (correct vs. incorrect preview) strongly modulated fixation times and electrophysiological N1 amplitudes, replicating previous findings. Importantly, gaze durations and FRPs measured on word n +1 were also affected by the frequency of the word shown as preview, with low-frequency previews eliciting a sustained, N400-like centroparietal negativity. Results support the idea that POF effects exist but affect word recognition with a delay. Lastly, once word n +1 was fixated, its frequency also modulated N1 amplitudes in ERPs and FRPs. Taken together, we separated immediate and delayed effects of parafoveal processing on brain correlates of word recognition.

Skilled readers read passages that were displayed on a Cathode Ray Tube controlled by a computer. The readers' eye movements were monitored and certain critical words were changed by the computer as the eye was in motion. The experimental technique utilized in the study provided data on how wide the area is from which a reader acquires information during a fixation in silent reading. The results also delineate different types of visual information that are acquired from various areas within the perceptual span. It was found that a reader was able to make a semantic interpretation of a word that began 1–6 character spaces from his fixation point. When he fixated 7–12 character spaces prior to a word, he was able to pick up such gross visual characteristics as word shape and initial and final letters. It was concluded that the skilled reader is able to take advantage of information in the periphery. However, the size of the area from which he does is rather small.

ABSTRACT Subjects' eye movements were recorded as they read sentences, and a display change occurred before they fixated on a critical target word (song). In the target word location one of four alternative previews was initially present: the target word itself, a word that was semantically related to the target (tune), a word that was unrelated to the target (door), or a nonword that was visually similar to the target (sorp). When the reader's eye movement crossed over an invisible boundary location, the initially displayed preview was replaced by the target word. If automatic semantic preprocessing of parafoveal words occurs in reading, the presence of a semantically related word should facilitate processing of the target word relative to the unrelated word. While the visually similar preview facilitated processing almost as much as the target itself, there was no difference between the semantically related preview and the unrelated preview, even though the semantically related words used in the study produced strong facilitation effects in a standard priming experiment. The results of the study are thus inconsistent with a model in which words in parafoveal vision are semantically preprocessed. It was concluded that the meanings of unidentified parafoveal words do not modulate our reading performance.

A major controversy in reading research is whether semantic information is obtained from the word to the right of the currently fixated word (word n + 1). Although most evidence has been negative in English, semantic preview benefit has been observed for readers of Chinese and German. In the present experiment, we investigated whether the discrepancy between English and German may be attributable to a difference in visual properties of the orthography: the first letter of a noun is always capitalized in German, but is only occasionally capitalized in English. This visually salient property may draw greater attention to the word during parafoveal preview and thus increase preview benefit generally (and lead to a greater opportunity for semantic preview benefit). We used English target nouns that can either be capitalized (e.g., We went to the critically acclaimed Ballet of Paris while on vacation.) or not (e.g., We went to the critically acclaimed ballet that was showing in Paris.) and manipulated the capitalization of the preview accordingly, to determine whether capitalization modulates preview benefit in English. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm was used with identical, semantically related, and unrelated previews. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found numerically larger preview benefits when the preview/target was capitalized than when it was lowercase. Crucially, semantic preview benefit was not observed when the preview/target word was not capitalized, but was observed when the preview/target word was capitalized.

In contrast to earlier research, evidence for semantic preview benefit in reading has been reported by Hohenstein and Kliegl ( Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40, 166–190, 2013 ) in an alphabetic writing system; they also implied that prior demonstrations of lack of a semantic preview benefit needed to be reexamined. In the present article, we report a rather direct replication of an experiment reported by Rayner, Balota, and Pollatsek ( Canadian Journal of Psychology, 40, 473–483, 1986 ). Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm , subjects read sentences that contained a target word ( razor ), but different preview words were initially presented in the sentence. The preview was identical to the target word (i.e., razor ), semantically related to the target word (i.e., blade ), semantically unrelated to the target word (i.e., sweet ), or a visually similar nonword (i.e., razar ). When the reader’s eyes crossed an invisible boundary location just to the left of the target word location, the preview changed to the target word. Like Rayner et al. ( Canadian Journal of Psychology, 40, 473–483, 1986 ), we found that fixations on the target word were significantly shorter in the identical condition than in the unrelated condition, which did not differ from the semantically related condition; when an orthographically similar preview had been initially present in the sentence, fixations were shorter than when a semantically unrelated preview had been present. Thus, the present experiment replicates the earlier data reported by Rayner et al. ( Canadian Journal of Psychology, 40, 473–483, 1986 ), indicating evidence for an orthographic preview benefit but a lack of semantic preview benefit in reading English.

While orthographic and phonological preview benefits in reading are uncontroversial (see Schotter, Angele, & Rayner, 2012 for a review), researchers have debated the existence of semantic preview benefit with positive evidence in Chinese and German, but no support in English. Two experiments, using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975), show that semantic preview benefit can be observed in English when the preview and target are synonyms (share the same or highly similar meaning, e.g., curlers-rollers). However, no semantic preview benefit was observed for semantic associates (e.g., curlers-styling). These different preview conditions represent different degrees to which the meaning of the sentence changes when the preview is replaced by the target. When this continuous variable (determined by a norming procedure) was used as the predictor in the analyses, there was a significant relationship between it and all reading time measures, suggesting that similarity in meaning between what is accessed parafoveally and what is processed foveally may be an important influence on the presence of semantic preview benefit. Why synonyms provide semantic preview benefit in reading English is discussed in relation to (1) previous failures to find semantic preview benefit in English and (2) the fact that semantic preview benefit is observed in other languages even for non-synonymous words. Semantic preview benefit is argued to depend on several factors ttentional resources, depth of orthography, and degree of similarity between preview and target.

Abstract Theories of preview benefit in reading hinge on integration across saccades and the idea that preview benefit is greater the more similar the preview and target are. Schotter (2013) reported preview benefit from a synonymous preview, but it is unclear whether this effect occurs because of similarity between the preview and target (i.e., integration), or because of contextual fit of the preview-synonyms satisfy both accounts. Studies in Chinese have found evidence for preview benefit for words that are unrelated to the target, but are contextually plausible (Yang, Li, Wang, Slattery, & Rayner, 2014; Yang, Wang, Tong, & Rayner, 2012), which is incompatible with an integration account but supports a contextual fit account. Here, we used plausible and implausible unrelated previews in addition to plausible synonym, antonym, and identical previews to further investigate these accounts for readers of English. Early reading measures were shorter for all plausible preview conditions compared to the implausible preview condition. In later reading measures, a benefit for the plausible unrelated preview condition was not observed. In a second experiment, we asked questions that probed whether the reader encoded the preview or target. Readers were more likely to report the preview when they had skipped the word and not regressed to it, and when the preview was plausible. Thus, under certain circumstances, the preview word is processed to a high level of representation (i.e., semantic plausibility) regardless of its relationship to the target, but its influence on reading is relatively short-lived, being replaced by the target word, when fixated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Semantic preview benefit in reading is an elusive and controversial effect because empirical studies do not always (but sometimes) find evidence for it. Its presence seems to depend on (at least) the language being read, visual properties of the text (e.g., initial letter capitalization), the type of relationship between preview and target, and as shown here, semantic constraint generated by the prior sentence context. Schotter (2013) reported semantic preview benefit for synonyms, but not semantic associates when the preview/target was embedded in a neutral sentence context. In Experiment 1, we embedded those same previews/targets into constrained sentence contexts and in Experiment 2 we replicated the effects reported by Schotter (2013; in neutral sentence contexts) and Experiment 1 (in constrained contexts) in a within-subjects design. In both experiments, we found an early (i.e., first-pass) apparent preview benefit for semantically associated previews in constrained contexts that went away in late measures (e.g., total time). These data suggest that sentence constraint (at least as manipulated in the current study) does not operate by making a single word form expected, but rather generates expectations about what kinds of words are likely to appear. Furthermore, these data are compatible with the assumption of the E-Z Reader model that early oculomotor decisions reflect edged bets that a word will be identifiable and, when wrong, lead the system to identify the wrong word, triggering regressions.

Abstract Current theories of eye movement control in reading posit that processing of an upcoming parafoveal preview word is used to facilitate processing of that word once it is fixated (i.e., a foveal target word). This preview benefit is demonstrated by shorter fixation durations in the case of valid (i.e., identical or linguistically similar) compared to invalid (i.e., dissimilar) preview conditions. However, we suggest that processing of the preview can directly influence fixation behavior on the target, independent of similarity between them. In Experiment 1, unrelated high and low frequency words were used as orthogonally crossed previews and targets and we observed a reversed preview benefit for low frequency targets horter fixation durations with an invalid, higher frequency preview compared to a valid, low frequency preview. In Experiment 2, the target words were replaced with orthographically legal and illegal nonwords and we found a similar effect of preview frequency on fixation durations on the targets, as well as a bimodal distribution in the illegal nonword target conditions with a denser early peak for high than low frequency previews. In Experiment 3, nonwords were used as previews for high and low frequency targets, replicating standard findings that enied preview increases fixation durations and the influence of target properties. These effects can be explained by forced fixations, cases in which fixations on the target were shortened as a consequence of the timing of word recognition of the preview relative to the time course of saccade programming to that word from the prior one. That is, the preview word was (at least partially) recognized so that it should have been skipped, but the word could not be skipped because the saccade to that word was in a non-labile stage. In these cases, the system pre-initiates the subsequent saccade off the upcoming word to the following word and the intervening fixation is short.

A hotly debated issue in reading research concerns the extent to which readers process parafoveal words, and how parafoveal information might influence foveal word recognition. We investigated syntactic word processing both in sentence reading and in reading isolated foveal words when these were flanked by parafoveal words. In Experiment 1 we found a syntactic parafoveal preview benefit in sentence reading, meaning that fixation durations on target words were decreased when there was a syntactically congruent preview word at the target location (n) during the fixation on the pre-target (n-1). In Experiment 2 we used a flanker paradigm in which participants had to classify foveal target words as either noun or verb, when those targets were flanked by syntactically congruent or incongruent words (stimulus on-time 170 ms). Lower response times and error rates in the congruent condition suggested that higher-order (syntactic) information can be integrated across foveal and parafoveal words. Although higher-order parafoveal-on-foveal effects have been elusive in sentence reading, results from our flanker paradigm show that the reading system can extract higher-order information from multiple words in a single glance. We propose a model of reading to account for the present findings.

Theories of eye movement control in reading assume that early oculomotor decisions are determined by a word frequency and cloze probability. This assumption is challenged by evidence that readers are sensitive to the contextual plausibility of an upcoming word: First-pass fixation probability and duration are reduced when the parafoveal preview is a plausible, but unpredictable, word relative to an implausible word. The present study sought to establish whether the source of this effect is sensitivity to violations of syntactic acceptability. In two experiments, the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm was used to compare contextually plausible previews to semantically acceptable and anomalous previews that either matched or violated syntactic rules. Results showed that readers benefited from the convergence of semantic and syntactic acceptability early enough in the timecourse of reading to affect skipping. In addition, both semantic and syntactic plausibility yielded preview effects on target fixation duration measures, providing direct evidence of parafoveal syntactic processing in reading. These results highlight the limitations of relying solely on cloze probability to index contextual influences on early lexical processing. The implications of the data for models of eye movement control and language comprehension are discussed.

Henderson and Ferreira (1990) found that foveal load (manipulated via word frequency) modulates parafoveal processing, thereby affecting the amount of preview benefit obtained from the word to the right of fixation. The present experiment used the eye-contingent boundary paradigm and, consistent with Henderson and Ferreira, showed that foveal load modulated preview benefit for participants who were not aware of the display changes during reading. Also, for these participants, foveal load modulated preview benefit regardless of fixation durations on the foveal word. For participants who were aware of the display change, preview benefits occurred regardless of foveal processing difficulty. These results have important implications for understanding the way in which foveal load influences parafoveal processing during reading.

Evidence for semantic preview benefit (PB) from parafoveal words has been elusive for reading alphabetic scripts such as English. Here we report semantic PB for noncompound characters in Chinese reading with the boundary paradigm. In addition, PBs for orthographic relatedness and, as a numeric trend, for phonological relatedness were obtained. Results are in agreement with other research suggesting that the Chinese writing system is based on a closer association between graphic form and meaning than is alphabetic script. We discuss implications for notions of serial attention shifts and parallel distributed processing of words during reading.

Semantic processing from parafoveal words is an elusive phenomenon in alphabetic languages, but it has been demonstrated only for a restricted set of noncompound Chinese characters. Using the...

The boundary paradigm (Rayner,1975) was used to examine whether high level information affects preview benefit during Chinese reading. In two experiments, readers read sentences with a 1-character target word while their eye movements were monitored. InExperiment 1, the semantic relatedness between the target word and the preview word was manipulated so that there were semantically related and unrelated preview words, both of which were not plausible in the sentence context. No significant differences between these two preview conditions were found, indicating no effect of semantic preview. InExperiment 2, we further examined semantic preview effects with plausible preview words. There were four types of previews:identical, related & plausible, unrelated & plausible,andunrelated & implausible. The results revealed a significant effect of plausibility as single fixation and gaze duration on the target region were shorter in the two plausible conditions than in the implausible condition. Moreover, there was some evidence for a semantic preview benefit as single fixation duration on the target region was shorter in therelated & plausiblecondition than theunrelated & plausiblecondition. Implications of these results for processing of high level information during Chinese reading are discussed.

Abstract English readers do not fixate every word: during their first pass through a sentence they skip a third of the words (Rayner, 1998, 2009). How do readers decide whether to skip or fixate a word? Angele and Rayner (2013) showed that English readers base skipping decisions on the parafoveal information available, but not the sentential context. Due to the increased visual density of the language, Chinese readers may be able to process a parafoveal word and integrate it with the sentence context to a greater extent than English readers. Consequently, influences on skipping decisions in Chinese may differ from those in English. In a boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) experiment, participants read sentences containing a single-character target verb (e.g., meaning get) whose preview was manipulated in three conditions: identity preview; a preview consisting of the syntactically anomalous high frequency structural particle de (), or a pseudocharacter preview. The results showed that Chinese readers were more likely to skip the target when the preview was de than in either of the other conditions, suggesting that de-skipping is triggered by the parafoveal preview of a highly frequent particle word rather than on the likelihood of the upcoming word given the sentential context. The present study shows that this phenomenon is observable across languages and writing systems with different degrees of visual density.