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Skilled deaf readers have an enhanced perceptual span in reading.

Bélanger, N.N, Slattery, T., Mayberry, R.I. and Rayner, K., 2012. Skilled deaf readers have an enhanced perceptual span in reading. Psychological Science, 23, 816 - 823 .

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Bélanger Slatterry Mayberry & Rayner accepted.pdf - Accepted Version

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DOI: 10.1177/0956797611435130

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that, compared with hearing people, deaf people have enhanced visual attention to simple stimuli viewed in the parafovea and periphery. Although a large part of reading involves processing the fixated words in foveal vision, readers also utilize information in parafoveal vision to preprocess upcoming words and decide where to look next. In the study reported here, we investigated whether auditory deprivation affects low-level visual processing during reading by comparing the perceptual span of deaf signers who were skilled and less-skilled readers with the perceptual span of skilled hearing readers. Compared with hearing readers, the two groups of deaf readers had a larger perceptual span than would be expected given their reading ability. These results provide the first evidence that deaf readers' enhanced attentional allocation to the parafovea is used during complex cognitive tasks, such as reading.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:0956-7976
Group:Faculty of Science & Technology
ID Code:22656
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:14 Oct 2015 10:14
Last Modified:14 Mar 2022 13:53

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