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Beyond the leftward limit of the perceptual span: Parafoveal processing to the left of fixation in Chinese reading.

Liu, W., Angele, B., Luo, C. and Li, X., 2018. Beyond the leftward limit of the perceptual span: Parafoveal processing to the left of fixation in Chinese reading. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, 80 (8), 1873 - 1878.

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DOI: 10.3758/s13414-018-1599-3

Abstract

During reading, Chinese readers have been found to obtain useful visual information from one character to the left to three characters to the right of fixation. The perceptual span is asymmetrical, and its leftward extent seems to be limited compared with the rightward extent. We conducted an experiment to investigate whether Chinese readers could process written information beyond the leftward extent of the perceptual span. We did this by using a variation of the gaze-contingent display change paradigm (Rayner, Cognitive Psychology, 81, 65-81, 1975) in order to manipulate the parafoveal "postview" that was available to the left of where readers were fixating. Each sentence contained an invisible boundary. Once the readers' eyes crossed the boundary, all of the characters to the left of the boundary except for one, two, or three characters directly to the left of the boundary were replaced with visually similar characters. The change lasted for only one single fixation, resulting in four different "postview" conditions including a control condition (n - 1, n - 2, n - 3, control). The results showed that, compared with the control condition, there were more regressions to the display change area immediately after readers' eyes crossed the boundary in the n - 1, n - 2, and n - 3 conditions, demonstrating that readers can acquire information from the three characters to the left of fixation at least.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:1943-3921
Uncontrolled Keywords:Boundary paradigm; Chinese reading; Leftward perceptual span
Group:Faculty of Science & Technology
ID Code:31422
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:05 Nov 2018 11:10
Last Modified:14 Mar 2022 14:13

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