TY - JOUR A1 - Pan, Jinger A1 - Shu, Hua A1 - Wang, Yuling A1 - Yan, Ming T1 - Parafoveal activation of sign translation previews among deaf readers during the reading of Chinese sentences JF - Memory & cognition N2 - In the present study, we manipulated the different types of information available in the parafovea during the reading of Chinese sentences and examined whether deaf readers could activate sign translations of Chinese words during reading. The main finding was that, as compared to unrelated previews, the deaf readers had longer fixation durations on the target words when sign-phonologically related preview words were presented; this preview cost effect due to sign-phonological relatedness was absent for reading-level-matched hearing individuals. These results indicate that Chinese deaf readers activate sign language translations of parafoveal words during reading. We discuss the implications for notions of parafoveal processing in reading. KW - Sign language KW - Parafoveal KW - Chinese KW - Deaf readers KW - Sentence reading Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-015-0511-9 SN - 0090-502X SN - 1532-5946 VL - 43 IS - 6 SP - 964 EP - 972 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yan, Ming A1 - Pan, Jinger A1 - Belanger, Nathalie N. A1 - Shu, Hua T1 - Chinese deaf readers have early access to parafoveal semantics JF - Journal of experimental psychology : Learning, memory, and cognition N2 - In the present study, we manipulated different types of information available in the parafovea during the reading of Chinese sentences and examined how deaf readers make use of the parafoveal information. Results clearly indicate that although the reading-level matched hearing readers make greater use of orthographic information in the parafovea, parafoveal semantic information is obtained earlier among the deaf readers. In addition, a phonological preview benefit effect was found for the better deaf readers (relative to less-skilled deaf readers), although we also provide an alternative explanation for this effect. Providing evidence that Chinese deaf readers have higher efficiency when processing parafoveal semantics, the study indicates flexibility across individuals in the mechanisms underlying word recognition adapting to the inputs available in the linguistic environment. KW - parafoveal KW - sentence reading KW - Chinese KW - deaf readers Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000035 SN - 0278-7393 SN - 1939-1285 VL - 41 IS - 1 SP - 254 EP - 261 PB - American Psychological Association CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yan, Ming A1 - Zhou, Wei A1 - Shu, Hua A1 - Kliegl, Reinhold T1 - Perceptual span depends on font size during the reading of chinese sentences JF - Journal of experimental psychology : Learning, memory, and cognition N2 - The present study explored the perceptual span (i.e., the physical extent of an area from which useful visual information is extracted during a single fixation) during the reading of Chinese sentences in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, we tested whether the rightward span can go beyond 3 characters when visually similar masks were used. Results showed that Chinese readers needed at least 4 characters to the right of fixation to maintain a normal reading behavior when visually similar masks were used and when characters were displayed in small fonts, indicating that the span is dynamically influenced by masking materials. In Experiments 2 and 3, we asked whether the perceptual span varies as a function of font size in spaced (German) and unspaced (Chinese) scripts. Results clearly suggest perceptual span depends on font size in Chinese, but we failed to find such evidence for German. We propose that the perceptual span in Chinese is flexible; it is strongly constrained by its language-specific properties such as high information density and lack of word spacing. Implications for saccade-target selection during the reading of Chinese sentences are discussed. KW - eye movements KW - parafoveal processing KW - perceptual span KW - Chinese reading Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038097 SN - 0278-7393 SN - 1939-1285 VL - 41 IS - 1 SP - 209 EP - 219 PB - American Psychological Association CY - Washington ER -