On the Development of Parafoveal Preprocessing: Evidence from the Incremental Boundary Paradigm

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Abstract

Parafoveal preprocessing of upcoming words and the resultant preview benefit are key aspects of fluent reading. Evidence regarding the development of parafoveal preprocessing during reading acquisition, however, is scarce. The present developmental (cross-sectional) eye tracking study estimated the magnitude of parafoveal preprocessing of beginning readers with a novel variant of the classical boundary paradigm. Additionally, we assessed the association of parafoveal preprocessing with several reading-related psychometric measures. The participants were children learning to read the regular German orthography with about 1, 3, and 5 years of formal reading instruction (Grade 2, 4, and 6, respectively). We found evidence of parafoveal preprocessing in each Grade. However, an effective use of parafoveal information was related to the individual reading fluency of the participants (i.e., the reading rate expressed as words-per-minute) which substantially overlapped between the Grades. The size of the preview benefit was furthermore associated with the children's performance in rapid naming tasks and with their performance in a pseudoword reading task. The latter task assessed the children's efficiency in phonological decoding and our findings show that the best decoders exhibited the largest preview benefit.
Translated title of the contributionOn the development of parafoveal preprocessing: Evidence from the incremental boundary paradigm
Original languageEnglish
Article number514
Number of pages13
JournalFrontiers in Psychology
Volume7
Issue numberAPR
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Keywords

  • Eye movement control during reading
  • Incremental boundary paradigm
  • Reading acquisition
  • Reading fluency
  • Visual word recognition

Fields of Science and Technology Classification 2012

  • 501 Psychology

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