Parafoveal Processing of Orthographic, Phonological, and Semantic Information from Chinese Characters at a Distant Position: A Parafoveal Priming Study

Previous research has shown that the perceptual span in Chinese reading extends three characters to the right of the fixation point. However, little is known regarding the types of preview information that can be extracted from such a distant position; namely, the character at the N + 3 position. Using the parafoveal priming paradigm combined with eye-tracking technology, we manipulated the preview type and preview duration to examine whether Chinese readers could extract orthographic, phonological, and semantic information from the character at the N + 3 position across three experiments. Experiment 1 revealed an orthographic preview cost: orthographically similar previews delayed the target character recognition compared to unrelated previews. Experiment 2 showed no evidence of phonological preview effects. Experiment 3 demonstrated a semantic preview benefit: semantically related previews significantly facilitated the target character recognition relative to unrelated previews. Taken together, these findings indicate that Chinese readers are able to extract orthographic and semantic, but not phonological, information from a distant parafoveal position.