Enhanced near‑foveal sensitivity in older Chinese readers: Evidence from the moving-window paradigm

This study investigated how aging affects the perceptual span, the spatial limit of visual processing, in traditional Chinese with the gaze-contingent moving-window paradigm. The viewing was either unrestricted or involved varying window sizes where a constant one-character left window was paired with a manipulated right window that revealed two, three, or four upcoming characters. Older readers had slower reading speed, although they did not differ from young readers in gaze durations. In addition, while reading performance was statistically comparable between the four-character window and full-line conditions in both groups, the two groups differed in their reliance on near- and far-foveal information. In particular, there was a larger boost in reading performance for the older readers than for the young readers when the window increased from two to three upcoming characters. In contrast, the young readers exhibited a larger gain than the older readers when the window included the fourth upcoming characters. Together, older Chinese readers appear to be more sensitive to information within three upcoming characters, but were less so to further ones. These findings highlight the interplay between script characteristics and cognitive aging in reading and constrain the range of parameters in developmentally valid computational models of eye-movement control in reading.