关键词: 语境预测性效应, 阅读技能, 副中央凹预视加工, 眼动

Abstract: Contextual predictability plays a crucial role in affecting lexical processing when reading character-based languages like Chinese. Words that are predictable from prior context are read more quickly and are less likely to be directly fixated than are unpredictable words. Previous studies have shown that there was significant difference of contextual facilitation effect for children with different reading skills. However, the relationship between reading skills and contextual effect is still controversial. Lexical quality hypothesis and Predictive coding framework have different hypothesis for this issue. The former states that less-skilled readers rely more on sentential context due to their low-quality lexical representations, however, the later states that higher-skiller will benefit more from sentential context at the early-stage of lexical processing because high reading skill enables automatic access to context-based inferences. Furthermore, numbers of evidences have showed that the occurrence of contextual predictability effects reply heavily on the lexical parafoveal process, and if the absence of valid parafoveal preview, the effects of contextual predictability would be decrease or disappear (Balota, Pollatsek, &Rayner, 1985; White, Rayner, & Liversedge, 2005; Schotter, Lee, Reiderman, & Rayner, 2015). Thus, recent investigations of the impact of contextual predictability on parafoveal preview effects on eye movements between highly-skilled and low-skilled developing readers during sentence reading provides a new source of insight into this issue. In current experiment, the boundary paradigm was used to investigate the parafoveal processing (Rayner, 1975). In this paradigm, the preview of a target word is manipulated to be correct or incorrect until the point of fixation crosses an invisible boundary preceding the preview. At this point the preview is replaced with the target word. Reduced fixation times on a word observed after a correct compared to an incorrect preview is known as preview benefit. Developing Chinese readers (32 skilled, 32 less-skilled) were selected from a pool of school children (aged 10-12 years) whose reading skills had been comprehensively assessed based on the tests of reading comprehention and speed-reading. All participants read sentences containing two-character target words for which predictability （higher or lower predictability）and previewing type (identity or noword preview)was manipulated. The results indicated that, for highly-skilled readers, there was a preview effect in higher predictability sentences, but it didn’t occur in lower predictability sentences. For low-skilled readers, the preview effect has no differences in two types of sentences. In addition, there was larger effects of contextual predictability on total reading time for less-skilled developing readers than that of higher-skilled developing readers. These suggested that there are fundamental differences in the influence of contextual predictability on lexical process for skilled and less-skilled developing Chinese readers. Specifically, the highly-skilled developing readers can use contextual predictability information to facilitate parafoveal processing, while low-skilled readers relied more on it during the later processing. The results were in line with the Predictive Coding Framework.

Key words: contextual predictability effect, reading skill, parafoveal preview processing, eye movements