Abstract: Several studies found deaf individuals have enhanced visual processing in the parafovea in low-level perceptual tasks and access parafoveal N+1 semantic information more quickly during Chinese sentences reading. This study further investigated whether the enhanced visual processing of deaf college students in the parafovea would affect parafoveal N+1 compound characters preview benefits during silent reading of Chinese sentences. The current study adopted a 3(Groups: deaf college students, reading control group, age control group) ×5 (Preview conditions: identity, orthography, phonology, semantics, unrelated) mixed experimental design. The group was as a between-participants factor and the preview condition was as a within-participants factor. There were a total of 35 severely to profoundly deaf college students. The deaf participants hearing loss was ≥ 75dB in the better ear. The deaf participants were either born deaf or became deaf before three years old. None of the deaf participants had received a cochlear implant. The deaf reader's group had an age-matched college students control group (n = 35) with typical levels of hearing and a reading skill matched middle school students control group (n = 35) with typical levels of hearing. Forty-nine target compound characters were selected, embedded in the first place of 80 two-character words. Each target character had five preview character conditions. Each participant read 80 experimental sentences and 16 filler sentences. All preview conditions were counterbalanced across participants by Latin square. The current study adopted the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm. EyeLink 1000 plus desktop system with a sampling rate of 1000 Hz was used to record eye movements. The distance between the central point in the display screen and participants was 70 cm. Each Chinese character was subtended 1.08 °visual angle. Data were analyzed using the lme4 package within the R environment for statistical computing. The first fixation durations, gaze durations, and total fixation durations were analyzed for the target characters. Across the three eye movement measures, the deaf readers showed a preview benefit in the identical character condition compared to the unrelated character condition and numerical trends in preview benefits from orthographic, phonological, and semantic character preview conditions relative to the unrelated character condition. Further analysis was conducted to examine whether the parafoveal N+1 compound characters preview benefit is modulated by reading levels of deaf individuals. Using the median-split procedure, deaf readers were divided into the fast reader's group (n =17) and slow readers group (n =18) based on their reading fluency test scores. The results showed the fast reading speed deaf readers acquired preview benefits from identical, orthographic, phonological, and semantic character preview conditions relative to the unrelated character condition. However, the slow reading speed deaf readers only showed the preview benefit in the identical character condition relative to the unrelated character condition. In conclusion, the current study provided evidence to demonstrate enhanced visual processing of high-level reading deaf readers (fast readers) in the parafovea could affect parafoveal N+1 compound characters preview benefits during the silent reading of Chinese sentences.

Key words: deaf readers, parafoveal visual attention enhancement, compound characters, N+1 preview benefit, eye movements

摘要： 聋人听觉受损后，在低水平的视觉认知任务中，表现出副中央凹注意增强效应。这种增强效应是否也会发生在高水平的汉语认知加工任务中？本研究采用边界范式，探究副中央凹注意增强效应对聋人读者合体字N+1预视效益的影响。研究发现，高技能聋人读者，可以获得合体字N+1语音和语义预视效益。研究表明，副中央凹注意增强促进了高技能聋人读者N+1预视信息的获得。

关键词: 聋人 副中央凹注意增强 合体字 N+1预视 眼动