Phonological and Orthographic Parafoveal Processing during Reading in Children and Adults

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Attention, Learning, Memory

Abstract

Many studies have shown that skilled adult readers are able to extract phonological and orthographic information from upcoming words in a sentence and this parafoveal processing facilitates reading (Hyönä, 2011; Rayner, 1975; Schotter et al., 2012), although the degree of phonological processing depends on the orthographic transparency of a language (Ziegler et al., 2010). However, children who are learning to read initially rely more on phonological information as compared to adults, whereas reliance on orthographic information develops later (Ziegler et al., 2014). What we do not know yet is the age when the shift from greater reliance on phonological information to greater reliance on orthographic information takes place. Studies that investigated reading in children agreed that many eye movement parameters reached the adult level by the age of 11 years (Blythe & Joseph, 2011). One could hypothesize that children should show the adult-like pattern and move from greater reliance on phonological to greater reliance on orthographic information during parafoveal processing by 11 years of age.
In the present study, we investigate the developmental pattern of phonological and orthographic parafoveal processing in Russian speaking 8- and 11-year-old children as well as adults. We use the invisible boundary eye tracking method (Rayner, 1975).
We plan to test 150 Russian speaking monolinguals: 50 adults (18-40 years old), 50 children at the age of 8, and 50 children at the age of 11. Prior to the experiment, we assess children’s IQ with Raven's Progressive Matrices (Raven et al., 2003) and their reading skills with the Standardized Assessment of Reading Skills (Kornev & Ishimova, 2010). As materials for the eye tracking experiment, we use sixty target nouns embedded in simple sentences. All nouns have the length of 5 letters and their average frequency is 32 ipm (range 10-100). Half of the nouns is feminine and the other half is masculine. For each target noun, five preview conditions are generated: identical (ID); pseudohomophone (PsH); control condition for pseudohomophone (Control.PsH); transposed-letter (TL); control condition for transposed-letter (Control.TL). Target nouns are preceded by adjectives with an average length of 6.96 letters. An invisible boundary is placed behind the last letter of an adjective. Previews are displayed until the boundary is crossed by a saccade, and then immediately changed to the target noun.
To estimate the phonological preview benefit, we will contrast ID and PsH conditions. The benefit will manifest in the comparable gaze duration on the target noun in the two conditions. We expect to find the phonological preview benefit in 8-year-olds, but not in 11-year-olds and adults. Similarly, to estimate the orthographic preview benefit, we will contrast ID and TL conditions. We expect to find the orthographic preview benefit in 11-year-olds and adults, but not in 8-year-olds. We will also measure the preview benefit of PsH over Control.PsH conditions and of the TL over Control.TL conditions. We expect to find both the phonological and the orthographic preview benefits in all age groups. We have already tested 63 participants. Our preliminary results for 33 adults meet our expectations.

Authors

• Vladislava Staroverova, National Research University Higher School of Economics
  Presenting Author

• Nina Zdorova, HSE University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anastasiya Lopukhina, HSE University
  Non-Presenting Author