Development of orthographic, phonological and semantic parafoveal processing in Chinese reading

Parafoveal pre-processing of upcoming words is a key aspect of fluent reading. A comparative analysis of how children’s orthographic, phonological and semantic parafoveal processing changes with age has not been investigated to date. In the present study, three eye movement experiments used the boundary paradigm to characterize the nature of change in orthographic, phonological and semantic parafoveal processing across children in Grades 2 to 5 ( n = 366, Tianjin Primary School) and adults ( n = 90, Tianjin Normal University) during natural Chinese reading. In each experiment we manipulated preview type (identical, related or unrelated preview). The results showed that effective orthographic parafoveal processing occurred in all our participant groups; however, effective phonological and semantic parafoveal processing was somewhat delayed, occurring in the third or fourth grade through to adults. We suggest that the differential developmental time course of orthographic relative to phonological and semantic parafoveal processing likely arises because the phonological and semantic characteristics of a written character are accessed via the character’s orthographic code. Orthographic parafoveal processing, therefore, likely takes developmental precedence over phonological and semantic parafoveal processing. Together, the results provide a quite comprehensive picture of how a fundamental aspect of reading, parafoveal processing, develops with age.