Chinese deaf readers have early access to parafoveal semantics.

Abstract

In the present study, we manipulated different types of information\navailable in the parafovea during the reading of Chinese sentences and examined\nhow deaf readers make use of the parafoveal information. Results clearly\nindicate that, although the reading-level matched hearing readers make greater\nuse of orthographic information in the parafovea, parafoveal semantic\ninformation is obtained earlier among the deaf readers. In addition, a\nphonological PB effect was found for the better deaf readers (relative to\nless-skilled deaf readers) though we also provide an alternative explanation for\nthis effect. Providing evidence that Chinese deaf readers have higher efficiency\nwhen processing parafoveal semantics, the study indicates flexibility across\nindividuals in the mechanisms underlying word recognition adapting to the inputs\navailable in the linguistic environment.