title: Is preview benefit from word n + 2 a common effect in reading Chinese? Evidence from eye movements.
abstract: Although most studies of reading English (and other alphabetic languages) have indicated that readers do not obtain preview benefit from word n + 2, Yang, Wang, Xu, and Rayner (2009) reported evidence that Chinese readers obtain preview benefit from word n + 2. However, this effect may not be common in Chinese because the character prior to the target word in Yang et al.'s experiment was always a very high frequency function word. In the current experiment, we utilized a relatively low frequency word n + 1 to examine whether an n + 2 preview benefit effect would still exist and failed to find any preview benefit from word n + 2. These results are consistent with a recent study which indicated that foveal load modulates the perceptual span during Chinese reading (Yan, Kliegl, Shu, Pan, & Zhou, 2010). Implications of these results for models of eye movement control are discussed.
authors.forename: Jinmian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Keith
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Rayner
authors.forename: Nan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Suiping
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang