title: Third and fifth graders' processing of parafoveal information in reading: A study in single-word recognition.
abstract: We assessed third and fifth graders' processing of parafoveal word information using a lexical decision task. On each trial, a preview word was first briefly presented parafoveally in the left or right visual field before a target word was displayed. Preview and target words could be identical, share the first three letters, or have no letters in common. Experiment 1 showed that developing readers receive the same word recognition benefit from parafoveal previews as expert readers. The impact of a change of case between preview and target in Experiment 2 showed that in all groups of readers, the preview benefit resulted from the identification of letters at an abstract level rather than from facilitation at a purely visual level. Fifth graders identified more letters from the preview than third graders. The results are interpreted within the framework of the interactive activation model. In particular, we suggest that although the processing of parafoveal information led to letter identification in developing readers, the processes involved may differ from those in expert readers. Although expert readers' processing of parafoveal information led to activation at the level of lexical representations, no such activation was observed in developing readers.
authors.affiliation: SCALab, CNRS, Université Lille, 59653 Villeneuve d'Ascq, France.
authors.forename: Rachid
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Khelifi
authors.affiliation: SCALab, CNRS, Université Lille, 59653 Villeneuve d'Ascq, France.
authors.forename: Laurent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sparrow
authors.affiliation: SCALab, CNRS, Université Lille, 59653 Villeneuve d'Ascq, France. Electronic address: severine.casalis@univ-lille3.fr.
authors.forename: Séverine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Casalis
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D014794:Visual Fields / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Attention; Lexical access; Parafoveal processing; Perceptual span; Reading development; Word recognition