The Effect Of Parafoveal Visual Attention Enhancement In Deaf Reading

Language is a major tool of human communication with each other.It is of great importance to individual's lifelong development.There was many research on reading of hearing individual,but for deaf individual,the basic issues and characters of reading is not clear(Belanger&Rayner,2015).Deaf readers generally have difficulty in reading,their average reading level is far lower than hearing reader(Kelly&Barac-Cikoja,2007;Mayberry,del Giudice,&Lieberman,2011;Kyle&Cain,2015).Therefore,it has become an important issue in the field of special education and psychology to explore the processing mechanism and to reveal the reasons of difficulty for deaf reading.Given the early auditory deprivation of deaf children,the visual information has become essential.Some researchers have proposed a view of the redistribution of visual attention resource and there was some low-level perceptual research have supported this view.Because of the early auditory deprivation,the distribution of deaf visual attention resource has changed——their visual attention resource has shifted from the central visual field to the extrafoveal visual field,which enhanced the peripheral visual abilities of deaf individuals.That is,the allocation of attention resources of the foveal vision would be reduced,and of extrafoveal vision would be increased.And some researchers put forward the hypothesis that these characteristics of visual attention would have an impact on the deaf reading,but this hypothesis has not been supported by empirical research.In order to explore the influence of the redistribution of visual attention on deaf reading,this is the first study to try to propose "the effect of parafoveal visual attention enhancement in deaf reading".Due to the absence of auditory input for deaf individuals,the visual attention reorganized to compensate for adapting the complex environment,which leads to increased distribution of visual attention toward the extrafoveal field.Under the premise of finite attentional resources,the more attention allocated in peripheral vision,the less in foveal vision,which resulting in the poor reading efficiency.The main problem to be investigated in the present study is the effect of parafoveal visual attention enhancement in deaf reading.This study includes two sub-studies,which was from word-processing level(study 1)and sentence-processing level(study 2)respectively.There were three behavioral experiments and three eye-tracking experiments.Study 1 was from word-processing level to investigate the effect of parafoveal visual attention enhancement in word recognition of deaf readers.Firstly,in experiment 1,we aimed to explore whether the foveal processing was more easily disruptive by parafoveal irrelevant stimulus for deaf students than the hearing controls(reading-level control group and chronological age control group).The result showed that,deaf students have longer RTs for targets with distractors,and have a larger interference effect than control groups.Secondly,in experiment 2,the parafoveal processing was separated to investigate whether the relevant information presented in the parafovea would enhance performance for deaf students.In the experiment 2a,the parafoveal priming paradigm was used.And to avoid the execution of overt eye movements towards the prime on the parafoyeal vision,the gaze-contingent foveal masking paradigm-(Calvo&Castillo,2009)was used in the experiment 2b.From the result of experiment 2,we can see deaf students have a larger priming effect than control groups,but make no more saccades to the primes.In experiment 3,the foveal processing was separated to investigate how the foveal processing would be when there is no parafoveal stimulus for deaf students.The result showed that there is no difference of foveal priming effect with control groups,which means deaf readers were equally able to perform the foveal processing in isolation.From the results of experiment in study 1,we confirm that deaf students are more efficient at processing parafoveal linguistic information than hearing controls during lexical processing,the greater availability of parafoveal information may affect foveal processing.But if there is no parafoveal information,their foveal processing was no difference.That is the effect of parafoveal visual attention enhancement in word recognition of deaf readers.Furthermore,Study 2 was from sentence-processing level to investigate the effect of parafoveal visual attention enhancement in sentence reading of deaf readers.By comparing the efficiency(speed)of encoding visual text information in parafoveal or foveal vision of three groups,the present study examined the temporal characteristics of reading processing to explore the effect of parafoveal visual attention enhancement.In experiment 4,we used the disappearing text paradigm to manipulate the display duration for parafoveal word N+1.The result showed that,in global analyses,when word N+1 was presented briefly(40ms),the overall sentence reading times were prolonged only for reading-level control group,but were no difference with deaf students and age control group.And in local analyses,the effect of word frequency was normal for all three groups.Therefore,from the experiment 4,we can see that deaf students showed higher efficiency of encoding parafoveal text information than their reading-level controls,and was equal to their age controls.In experiment 5,we used the disappearing text paradigm to manipulate the display duration for foveal word N.The result showed that,in global analyses,when word N was presented briefly(40ms),the overall sentence reading times were prolonged only for deaf students,but were no difference with reading-level and age control group.And in local analyses,for gaze duration,when foveal word N were presented briefly(40ms),the effect of word frequency was disappeared for deaf students.That is,there was negative influence of the manipulation of word N on the early lexical processing of deaf students.Therefore,from the experiment 5,we can see that deaf students showed lower efficiency of encoding foveal text information than their hearing controls.From the results of experiments in study 2,we also confirm that deaf students are more efficient at processing parafoveal text information than reading-level controls,but are less efficient at processing foveal text information than hearing controls during sentence reading.That is,deaf readers have enhanced parafoveal processing of linguistic information,but as result,their foveal processing were hampered.In conclusion,the results of the present study are as follows:(1)relative to hearing controls(reading-level controls and chronological age controls),deaf students showed a larger interference effect for foveal lexical decision with parafoveal distractors.(2)deaf students showed the higher efficiency of obtaining parafoveal orthographical related information during lexical processing.(3)when there is no parafoveal information,deaf students showed equal performance to the hearing controls for the foveal lexical decision.(4)when the parafoveal word N+1 is presented briefly(40ms),deaf students could obtain enough text information during fixation for normal sentence reading processing;but for the reading-level controls,their overall sentence reading time is prolonged.(5)when the foveal word N is presented briefly(40ms),deaf students could not obtain enough text information during fixation for normal lexical processing and overall sentence reading.but for the hearing controls,their reading processing is not influenced.In sum,from the present study,we found "the effect of parafoveal visual attention enhancement in deaf reading",regardless of the word recognition processing or natural sentence reading.