| Many studies suggest that visual attention is reorganized to compensate for the lack or absence of auditory input provided by a complex environment for deaf individuals.This reorganization has been thought to result in a redistribution of spatial visual attention toward the parafoveal and peripheral visual fields in deaf individuals.In low-level visual tasks,deaf individuals show enhanced visual selective attention in the parafoveal and peripheral visual field.Neuroimaging studies found that deaf individuals show larger activation in visual and auditory brain regions during low-level visual tasks.Neuroimaging studies suggest that the brain undergoes a cross-modal reorganization in deaf individuals.It is also well known that there is a strong link between visual attention and reading efficiency in individuals with typical levels of hearing.Foveal information is essential for word processing and for reading.However,eye movement studies in reading have also indicated that linguistic information can be obtained from the parafoveal region.Parafoveal information can guide readers eye saccade length and landing position.Some studies suggest that parafoveal information acquisition was determined by visual attention resources.If readers' allocate attentional resources to process parafoveal words,then reading efficiency can be increased,but,if too much attention is allocated to process parafoveal information,then this may actually hinder identification of the foveal word under inspection.Therefore,readers have to carefully allocate their attention between the foveal region and parafoveal region,in order to obtain parafoveal information that is useful(facilitatory),but not harmful(inhibitory)for the reading process.Given the important function of visual attention in reading and the enhanced visual selective attention in the parafoveal and peripheral visual field in the low-level visual tasks in deaf individuals,in recent years,some scholars explored the characteristics and rules of deaf individuals reading from the perspective of the redistribution of visual attention resources using eye-tracking technology.These researches are mainly carried out from two aspects: some studies explored whether the redistribution of visual attention of deaf individuals(allocation of more attention resources to parafoveal and peripheral visual field)would promote parafoveal processing in reading tasks;some studies explored the enhancement of the parafoveal attention in reading is facilitatory or inhibitory for the reading of deaf readers.The study of deaf reading from the perspective of the redistribution of visual attention resources is still in its infancy.Although some studies have shown that deaf readers can access parafoveal information more efficiently during sentence reading and have found that the parafoveal attention enhancement can promote the reading of deaf readers,but most of these studies are from the alphabetic writing systems reading.There are great differences between the Chinese and alphabetic writing systems.Chinese does not include spaces between words.The information is more densely packed and situated close to the point of fixation.At present,there are few studies on the characteristics and rules of Chinese reading for deaf people from the perspective of visual attention redistribution.Is there a parafoveal enhancement in Chinese reading for deaf readers? If so,how would this enhancement of the parafoveal effect(facilitatory or inhibitory)the reading of deaf readers? These issues need to be further investigated.From the perspective of the redistribution of visual attention resources for deaf individuals,the present study using eye-tracking technology explore two issues: the first is to investigate the enhancement of parafoveal attention in Chinese reading for deaf individuals using lexical judgment task(study 1)and parafoveal processing task in sentence reading(study 2).The second is to investigate the enhancement of the parafoveal attention in Chinese reading is facilitatory or inhibitory for the deaf readers in natural sentence reading(study 3).Study 1 adopted the modified flanker paradigm and utilized lexical decision task to investigate the effects of task-irrelevant linguistic stimuli interference and the enhancement of parafoveal attention of the deaf college students in Chinese reading at the level of word processing.The study included three groups: deaf college student group,reading control group and age control group.Study 1 included experiments 1a and 1b.Experiment 1a used a 3(Group: deaf college student group,reading control group,age control group)×7(Interference condition: without interference,left 2°,left 3°,left 4°,right 2°,right 3°,right 4°)mixed experimental design.The group was as a betweenparticipants factor and the interference condition was as a within-participants factor.If the redistribution of spatial visual attention toward the parafoveal visual fields in deaf readers,it would be predicted that deaf readers should take longer to make a lexical decision when a target character is presented centrally along with a distractor character simultaneously presented in parafoveal visual field.Experiment 1a showed that deaf readers have a larger interference effect from irrelevant parafoveal distractors compared to the participants with typical levels of hearing in all interference conditions.Experiment 1b used a 3(Group: deaf college student group,reading control group,age control group)×3(Interference condition: without interference,left 1°,right 1°)mixed experimental design.Experiment 1b showed that deaf readers have a larger interference effect from irrelevant distractors of the right side 1° visual angle from the center of the display compared to the reading control group,and deaf readers have a larger interference effect from irrelevant distractors of the right side 1° visual angle and left side 1° visual angle from the center of the display compared to the age control group.Study 1 further confirmed the enhancement of parafoveal attention in deaf college students in the lexical decision task.Study 2 investigated the enhancement of parafoveal attention of deaf college students in Chinese sentence reading using eye-tracking technology.Experiment 2a adopted a 3(Group: deaf college students,reading control group,age control group)× 8(Window condition: R0,R1,R2,R3,R4,L1R4,L2R4,full line)mixed experimental design.The group was a between-participants factor and the window condition was a within-participants factor.Experiment 2a investigated the perceptual span of deaf college students in Chinese sentence reading.A gaze-contingent moving-window paradigm was used in the experiment.The results showed the perceptual span for the deaf readers was more than 2 characters to the left of the fixated character and 3 characters to the right of the fixated character.The perceptual span for the control groups was 2 characters to the left of the fixated character and 3 characters to the right fixated character.Deaf readers have a wider perceptual span at the left of the fixated relative to the participants with typical levels of hearing.Experiment 2a also showed that deaf readers have a smaller number of regressive fixations and fixations.Experiment 2a provided evidence to demonstrate that the deaf individuals' redistribution of spatial visual attention toward the parafoveal visual fields could influence reading Chinese sentences.Experiment 2b adopted a 3(Group: deaf college students,reading control group,age control group)× 5(Preview condition: identity,orthography,phonology,semantics,unrelated)mixed experimental design.The group was as a between-participants factor and the preview condition was as a within-participants factor.Experiment 2b using boundary paradigm further investigated whether the enhanced visual processing of deaf college students in the parafovea would affect preview benefits of parafoveal N+1 compound character during silent reading of Chinese sentences.The results showed the fast-reading deaf readers acquired preview benefits from phonological and semantic character preview conditions relative to the unrelated character condition.Experiment 2b provided evidence to demonstrate that the enhanced visual processing of high-level reading deaf readers(fast readers)in the parafovea could affect preview benefits of parafoveal N+1 compound character during the silent reading of Chinese sentences.Study 2 demonstrated that enhancement of parafoveal attention in Chinese reading for deaf readers in sentence reading.Study 3 further explored whether the enhanced visual processing of deaf college students in the parafovea would affect the silent reading of Chinese sentences.Experiment 3 adopted a 3(Group: deaf college students,reading control group,age control group)× 2(Frequency: high frequency,low frequency)mixed experimental design.The group was as a between-participants factor and the frequency was as a within-participants factor.Experiment 3 investigated the eye movement pattern of deaf college readers in natural sentence reading by manipulating the word frequency of parafoveal,and then further investigated the facilitatory or inhibitory effects of the reorganization of visual attention of the deaf on reading.Experiment 3 also investigated the parafoveal-on-foveal(PoF)effects of word frequency,in order to explore the influence of visual attention redistribution of deaf readers on PoF effects of word frequency.Experiment 3 found that deaf readers showed efficient eye movement characteristic of lower refixation rates.The analysis of PoF effects of word frequency showed that deaf readers do not have a larger PoF effects of word frequency compared to the reading matching group,indicating that the visual attention redistribution of deaf readers does not have a significant impact on PoF effects of word frequency.The PoF effects of word frequency indicated that the efficient eye movement characteristics of deaf readers might not be achieved by changing the effect of parafoveal-on-foveal in one-time fixations.Therefore,this efficient eye movement characteristic of deaf readers might be realized by acquiring more information in the parafovea and then promote the information processing of the word after entering the fovea.The main conclusions of the current study are as follows:(1)The current study demonstrates that deaf college readers show a larger interference effect from irrelevant parafoveal distractors,during a lexical decision task.It provides further evidence of the parafoveal attention enhancement in the reading of deaf college students.(2)In the perceptual span experiment,the perceptual span of deaf college readers to the fixation left is larger than that of the reading control group and the age control group.It provides evidence to demonstrate that the enhanced visual processing of deaf readers in the parafovea could affect the perceptual span during the silent reading of Chinese sentences.(3)In the N+1 compound character previewing experiment,the fast-reading deaf readers acquire preview benefits from phonological and semantic character preview conditions relative to the unrelated character condition.It provides evidence to demonstrate that the enhanced visual processing of high-level reading deaf readers(fast readers)in the parafovea could affect preview benefits of parafoveal N+1 compound character during the silent reading of Chinese sentences.(4)In the natural sentence reading experiment,compared with the reading matching group,the deaf readers show efficient eye movement characteristic of lower refixation rates.This increase in efficiency might be attributed to the fact that deaf college readers parafovea could obtain more information and then promote the information processing of the word after entering the fovea.In sum,this study confirms the enhancement of parafoveal processing in Chinese reading in deaf college students.In addition,this study proves that the enhancement of parafoveal processing of deaf readers can promote their reading in Chinese. |
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