The Contexual Facilitation Effect For Developing Readers' Lexical Processing In Natual Reading

The contextual facilitation effect refers to the phenomenon that context will facilitate words processing in reading.Early studies have examined this phenomenon by using time reaction tasks,and have compared the differences of the contextual facilitation effect between highly-skilled and low-skilled developing readers.But there were some problems in those studies,and it has no consistent conclusion.The present research extends this work by using measures of eye movements to examine the effect of context on Chinese developing readers in natural reading.Experiment 1 was designed to examine the influences of context on words processing when it is fixated for Chinese developing readers,and whether.this is modulated by reading skills.44 participants were selected(22 skilled,22 less-skilled)whose reading skills had been comprehensively assessed.The participants read sentences containing two-character target words for which predictability and frequency was manipulated.The results were as follows:(1)Comparing to low-predictability words,the readers skipped more and spend less time on highly-predictability words;(2)there was no interaction between predictability and reading skills,that is,both two groups could use contextual information to facilitate words processing when it is fixated.Experiment 2 aimed to explore the influences of context on parafoveal preprocessing for Chinese developing readers,and whether this is modulated by reading skills.48 participants were selected(24 skilled,24 less-skilled)whose reading skills had been comprehensively assessed.The participants read sentences containing two-character target words for which predictability and previewing type was manipulated.The results were as follows:(1)there was an interaction between predictability and preview type,preview effect was shown in constrained sentences,but didn't in neutral sentences.(2)there was also an interaction between predictability,preview type and reading skills.For low-skilled readers,the preview effect has no differences in two type of sentences,while for highly-skilled readers,there was a preview effect in constrained sentences,but it wasn't in neutral sentences.In conclusion,(1)The contextual information can facilitate words processing for Chinese developing readers,comparing with the low-predictability words,the readers process high-predictability words more easily;(2)there were no differences in contextual facilitation effect between highly-skilled and low-skilled Chinese developing readers when it is fixated.(3)there were some differences in contextual facilitation effect in parafoveal preprocessing between highly-skilled and low-skilled developing readers.The highly-skilled readers can use contextual information to facilitate parafoveal processing,but the low-skilled readers didn't.