# Development of orthographic, phonological and semantic parafoveal processing in Chinese reading

## TL;DR

This study explores how children's ability to process upcoming words in Chinese reading improves with age, focusing on orthographic, phonological, and semantic aspects.

## Contribution

The study is the first to compare the development of orthographic, phonological, and semantic parafoveal processing in Chinese reading across different age groups.

## Key findings

- Orthographic parafoveal processing is effective in all age groups studied.
- Phonological and semantic parafoveal processing develops later, starting in third or fourth grade.
- Orthographic processing likely precedes phonological and semantic processing during reading development.

## Abstract

Parafoveal pre-processing of upcoming words is a key aspect of fluent reading. A comparative analysis of how children’s orthographic, phonological and semantic parafoveal processing changes with age has not been investigated to date. In the present study, three eye movement experiments used the boundary paradigm to characterize the nature of change in orthographic, phonological and semantic parafoveal processing across children in Grades 2 to 5 (n = 366, Tianjin Primary School) and adults (n = 90, Tianjin Normal University) during natural Chinese reading. In each experiment we manipulated preview type (identical, related or unrelated preview). The results showed that effective orthographic parafoveal processing occurred in all our participant groups; however, effective phonological and semantic parafoveal processing was somewhat delayed, occurring in the third or fourth grade through to adults. We suggest that the differential developmental time course of orthographic relative to phonological and semantic parafoveal processing likely arises because the phonological and semantic characteristics of a written character are accessed via the character’s orthographic code. Orthographic parafoveal processing, therefore, likely takes developmental precedence over phonological and semantic parafoveal processing. Together, the results provide a quite comprehensive picture of how a fundamental aspect of reading, parafoveal processing, develops with age.