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Little is known about how information to the left of fixation impacts reading and how it may help to integrate what has been read into the context of the sentence. To better understand the role of this leftward information and how it may be beneficial during reading, we compared the sizes of the leftward span for reading-matched deaf signers ( n = 32) and hearing adults ( n = 40) using a gaze-contingent moving window paradigm with windows of 1, 4, 7, 10, and 13 characters to the left, as well as a no-window condition. All deaf participants were prelingually and profoundly deaf, used American Sign Language (ASL) as a primary means of communication, and were exposed to ASL before age eight. Analysis of reading rates indicated that deaf readers had a leftward span of 10 characters, compared to four characters for hearing readers, and the size of the span was positively related to reading comprehension ability for deaf but not hearing readers. These findings suggest that deaf readers may engage in continued word processing of information obtained to the left of fixation, making reading more efficient, and showing a qualitatively different reading process than hearing readers.
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The role of perceptual and word identification spans in reading efficiency: Evidence from hearing and deaf readers.
Theories of reading posit that decisions about “where” and “when” to move the eyes are driven by visual and linguistic factors, extracted from the perceptual span and word identification span, respectively. We tested this hypothesized dissociation by masking, outside of a visible window, either the spaces between the words (to assess the perceptual span, Experiment 1) or the letters within the words (to assess the word identification span, Experiment 2). We also investigated whether deaf readers’ previously reported larger reading span was specifically linked to one of these spans. We analyzed reading rate to test overall reading efficiency, as well as average saccade length to test “where” decisions and average fixation duration to test “when” decisions. Both hearing and deaf readers’ perceptual spans extended between 10 and 14 characters, and their word identification spans extended to eight characters to the right of fixation. Despite similar sized rightward spans, deaf readers read more efficiently overall and showed a larger increase in reading rate when leftward text was available, suggesting they attend more to leftward information. Neither rightward span was specifically related to where or when decisions for either group. Our results challenge the assumed dissociation between type of reading span and type of saccade decision and indicate that reading efficiency requires access to both perceptual and linguistic information in the parafovea.
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- PAR ID:
- 10617623
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Psychological Association
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
- Volume:
- 153
- Issue:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 0096-3445
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 2359 to 2377
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Both deafness and sign language experience impact the distribution of visual attention, and either factor could affectreading span size, the area around fixation from which useful information is obtained. In contrast to the typical asymmetrical span (smaller on the left), deaf signers have a larger leftward span than skill‐matched hearing readers. We investigated whether this enhanced span is due to changes in visual attention associated with early deafness or sign language experience (right‐handed signs fall in the left periphery). A gaze‐contingent moving‐window paradigm was used to assess the leftward reading span of hearing early signers, deaf early signers, and hearing nonsigners with similar reading abilities. The size of the leftward span for deaf and hearing signers was the same (10 characters) and was larger than that of hearing nonsigners (4 characters). Thus, sign language experience appears to be at least one source of the larger leftward span in deaf signers. However, deaf signers were more efficient readers than both hearing groups (faster reading rate, more skipped words, fewer regressions), suggesting that their greater reading efficiency does not stem solely from a larger leftward span.more » « less
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Eye-tracking corpora have advanced our understanding of reading processes by providing large-scale datasets of naturalistic reading behavior. However, existing corpora have almost exclusively sampled from typically hearing readers of spoken languages. Here, we present the Signers’ Eye-movements in English Reading (SEER) Corpus, a dataset of eye-movement behaviors from 41 skilled deaf adult readers who are early signers of American Sign Language (ASL), as well as a comparative group of 101 typically hearing monolingual English readers. Participants read 200 English sentences presented one at a time. In addition to eye-tracking data, the corpus includes detailed participant information: a standardized measure of reading proficiency, spelling recognition, and nonverbal intelligence for all participants. Information for the deaf participants include ASL comprehension scores, age of ASL acquisition, and phonological awareness scores (for a subset of participants). We report comparative analyses of reading behaviors at both the word level and sentence level. We also examine group differences in the effects of word length, frequency, and surprisal on local measures. The results indicate stronger effects of length and surprisal, but equivalent frequency effects (on content words) for deaf compared to hearing readers. The SEER Corpus offers researchers the opportunity to test hypotheses about reading development and efficiency in bimodal bilinguals who are first language users of ASL and skilled readers of English, supporting broader investigations of visual language processing. The corpus is preregistered and publicly availableat https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/7P4F2 to facilitate replication, cross-study comparisons, and exploration of preliminary hypotheses in this understudied population.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001633
