Becoming a skilled reader: the development of parafoveal pre-processing

Abstract

In contrast to the large body of research that has examined parafoveal pre-processing in skilled adult readers, very little research has examined such processing in beginner child readers. Several novel aspects of parafoveal pre-processing within child readers, in comparison to adult readers, were examined within this thesis; enabling further insight into what information children extract from an upcoming word, and whether there is evidence of developmental change within this processing. Research has shown that adult readers continue to use phonological information to facilitate their lexical identification, counter to current theories of reading development. There appears, rather, to be a developmental change in phonological processing as beginner readers progress to be skilled readers; such that phonology can be used pre-lexically, facilitating lexical identification. This pre-lexical processing of phonology by adults is dependent on orthography. Consequently, prior to examining whether children, like adults, extract phonological information from preview, it was necessary to examine child readers’ extraction of orthographic information from preview in my first experiment. Within this experiment it was shown that, firstly, children were sensitive to a word’s entire orthographic form in preview, and, secondly, for both adult and child readers, the external letters of an upcoming word were more facilitative to their lexical identification than the internal letters. Moreover, substituting the first letter in preview caused disruption to both adults’ and children’s processing (first-letter bias). The children’s parafoveal pre-processing of orthography was also found to be slower in comparison to that of the adults. My second experiment directly examined whether children process phonological information from an upcoming word, and the extent to which this is affected by orthography. Both adult and child readers benefitted from phonological information being present in preview, though this benefit was modulated by orthography. As such, benefits from phonology were only present within orthographically similar stimuli. Also, the results, again, suggest that both adults and children display a first-letter bias. My third experiment examined this first-letter bias; determining whether it is driven by orthography or phonology. Within both adults’ and children’s first-pass reading, the first-letter bias was primarily driven by orthography. Again, there was evidence of children’s extraction of orthographic information from preview being slower relative to that of the adults. Overall, 8- to 9-year-old child readers’ extraction of information from preview was broadly comparable to that of skilled adult readers. There was also evidence found of developmental change in the time course of parafoveal pre-processing of orthography.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Denis Drieghe: orcid.org/0000-0001-9630-8410

ORCID for Hayward Godwin: orcid.org/0009-0005-1232-500X

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