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Updated: Oct 4, 2025

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
Published on: September 5, 2019
Accessing Semantic Information from Above: Parafoveal Processing during the Reading of Vertically Presented Sentences
Jinger Pan1, Ming Yan2,3, Su-Ling Yeh4,5,6,7
1Department of Psychology, The Education University of Hong Kong.
Abstract:
As traditional Chinese readers are familiar with reading texts both horizontally rightwards and vertically downwards, the traditional Chinese script provides us a chance to investigate the influence of reading direction on preview benefits by ruling out the confounding factor of different familiarities with reading directions. The present study examines whether parafoveal information can be obtained when reading Chinese sentences in the vertical direction. We manipulated semantic and phonological relatedness between parafoveal preview words and target words. Results showed that traditional Chinese readers could obtain semantic information from preview words; however, there was no phonological preview benefit. Our findings agree with the notion that Chinese characters are well-optimized for semantic access.
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