Getting a head start: Children’s parafoveal pre-processing during reading

Abstract: Skilled adult readers do not only process the word that they are fixating (N), but also begin to pre-process the upcoming word in the sentence (N+1). This is known as parafoveal pre-processing and results in reduced reading times on that word once it is, subsequently, directly fixated. Much research has shown that adult readers pre-process both the orthography and the phonology of N+1. Furthermore, manipulations of the external letters of a word (the first and final letters) are particularly disruptive to adults’ pre-processing compared to manipulations of internal letters. Until recently, little was known about children’s parafoveal pre-processing. Over a series of eye movement experiments, we showed that children from the age of 8 years: (1) pre-process orthography; (2) pre-process phonology; (3) show greater sensitivity to external than internal letter manipulations in pre-processing; (4) are particular dependent upon the first letter of the word in pre-processing for efficient lexical identification; and that (5) the importance of the first letter stems from orthographic, not phonological, processing. These effects were highly similar to those observed in control groups of skilled adult readers. There were, however, consistent differences between the two groups in terms of the time course of effects – manipulations affect earlier measures of in adults than in children, consistent with the idea that children have a slower rate of lexical processing than adults.