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Much reading research has found that informative parafoveal masks lead to a reading benefit for native speakers (see, Schotter et al., 2012). However, little reading research has tested the impact of uninformative parafoveal masks during reading. Additionally, parafoveal processing research is primarily restricted to native speakers. In the current study we manipulated the type of uninformative preview using a gaze contingent boundary paradigm with a group of L1 English speakers and a group of late L2 English speakers (L1 German). We were interested in how different types of uninformative masks impact on parafoveal processing, whether L1 and L2 speakers are similarly impacted, and whether they are sensitive to parafoveally viewed language-specific sub-lexical orthographic information. We manipulated six types of uninformative masks to test these objectives: an Identical, English pseudo-word, German pseudo-word, illegal string of letters, series of X’s, and a blank mask. We found that X masks affect reading the most with slight graded differences across the other masks, L1 and L2 speakers are impacted similarly, and neither group is sensitive to sub-lexical orthographic information. Overall these data show that not all previews are equal, and research should be aware of the way uninformative masks affect reading behavior. Additionally, we hope that future research starts to approach models of eye-movement behavior during reading from not only a monolingual but also from a multilingual perspective.
In this study we investigated parafoveal processing by L1 and late L2 speakers of English (L1 German) while reading in English.
We hypothesized that L2ers would make use of semantic and orthographic information parafoveally. Using the gaze contingent
boundary paradigm, we manipulated six parafoveal masks in a sentence (Mark found th*e wood for the fire; * indicates the
invisible boundary): identical word mask (wood), English orthographic mask (wook), English stringmask (zwwl), German mask
(holz), German orthographic mask (holn), and German string mask (kxfs). We found an orthographic benefit for L1ers and L2ers
when the mask was orthographically related to the target word (wood vs. wook) in line with previous L1 research. English L2ers
did not derive a benefit (rather an interference) when a non-cognate translation mask from their L1 was used (wood vs. holz), but
did derive a benefit from a German orthographic mask (wood vs. holn). While unexpected, it may be that L2ers incur a switching
cost when the complete German word is presented parafoveally, and derive a benefit by keeping both lexicons active when a
partial German word is presented parafoveally (narrowing down lexical candidates). To the authors’ knowledge there is no
mention of parafoveal processing in any model of L2 processing/reading, and the current study provides the first evidence for a
parafoveal non-cognate orthographic benefit (but only with partial orthographic overlap) in sentence reading for L2ers. We
discuss how these findings fit into the framework of bilingual word recognition theories.