From Symmetrical to Asymmetrical: The Developmental Stages of Perceptual Span in Chinese Reading Among Primary School Students

Wu Jingen; Li Sainan; Yuan Xiaoyuan; Wang Yongsheng; Yan Guoli

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20250211

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2025, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (2) : 382-392. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20250211

From Symmetrical to Asymmetrical: The Developmental Stages of Perceptual Span in Chinese Reading Among Primary School Students

Wu Jingen^1,2,3,4, Li Sainan⁵, Yuan Xiaoyuan^1,2,3, Wang Yongsheng^1,2,3, Yan Guoli^1,2,3

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Abstract

The perceptual span in reading is "the area of effective vision or the region from which useful information can be obtained during a fixation in reading" (Rayner, 1986, p. 212) and has been extensively tested in the moving window paradigm (Rayner, 2014). Previous studies have revealed that the perceptual span of first graders (Li et al., 2021) and second graders (Yan et al., 2018) is three characters, extending one character to both the left and right of the fixated character, which shows a symmetrical characteristic. Compared to first- and second-graders, the perceptual span of fifth-graders (Yan et al., 2013) and adult readers (Inhoff & Liu, 1998) is five characters, extending one character to the left of the fixation character and three characters to the right of the fixated character, which shows an asymmetric characteristic. How does the perceptual span develop from a smaller and symmetrical span to a larger and asymmetrical span in Chinese reading for primary school students as chronological age increases and reading ability develops? Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the development process of the perceptual span in Chinese reading among primary school students by conducting a cross-sectional study.
We compared the perceptual span of children at the end of the first, second, third, and fifth graders as they read the same sentences in the moving window paradigm. Three types of window conditions were set up, corresponding to a total of six window sizes. The asymmetric-left condition (L2R1, L3R1) was that the window extended 2 and 3 characters to the left of the fixation character, but only 1 character to the right of the fixation character. Correspondingly, the asymmetric-right window condition (L1R2, L1R3) was that the window extended 2 and 3 characters to the right of the fixation character, but only 1 character to the left of the fixation character. The remaining symmetric window condition (L1R1, L2R2) was that both extended 1 character or 2 characters to the left and right of the fixation character. The Full Line (FL) condition had no masking and displayed normal text and served as the baseline. A total of 11 short stories were selected from different versions of Chinese textbooks and edited to be suitable for first graders. There were 12 sentences in each window condition. A fixed order of sentence presentation was used to maintain the integrity of a theme story, while the seven window conditions in the moving window paradigm were counterbalanced across seven blocks using a Latin square design.
The present study found that only enlarging the visual area of the right fixation could continuously improve both reading speed and eye movement measures for primary school students as chronological age increases and reading ability develops. Therefore, these evidences indicate that the developmental process of the perceptual span in Chinese reading is that the left side of the perceptual span is constant, but only the right side of the perceptual span increases, leading to a more asymmetric perceptual span to the right of fixation, supporting the attentional bias view (Li et al., 2022; Pollatsek et al., 1981) and the foveal load hypothesis (Henderson & Ferreira, 1990). The present results revealed that the perceptual span of the first- and second-graders extended 1 character both to the left and to the right of the fixated character, which shows a symmetric perceptual span, and that of the third- and fifth-graders extended 1 character to the left and 2 characters to the right of the fixated character, which shows an asymmetric perceptual span, based on the reading speed measure. The results consistently prove that the development process of perceptual span in Chinese reading consists of two stages, that is, the first stage is a smaller and symmetric perceptual span and the second stage is a larger and asymmetric perceptual span. Finally, our findings indicate that the turning point in the development of the perceptual span in Chinese reading is the third year of primary school, which is in the developmental stage of reading to learn, according to the view of stages of reading development (Chall, 1996).

Key words

primary school students / reading development / Chinese reading / perceptual span / eye movements

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Wu Jingen, Li Sainan, Yuan Xiaoyuan, Wang Yongsheng, Yan Guoli. From Symmetrical to Asymmetrical: The Developmental Stages of Perceptual Span in Chinese Reading Among Primary School Students[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2025, 48(2): 382-392 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20250211

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