The Perceptual Span of Good Readers and Poor Readers in Fifth Grade Abstract The perceptual span is the area of effective vision from which useful information can be obtained during a fixation in reading. Previous studies had proved that the perceptual span changed as a function of reading skill (Rayner,1986). Chinese is quite different from Western language. The poor readers in Chinese have poor test scores. It has been predicted that the poor readers in Chinese have a smaller perceptual span. So the present study was conducted to explore if reading skill level modulated the amount of information acquired during a fixation in Chinese reading. 17 poor readers and 17 good readers in fifth grade participated in the experiment. Their eye movements were recorded with a SR Research EyeLink 2000 eyetracker. Participants read 80 sentences with eight experimental conditions. The experiment design was 2 (skill level: good and poor reader in fifth grade) ×8(display conditions: no preview, R1, R2, R3, R4, L1R4, L2R4 and whole line condition) mixed design. The stimuli were presented in black on a white background. Participants were seated 90 cm from the monitor. The size of a character was 30×30 pixels, subtended 0.7°of visual angle. Latin square design was adopted in the experiment. Various display conditions were blocked, and the order of conditions was counterbalanced across participants. The whole experiment lasted about 30 minutes. The results showed that the perceptual span of poor readers in fifth grade was one character to the left of current fixation and two characters to its right.(The results on mean fixation duration and reading speed eye movement measures supported one character space to the right of the fixated character, while forward saccade size measure supported two characters space to its right.) The perceptual span of good readers in fifth grade was one character to the left of current fixation and three characters to its right. (The results on mean fixation duration and reading speed measures supported two characters space to the right of span, while forward saccade size measure supported three characters space to its right.) The tentative conclusion was that the perceptual span of good readers was larger. Key words good readers, poor readers, perceptual span, eye movements