Abstract: Word segmentation is an important process of reading. Unlike most alphabetic writing systems, such as English, Chinese is written without spaces between successive characters or words. There is no obvious visual cue to demarcate words except punctuation marks. Thus, it is necessary to word segmentation during Chinese reading. As shown by Perea & Wang (2017) , alternating-color words were an effective way of word segmentation and it facilitated reading aloud a text for developing readers. Similar to developing readers, deaf readers have difficult in Chinese reading, for, deaf readers know and process language via different sensory channels due to auditory deprivation (Bélanger & Rayner, 2015). There were few studies to investigate how to improve the reading efficiency of deaf readers in Chinese so far. Thus, the present study used eye tracking technique to explore the influence of the alternating-color text on text reading of senior deaf students in primary school. This paper aims to study an effective way to improve the reading efficiency of deaf students. The present study adopted a one-way (text types: alternating-color text, mono-color text) within-subjects design. Participants were composed of 29 forth-sixth graders recruited from a deaf elementary school in Tianjin. Their eye movements were recorded with the SR Research Eyelink 1000 plus with a sampling rate of 1000HZ. The experiment provide two sets of analyses. In the global analyses, we computed the reading rate, average fixation duration and average saccade length. In the local analyses, we used the following eye movement measures: single fixation duration, first fixation duration, gaze duration and total reading time. There were 6 texts in total. They were chosen from different versions of Chinese textbook for 2 grade. Every text, evaluated by teachers from deaf school, can be used as experimental material. In the formal experiment, all texts were randomly divided into two groups (three texts per group) : the alternating-color text and the mono-color text. For the multicolored texts, the color of the words alternated between red, green, brown and blue. For the mono-color texts, the characters were presented in red, green, brown or blue. Participants read all texts in the two group. The results showed that compared to the mono-color text, when deaf students read the alternating-color text, they read faster and cost shorter average fixation duration for global analyses. Similar results were observed in the local analyses. The local analyses of eye movement measures showed that deaf students required shorter gaze duration and total reading time in the alternating-color text than in the mono-color text. In conclusion, these data indicated that the alternating-color text did facilitate deaf students text reading supported by both the global analyses and the local analyses. At the moment, the experiment provides evidence to demonstrate that alternating-color is an effective way of word segmentation. That is, when reading Chinese text, color information may provide an extra visual cue to help to segment the words and to facilitate word recognition. In addition, the result of the present study can be used to improve deaf students’ reading teaching in the primary school.

Key words: primary deaf students, alternating colors, word segmentation, text reading, eye movement

摘要： 聋生由于听力损失，导致其在阅读方面存在一定的困难。如何提高聋生的阅读效率是一个具有重要的实践价值的课题。本研究采用眼动追踪技术，以29名小学高年级聋生为研究对象，考察颜色交替词标记形式对小学高年级聋生篇章阅读的促进作用。结果发现，无论是眼动指标的整体分析还是局部分析，均支持颜色交替词标记文本可以有效地提高小学高年级聋生的语篇阅读效率。本研究结果对于训练提高小学高年级聋生的阅读效率具有一定的启发意义。

关键词: 小学聋生, 颜色交替, 词切分, 篇章阅读, 眼动