Abstract: The word predictability has a fundamental role in determining whether a word is fixated and for how long during skilled reading for both alphabetic and non-alphabetic languages. Current models of eye movement control, such as E-Z Reader (e.g., Reichle, Pollatsek, Fisher, Rayner, 1998) and SWIFT (e.g., Engbert, Kliegl & Nuthmann, 2005), treat predictability as one of the two main linguistic variables determining the speed with which words can be identified during reading. However, while this influence of word predictability on the eye movements of skilled readers is relatively well understood, surprising little is known about the how the use of these lexical cues develops. This will be important for understanding how children learn to read. Moreover, previous studies have shown that there was significant difference of predictability facilitation effect for children with different reading skills. However, the relationship between reading skills and predictability effect is still controversial. Accordingly, to gain insight into the use of these lexical cues by developing Chinese readers and how it would be modulated by reading skills, we examined the effects of parametrically manipulating the predictability of a specific target word in sentences on the eye movements of higher and lower skilled 5th grade readers. Developing Chinese readers (22 skilled, 20 less-skilled) were selected from a pool of school children (aged 10-12 years) whose reading skills had been comprehensively assessed. The test of reading skill was composed of reading comprehension and reading fluency. They read sentences containing two-character target words for which predictability and frequency was manipulated. Some findings suggest that lexical frequency effects provide a robust measure of lexical access, thus to investigate the relationship between predictability and frequency could tell us the the processing stage at which predictability operates. The results showed that predictability effects emerged on skipping rate, first-pass fixation times and total reading times for highly-skilled developing readers, while for low-skilled developing readers, predictability effect emerged on all fixation times measures; and for both group readers, an interaction between predictability frequency and complexity were observed on skip probability with larger frequency effect for low-predictability words. Furthermore, the differences between higher and lower skilled children showed that highly-skilled readers were more likely to skip words that were more predictable in the sentence context, indicating that predictability influenced the parafoveal processing of upcoming words. But lower-skilled children these developing readers made longer refixation fixation for higher predictability words which indicated they more rely on contextual predictability during later stage of lexical processing. In summary, word predictability indeed influences the eye movements of Chinese developing readers as developed adult readers. And there are fundamental differences in the influence of predictability on eye movements and lexical process for skilled and less-skilled developing Chinese readers. Highly-skilled readers used the predictability to facilitate lexical identification from the parafoveal processing, while the low-skilled did it from the word was fixated; although the predictability had the same influences on word identification when words were fixated for both group readers, low-skilled readers relied more on it during the re-reading processing.

Key words: word predictability effect, reading skill, lexical processing, eye movements

摘要： 操纵目标词的预测性、词频和阅读技能水平，考察句子阅读中词汇预测性对高、低阅读技能儿童眼动行为的影响，揭示其在儿童阅读发展中的作用。结果显示：儿童对高预测词的跳读率更高、注视时间更短，且预测性与词频交互影响跳读率和注视时间；预测性对高阅读技能儿童早期的跳读率影响更大，而对低阅读技能儿童晚期的再阅读时间具有更大影响。结果表明：词汇预测性影响儿童阅读的眼动行为和词汇加工，且作用大小和发生时程受阅读技能调节。

关键词: 汇预测性性, 阅读技能, 词汇加工, 眼动