Abstract: Because of the early auditory impairment, deaf readers relied heavily on the visual channel to process information, resulting in the changes of the spatial distribution of visual attention resources around 11 years old. Lots of studies showed their selectively enhanced attention in extrafoveal visual field when they were asked to complete the low-level visual perceptual tasks, like orientation, discrimination, search task and some other tasks. Studies showed that the enhanced attention to the parafovea in deaf readers is not restricted to low-level visual perception but can also be recruited for a complex cognitive process, such as reading. The perceptual span is the area of effective vision from which useful information can be obtained during one fixation in reading, which is a basic issue in reading research (Rayner,1975). In the alphabetic writing system, skilled deaf readers were found with a larger perceptual span than their reading ability and age matched hearing readers to the right of fixation, and this phenomenon is the result of deaf readers’ enhanced visual attention in extrafoveal visual field. In logographic writing system, researchers found that deaf college students had a larger perceptual span than the hearing college students to the left of fixation without matching the two groups strictly, so we can’t know the exact causes. In addition, until now, there are few studies focusing on deaf middle school students’ enhanced parafoveal processing in Chinese reading, and this phenomenon needs further confirmation. So It’s of great importance to compare deaf readers’ reading perceptual span to verify this phenomenon. The current study attempts to investigate deaf middle school students’ enhanced parafoveal attention feature in reading by comparing their Chinese reading perceptual span with the two hearing control groups. The moving window paradigm was adopted to explore this issue by using the Eyelink 2000 eye tracker. The design was a 3(groups: deaf middle school students、reading ability matched hearing group、aged matched hearing group ) ×6（window sizes：WS1、WS2、WS3、WS4、WS5、FL）mixed design. WS means window symmetry. WS1 represents one character to the left of fixation and one character to the right of fixation. WS2、WS3、WS4、WS5 represent 2、3、4、5characters to the left of fixation and 2、3、4、5 characters to the right of fixation respectively. FL means full line condition, it was treated as the control condition. The results demonstrated a larger perceptual span of deaf middle school students with 3 characters to the right of fixation compared with their reading ability matched hearing students’ (2 characters to the right of fixation), and equal to the aged matched hearing students’ (3 characters to the right of fixation), supporting their enhanced parafoveal attention feature in reading.

Key words: deaf middle school students, parafoveal attention enhancement, perceptual span in Chinese reading, eye movement

摘要： 副中央凹注意增强特点是指受视觉注意资源空间分配变化的影响，聋人在阅读中表现出更强的副中央凹信息加工能力。本研究以Eyelink2000眼动仪为工具，采用移动窗口范式，通过探讨中学聋生的阅读知觉广度，来进一步验证聋人阅读中的副中央凹注意增强特点。实验采用3（被试：中学聋生、年龄匹配组、能力匹配组）× 6（窗口水平：WS1、WS2、WS3、WS4、WS5、FL）的混合实验设计。结果发现，中学聋生和其年龄匹配组的阅读知觉广度均为注视点右侧3个汉字，能力匹配组的阅读知觉广度为注视点右侧2个汉字，表明中学聋生在阅读中存在副中央凹注意增强特点。

关键词: 中学聋生, 副中央凹注意增强, 中文阅读知觉广度, 眼动