Adult Age Differences in Parafoveal Preview Effects during Reading: Evidence from Chinese

We investigated parafoveal processing by 44 young (18-30 years) and 44 older (65+ years) Chinese readers using eye movement measures. Participants read sentences which included an invisible boundary after a two-character word (N) and before two one-character words (N+1, N+2). Before a reader’s gaze crossed the boundary, N+1 and N+2 were shown normally or masked (i.e., as valid/invalid previews), after which they reverted to normal. Young adults obtained preview benefits (a processing advantage for valid over invalid previews) for both words. However, older adults obtained N+2 preview benefits only when N+1 was valid, suggesting their parafoveal processing is more limited.