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Phonological and orthographic parafoveal processing during silent reading in Russian children and adults
Studies on German and English showed that children and adults can rely on phonological and orthographic information from the parafovea during reading, but this reliance differs between ages and languages. In the present study, we investigated the development of phonological and orthographic parafoveal processing during silent reading in Russian-speaking 8-year-old children, 10-year-old children and adults using gaze-contingent boundary paradigm. The participants read sentences with embedded nouns which were presented in original, pseudohomophone, control for pseudohomophone, transposed-letter and control for transposed-letter conditions in the parafoveal area to assess phonological and orthographic preview benefit effects. The results revealed that 8-year-old children already relied on orthographic information, which was stable in 10-year-old children and adults. The evidence for phonological parafoveal processing was found only in adults, which indicates the development of phonological recoding strategy in skilled readers.