The Different Effects of Parafoveal Information Processing of Kana Reading in Poor and Good Readers of Elementary School First and Second Graders

The effect of parafoveal information on a Hirakana recognitIOn task was investigated with first and second graders of elementary school.Especially examined was the difference in the efficiency of parafoveal information processing between poor readers and good readers.Subjects were presented Hirakana targets surrounded by different kinds of material-Hirakana, Katakana, Alphabet, and concrete object shapes-and were asked to read aloud the target as fast as possible.The results showed, first, that the R Ts of the second graders were faster than those of the first graders and, second, R Ts varied depending on the kind of surrounding material.Further, the results suggest that the firstgrade poor readers' filtering efficiency of parafoveal information was poor compared to that of the good readers, and that this filtering process becomes more efficient from the first to the second year of school attendance.During the first grade of Japanese elementary school, the child is introduced to writing and reading, starting with learning Hirakana.From each Hirakana character he is going to be able to read words and sentences throughout the first year of school attendance until some Kanjis are included.What kind of mechanisms are working in this learning process, i.e., from the slow reading of one letter until the fluent reading of words and sentences?In the process of reading each letter composing each word in one sentence, the letter should be read ignoring the surrounding letters and figure background.Keeping these circumstances in mind, we shall investigate the developmental process of a child's recognition of letters.We do not think that the developmental analysis of one-letter reading, as investigated in earlier studies, explains the mechanism underlying letter recognition in the real life situation.A developmental study of letter recognition that approximates the real life situation should provide us with significant knowledge about learning-disabled children, for instance, those retarded in reading acquirement, in sentence decoding, etc.This experiment examined how surrounding stimuli affect the process of reading a letter target, and what differences emerge between poor and good readers among first and second grade elementary school children.