• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.315-347
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• 2023

This study aimed to investigate the semantic preview effect in the parafoveal processing of words that are presented in advance in the parafoveal area ahead of the fixation point, benefiting word processing in the fovea. Using the boundary technique in eye-tracking experiments, 25 Chinese-Korean bilinguals, whose native language is Chinese, were presented with 96 sentences that contained a mix of Chinese and Korean, where Korean words were associated with Chinese characters semantically. The study aimed to determine whether a semantic preview effect could be extracted in reading. The experimental sentences were divided into four conditions: the same Korean native word condition (e.g., "나라" meaning "country"), the same Korean word with semantic equivalent in Chinese condition (e.g., "국가" meaning "country"), the same Chinese condition with semantic equivalent in Korean (e.g., "国家" meaning "country"), and the unrelated Chinese condition to the target word (e.g., "围裙" meaning "apron"). The results showed a preview effect in both the Korean word and Chinese word conditions, with a larger preview effect observed in the Chinese word condition compared to the Korean word condition.