In Chinese reading, the possibility and mechanism of semantic parafoveal processing has been debated for a long time. To advance the topic, “semantic preview benefit” in Chinese reading was reexamined, with a specific focus on how it is affected by the semantic relatedness between preview and target words at the two-character word level. Eighty critical two-character words were selected as target words. Reading tasks with gaze-contingent boundary paradigms were used to study whether different semantic-relatedness preview conditions influenced parafoveal processing. The data showed that synonyms (the most closely related preview) produced significant preview benefit compared with the semantic-related (non-synonyms) condition, even when plausibility was controlled. This result indicates that the larger extent of semantic preview benefit is mainly caused by the larger semantic relatedness between preview and target words. Moreover, plausibility is not the only cause of semantic preview benefit in Chinese reading. These findings improve the current understanding of the mechanism of parafoveal processing in Chinese reading and the implications on modeling eye movement control are discussed.

在中文阅读中，语义副凹处理的可能性和机制已争论了很长时间。为了推进这一主题，重新审视了中文阅读中的“语义预览优势”，重点是在两个字符的单词级别上，预览单词与目标单词之间的语义相关性如何影响语义预览。选择了80个关键的两个字符的单词作为目标单词。使用具有视线或边界边界范例的阅读任务来研究不同的语义相关性预览条件是否影响副凹处理。数据显示，与语义相关（非同义词）条件相比，同义词（最密切相关的预览）产生了显着的预览优势，即使在合理性得到控制的情况下。该结果表明，语义预览收益的较大程度主要是由于预览词与目标词之间的语义关联性较大所致。而且，合理性并不是汉语阅读中语义预览受益的唯一原因。这些发现改善了当前对中文阅读中副凹处理机制的理解，并讨论了对眼动控制建模的含义。