Visual information capture during fixations in reading for children and adults

A Systematic Review on Visual-Processing Deficits in Neurofibromatosis Type 1: What Possible Impact on Learning to Read?

This systematic review aimed to examine the possible implication of visual-perceptual, visuo-attentional and oculomotor processing in the reading deficits frequently experienced by children with Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), as previously shown in dyslexia. Using PRISMA methodological guidelines, we examined 49 studies; most of these reported visual-processing deficits in this population, raising the importance of directly studying the visuo-perceptual and visuo-attentional processes and eye-movement control involved in the learning-to-read process in NF1. The discussion provides a reflection for a better understanding of how visual-processing skills interact with reading deficits in NF1, as well as new avenues for their screening and care.

Pausing behavior of late bilingual and monolingual English speakers

This study examined the differences in the pausing behavior between native and non-native English speakers. Specifically, it examined the location and duration of pauses in relation to the syntactic and lexical complexity of the clauses in which these pauses occur and the nature of the prosodic phrasing of the utterances containing pauses. Speech samples from 10 native (L1) English and 10 Mandarin non-native English speakers from the Archive of L1 and L2 Scripted and Spontaneous Transcripts and Recordings (ALLSSTAR) were included in the analysis. The results showed that lower-level prosodic boundaries and syntactically complex phrases were associated with significantly longer pause duration in the L2 speech. Additionally, phrases with less frequent words tended to induce longer pauses. These findings suggest that insufficient knowledge of the L2 syntax, lexicon, and prosody might determine the location and duration of pauses and ultimately affect the speech fluency of L2 speakers.

Joint effects of individual reading skills and word properties on Chinese children's eye movements during sentence reading

Word recognition during the reading of continuous text has received much attention. While a large body of research has investigated how linguistic properties of words affect eye movements during reading, it remains to be established how individual differences in reading skills affect momentary cognitive processes during sentence reading among typically developing Chinese readers. The present study set out to test the joint influences of word properties and individual reading skills on eye movements during reading among Chinese children. We recorded eye movements of 30 grade 3 (G3) children and 27 grade 5 (G5) children when they read sentences silently for comprehension. Predictors of linear mixed models included word frequency, visual complexity, and launch site distance, in addition to the participants' offline psychometric performances in rapid naming, morphological awareness, word segmenting, and character recognition. The results showed that word properties affected word recognition during sentence reading in both G3 and G5 children. Moreover, word segmenting predicted the G3 children's fixation durations and the G5 children's fixation location, whereas rapid naming predicted the G5 children's fixation duration. Implications are discussed based on the current findings, in light of how different literacy skills contribute to reading development.

Reading numbers is harder than reading words: An eye-tracking study

We recorded the eye movements of adults reading aloud short (four digit) and long (eight to 11 digit) Arabic numerals compared to matched-in-length words and pseudowords. We presented each item in isolation, at the center of the screen. Participants read each item aloud at their pace, and then pressed the spacebar to display the next item. Reading accuracy was 99 %. Results showed that adults make 2.5 times more fixations when reading short numerals compared to short words, and up to 7 times more fixations when reading long numerals with respect to long words. Similarly, adults make 3 times more saccades when reading short numerals compared to short words, and up to 9 times more saccades when reading long numerals with respect to long words. Fixation duration and saccade amplitude stay almost the same when reading short numerals with respect to short words. However, fixation duration increases by ∼50 ms when reading long numerals (∼300 ms) with respect to long words (∼250 ms), and saccade amplitude decreases up to 0.83 characters when reading long numerals with respect to long words. The pattern of findings for long numerals-more and shorter saccades as well as more and longer fixations-shows the extent to which reading long Arabic numerals is a cognitively costly task. Within the phonographic writing system, this pattern of eye movements stands for the use of the sublexical print-to-sound correspondence rules. The data highlight that reading large numerals is an unautomatized activity and that Arabic numerals must be converted into their oral form by a step-by-step process even by expert readers.

Effects of word length and word frequency among dyslexic, ADHD-I and typical readers

This study aimed to investigate the neuropsycholinguistic functioning of children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder - inattentive subtype (ADHD-I) in a reading task. The psycholinguistic profile of both groups was assessed using a battery of neuropsychological and linguistic tests and compared to typical readers. Participants were submitted to a silent reading task with lexical manipulation of the text. Eye movements were recorded and compared aiming to find cognitive processes involved in reading that could help differentiate groups. The study examined whether word-frequency and word-length effects distinguish between groups. Participants included 19 typical readers, 21 children diagnosed with ADHD-I and 19 children with DD. All participants were attending 4th grade and had a mean age of 9.08 years. Children with DD and ADHDI exhibited significant different cognitive and linguistic profiles on almost all measures evaluated when compared to typical readers. The effects of word length and word frequency interaction also differed significantly in the 3 experimental groups. The results support the multiple cognitive deficits theory. While the shared deficits support the evidence of a phonological disorder present in both conditions, the specific ones corroborate the hypothesis of an oculomotor dysfunction in DD and a visuo-spatial attention dysfunction in ADHD.

Lexicality effects on orthographic learning in beginning and advanced readers of Dutch: An eye-tracking study

Orthographic learning is the topic of many recent studies about reading, but much is still unknown about conditions that affect orthographic learning and their influence on reading fluency development over time. This study investigated lexicality effects on orthographic learning in beginning and relatively advanced readers of Dutch. Eye movements of 131 children in Grades 2 and 5 were monitored during an orthographic learning task. Children read sentences containing pseudowords or low-frequency real words that varied in number of exposures. We examined both offline learning outcomes (i.e., orthographic choice and spelling dictation) of target items and online gaze durations on target words. The results showed general effects of exposure, lexicality, and reading-skill level. Also, a two-way interaction was found between the number of exposures and lexicality when detailed orthographic representations were required, consistent with a larger overall effect of exposure on learning the spellings of pseudowords. Moreover, lexicality and reading-skill level were found to affect the learning rate across exposures based on a decrease in gaze durations, indicating a larger learning effect for pseudowords in Grade 5 children. Yet, further interactions between exposure and reading-skill level were not present, indicating largely similar learning curves for beginning and advanced readers. We concluded that the reading system of more advanced readers may cope somewhat better with words varying in lexicality, but is not more efficient than that of beginning readers in building up orthographic knowledge of specific words across repeated exposures.

Algorithms for the automated correction of vertical drift in eye-tracking data

A common problem in eye-tracking research is vertical drift—the progressive displacement of fixation registrations on the vertical axis that results from a gradual loss of eye-tracker calibration over time. This is particularly problematic in experiments that involve the reading of multiline passages, where it is critical that fixations on one line are not erroneously recorded on an adjacent line. Correction is often performed manually by the researcher, but this process is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to error and inconsistency. Various methods have previously been proposed for the automated, post hoc correction of vertical drift in reading data, but these methods vary greatly, not just in terms of the algorithmic principles on which they are based, but also in terms of their availability, documentation, implementation languages, and so forth. Furthermore, these methods have largely been developed in isolation with little attempt to systematically evaluate them, meaning that drift correction techniques are moving forward blindly. We document ten major algorithms, including two that are novel to this paper, and evaluate them using both simulated and natural eye-tracking data. Our results suggest that a method based on dynamic time warping offers great promise, but we also find that some algorithms are better suited than others to particular types of drift phenomena and reading behavior, allowing us to offer evidence-based advice on algorithm selection.

Attention extends beyond single words in beginning readers

A common notion is that during the first stages of learning to read, attention is narrowly focused so as to encompass only a single or a few letters. In skilled adult readers, however, attention extends beyond single words. The latter is evidenced by faster recognition of words that have many letters in common with surrounding words, along with correlations between such integration effects and measures of attention. These premises suggest that the distribution of attention gradually increases as a function of reading skill, and that this progression can be mapped by measuring spatial integration effects across the course of reading development. The latter was undertaken in the present study, in which we employed the flanker paradigm combined with the lexical decision task. Children in grades 1-6 (N = 113) were shown central target words flanked by various types of orthographically related and unrelated flanking stimuli. Against expectations, significant effects of flanker relatedness on word recognition speed were found in the youngest children, and this effect was not modulated by reading age. Our results challenge the notion that attention is focused on single letters in beginning readers, and instead suggest that, from the earliest stages of reading development, orthographic processing can extend beyond single words.

Reading development at the text level: an investigation of surprisal and embeddingbased text similarity effects on eyemovements in Chinese early readers

This paper describes the use of semantic similarity measures based on distributed representations of words, sentences, and paragraphs (so-called “embeddings”) to assess the impact of supra-lexical factors on eye-movement data from early readers of Chinese. In addition, we used a corpus-based measure of surprisal to assess the impact of local word predictability. Eye movement data from 56 Chinese students were collected (a) in the students’ 4th grade and (b) one year later while they were in 5th grade. Results indicated that surprisal and some text similarity measures have a significant impact on the momentto- moment processing of words in reading. The paper presents an easy-to-use set of tools for linking the low-level aspects of fixation durations to a hierarchy of sentence-level and paragraph-level features that can be computed automatically. The study is the first attempt, as far as we are aware, to track the developmental trajectory of these influences in developing readers across a range of reading abilities. The similarity-based measures described here can be used (a) to provide a measure of reader sensitivity to sentence and paragraph cohesion and (b) to assess specific texts for their suitability for readers of different reading ability levels.

Undersweep fixations during reading in adults and children

Return sweeps take a reader's fixation from the end of one line to the start of the next. Return sweeps frequently undershoot their target and are followed by a corrective saccade toward the left margin. The pauses prior to corrective saccades are typically considered to be uninvolved in linguistic processing. However, recent findings indicate that these undersweep fixations influence skilled adult readers' subsequent reading pass across the line and provide preview of line-initial words. The current research examined these effects in children. First, a children's reading corpus analysis revealed that words receiving an undersweep fixation were more likely skipped and received shorter gaze durations during a subsequent pass. Second, a novel eye movement experiment that directly compared adults' and children's eye movements indicated that, during an undersweep fixation, readers very briefly allocate their attention to the fixated word-as indicated by inhibition of return effects during a subsequent pass-prior to deploying attention toward the line-initial word. We argue that prior to the redeployment of attention, readers extract information at the point of fixation that facilitates later encoding and saccade targeting. Given similar patterns of results for adults and children, we conclude that the mechanisms controlling for oculomotor coordination and attention necessary for reading across line boundaries are established from a very early point in reading development.

Return sweeps in reading: Processing implications of undersweep-fixations

Models of eye-movement control during reading focus on reading single lines of text. However, with multiline texts, return sweeps, which bring fixation from the end of one line to the beginning of the next, occur regularly and influence ~20% of all reading fixations. Our understanding of return sweeps is still limited. One common feature of return sweeps is the prevalence of oculomotor errors. Return sweeps, often initially undershoot the start of the line. Corrective saccades then bring fixation closer to the line start. The fixation occurring between the undershoot and the corrective saccade (undersweep-fixation) has important theoretical implications for the serial nature of lexical processing during reading, as they occur on words ahead of the intended attentional target. Furthermore, since the attentional target of a return sweep will lie far outside the parafovea during the prior fixation, it cannot be lexically preprocessed during this prior fixation. We explore the implications of undersweep-fixations for ongoing processing and models of eye movements during reading by analysing two existing eye-movement data sets of multiline reading.

Influence of reading skill and word length on fixation-related brain activity in school-aged children during natural reading

Word length is one of the main determinants of eye movements during reading and has been shown to influence slow readers more strongly than typical readers. The influence of word length on reading in individuals with different reading skill levels has been shown in separate eye-tracking and electroencephalography studies. However, the influence of reading difficulty on cortical correlates of word length effect during natural reading is unknown. To investigate how reading skill is related to brain activity during natural reading, we performed an exploratory analysis on our data set from a previous study, where slow reading (N = 27) and typically reading (N = 65) 12-to-13.5-year-old children read sentences while co-registered ET-EEG was recorded. We extracted fixation-related potentials (FRPs) from the sentences using the linear deconvolution approach. We examined standard eye-movement variables and deconvoluted FRP estimates: intercept of the response, categorical effect of first fixation versus additional fixation and continuous effect of word length. We replicated the pattern of stronger word length effect in eye movements for slow readers. We found a difference between typical readers and slow readers in the FRP intercept, which contains activity that is common to all fixations, within a fixation time-window of 50-300 ms. For both groups, the word length effect was present in brain activity during additional fixations; however, this effect was not different between groups. This suggests that stronger word length effect in the eye movements of slow readers might be mainly due re-fixations, which are more probable due to the lower efficiency of visual processing.

Do eye movements reveal differences between monolingual and bilingual children's first-language and second-language reading? A focus on word frequency effects

An extensive body of research has examined reading acquisition and performance in monolingual children. Surprisingly, however, much less is known about reading in bilingual children, who outnumber monolingual children globally. Here, we address this important imbalance in the literature by employing eye movement recordings to examine both global (i.e., text-level) and local (i.e., word-level) aspects of monolingual and bilingual children's reading performance across their first-language (L1) and second-language (L2). We also had a specific focus on lexical accessibility, indexed by word frequency effects. We had three main findings. First, bilingual children displayed reduced global and local L1 reading performance relative to monolingual children, including larger L1 word frequency effects. Second, bilingual children displayed reduced global and local L2 versus L1 reading performance, including larger L2 word frequency effects. Third, both groups of children displayed reduced global and local reading performance relative to adult comparison groups (across their known languages), including larger word frequency effects. Notably, our first finding was not captured by traditional offline measures of reading, such as standardized tests, suggesting that these measures may lack the sensitivity to detect such nuanced between-group differences in reading performance. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that bilingual children's simultaneous exposure to two reading systems leads to eye movement reading behavior that differs from that of monolingual children and has important consequences for how lexical information is accessed and integrated in both languages.

Does Online Comprehension Monitoring Make a Unique Contribution to Reading Comprehension in Beginning Readers? Evidence from Eye Movements

The goal was to investigate the nature of online comprehension monitoring, its predictors, and its relation to reading comprehension. Questions were concerned with (1) beginning readers' sensitivity to inconsistencies, (2) predictors of online comprehension monitoring, and (3) the relation of online comprehension monitoring to reading comprehension over and above word reading and listening comprehension. Using eye-tracking technology, online comprehension monitoring was measured as the amount of time spent rereading target implausible words and looking back at surrounding contexts. Results from 319 second graders revealed that children spent greater time fixating on inconsistent than consistent words and engaged in more frequent lookbacks. Comprehension monitoring was explained by both word reading and listening comprehension. However, comprehension monitoring did not uniquely predict reading comprehension after accounting for word reading and listening comprehension. These results provide insight into the nature of comprehension monitoring and its role in reading comprehension for beginning readers.

A Comparison of Eye Movement Measures across Reading Efficiency Quartile Groups in Elementary, Middle, and High School Students in the U.S

This cross-sectional study examined eye movements during reading across grades in stu-dents with differing levels of reading efficiency. Eye-movement recordings were obtained while students in grades 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 silently read normed grade-leveled texts with demonstrated comprehension. Recordings from students in each reading rate quartile at each grade level were compared to characterize differences in reading rate, number of fixations, number of regressions, and fixation durations. Comparisons indicated that stu-dents in higher reading rate quartiles made fewer fixations and regressions per word, and had shorter fixation durations. These indices of greater efficiency were also characteristic of students in upper as compared to lower grades, with two exceptions: (a) between grades 6 and 8, fixations and regressions increased while reading rates stagnated and fixation durations continued to decline, and (b) beyond grade 6 there was relatively little growth in the reading efficiency of students in the lower two reading rate quartiles. These results suggest that declines in fixation duration across grades may in part reflect broader matura-tional processes, while higher fixation and regression rates may distinguish students who continue to struggle with word recognition during their high school years.

Young Skilled Deaf Readers Have an Enhanced Perceptual Span in Reading

Recently, Bélanger, Slattery, Mayberry and Rayner (2012) showed, using the moving window paradigm, that profoundly deaf adults have a wider perceptual span during reading relative to hearing adults matched on reading level. This difference might be related to the fact that deaf adults allocate more visual attention to simple stimuli in the parafovea (Bavelier, Dye & Hauser, 2006). Importantly, this reorganization of visual attention in deaf individuals is already manifesting in deaf children (Dye, Hauser & Bavelier, 2009). This leads to questions about the time course of the emergence of an enhanced perceptual span (which is under attentional control; Rayner, 2014; Miellet, O'Donnell, & Sereno, 2009) in young deaf readers. The present research addressed this question by comparing the perceptual spans of young deaf readers (age 7-15) and young hearing children (age 7-15). Young deaf readers, like deaf adults, were found to have a wider perceptual span relative to their hearing peers matched on reading level, suggesting that strong and early reorganization of visual attention in deaf individuals goes beyond the processing of simple visual stimuli and emerges into more cognitively complex tasks, such as reading.

Relationships between Eye Movements during Sentence Reading Comprehension, Word Spelling and Reading, and DTI and fmri Connectivity In Students with and without Dysgraphia or Dyslexia

While eye movements were recorded and brains scanned, 29 children with and without specific learning disabilities (SLDs) decided if sentences they read (half with only correctly spelled words and half with homonym foils) were meaningful. Significant main effects were found for diagnostic groups (non-SLD control, dysgraphia control, and dyslexia) in total fixation (dwell) time, total number of fixations, and total regressions in during saccades; the dyslexia group had longer and more fixations and made more regressions in during saccades than either control group. The dyslexia group also differed from both control groups in (a) fractional anisotropy in left optic radiation and (b) silent word reading fluency on a task in which surrounding letters can be distracting, consistent with Rayner's selective attention dyslexia model. Different profiles for non-SLD control, dysgraphia, and dyslexia groups were identified in correlations between total fixation time, total number of fixations, regressions in during saccades, magnitude of gray matter connectivity during the fMRI sentence reading comprehension from left occipital temporal cortex seed with right BA44 and from left inferior frontal gyrus with right inferior frontoccipital fasciculus, and normed word-specific spelling and silent word reading fluency measures. The dysgraphia group was more likely than the non-SLD control or dyslexia groups to show negative correlations between eye movement outcomes and sentences containing incorrect homonym foils. Findings are discussed in reference to a systems approach in future sentence reading comprehension research that integrates eye movement, brain, and literacy measures.

Effects of adults aging on word encoding in reading Chinese: evidence from disappearing text

The effect of aging on the process of word encoding for fixated words and words presented to the right of the fixation point during the reading of sentences in Chinese was investigated with two disappearing text experiments. The results of Experiment 1 showed that only the 40-ms onset disappearance of word n disrupted young adults' reading performance. However, for old readers, the disappearance of word n caused disruptions until the onset time was 120 ms. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the disappearance of word n + 1 did not cause disruptions to young adults, but these conditions made old readers spend more time reading a sentence compared to the normal display condition. These results indicated a reliable aging effect on the process of word encoding when reading Chinese, and that the encoding process in the preview frame was more susceptible to normal aging compared to that in the fixation frame. We propose that sensory, cognitive, and specific factors related to the Chinese language are important contributors to these age-related differences.

Child readers' eye movements in reading Thai

It has recently been found that adult native readers of Thai, an alphabetic scriptio continua language, engage similar oculomotor patterns as readers of languages written with spaces between words; despite the lack of inter-word spaces, first and last characters of a word appear to guide optimal placement of Thai readers' eye movements, just to the left of word-centre. The issue addressed by the research described here is whether eye movements of Thai children also show these oculomotor patterns. Here the effect of first and last character frequency and word frequency on the eye movements of 18 Thai children when silently reading normal unspaced and spaced text was investigated. Linear mixed-effects model analyses of viewing time measures (first fixation duration, single fixation duration, and gaze duration) and of landing site location revealed that Thai children's eye movement patterns were similar to their adult counterparts. Both first character frequency and word frequency played important roles in Thai children's landing sites; children tended to land their eyes further into words, close to the word centre, if the word began with higher frequency first characters, and this effect was facilitated in higher frequency words. Spacing also facilitated more effective use of first character frequency and it also assisted in decreasing children's viewing time. The use of last-character frequency appeared to be a later development, affecting mainly single fixation duration and gaze duration. In general, Thai children use the same oculomotor control mechanisms in reading spaced and unspaced texts as Thai adults, who in turn have similar oculomotor control as readers of spaced texts. Thus, it appears that eye movements in reading converge on the optimal landing site using whatever cues are available to guide such placement.

Eye Movement Patterns in Natural Reading: A Comparison of Monolingual and Bilingual Reading of a Novel

INTRODUCTION AND METHOD

This paper presents a corpus of sentence level eye movement parameters for unbalanced bilingual first language (L1) and second-language (L2) reading and monolingual reading of a complete novel (56 000 words). We present important sentence-level basic eye movement parameters of both bilingual and monolingual natural reading extracted from this large data corpus.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

Bilingual L2 reading patterns show longer sentence reading times (20%), more fixations (21%), shorter saccades (12%) and less word skipping (4.6%), than L1 reading patterns. Regression rates are the same for L1 and L2 reading. These results could indicate, analogous to a previous simulation with the E-Z reader model in the literature, that it is primarily the speeding up of lexical access that drives both L1 and L2 reading development. Bilingual L1 reading does not differ in any major way from monolingual reading. This contrasts with predictions made by the weaker links account, which predicts a bilingual disadvantage in language processing caused by divided exposure between languages.

Third and fifth graders' processing of parafoveal information in reading: A study in single-word recognition

We assessed third and fifth graders' processing of parafoveal word information using a lexical decision task. On each trial, a preview word was first briefly presented parafoveally in the left or right visual field before a target word was displayed. Preview and target words could be identical, share the first three letters, or have no letters in common. Experiment 1 showed that developing readers receive the same word recognition benefit from parafoveal previews as expert readers. The impact of a change of case between preview and target in Experiment 2 showed that in all groups of readers, the preview benefit resulted from the identification of letters at an abstract level rather than from facilitation at a purely visual level. Fifth graders identified more letters from the preview than third graders. The results are interpreted within the framework of the interactive activation model. In particular, we suggest that although the processing of parafoveal information led to letter identification in developing readers, the processes involved may differ from those in expert readers. Although expert readers' processing of parafoveal information led to activation at the level of lexical representations, no such activation was observed in developing readers.

Word length and frequency effects on children's eye movements during silent reading

In the present study we measured the eye movements of a large sample of 2nd grade German speaking children and a control group of adults during a silent reading task. To be able to directly investigate the interaction of word length and frequency effects we employed controlled sentence frames with embedded target words in an experimental design in which length and frequency were manipulated independently of one another. Unlike previous studies which have investigated the interaction of word length and frequency effects in children, we used age-appropriate word frequencies for children. We found significant effects of word length and frequency for both children and adults while effects were generally greater for children. The interaction of word length and frequency was significant for children in gaze duration and total viewing time eye movement measures but not for adults. Our results suggest that children rely on sublexical decoding of infrequent words, leading to greater length effects for infrequent than frequent words while adults do not show this effect when reading children's reading materials.

An Analysis of Reading Skill Development using E-Z Reader

Previously reported simulations using the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control suggest that the patterns of eye movements observed with children versus adult readers reflect differences in lexical processing proficiency (Reichle et al., 2013). However, these simulations fail to specify precisely what aspect(s) of lexical processing (e.g., orthographic processing) account for the concurrent changes in eye movements and reading skill. To examine this issue, the E-Z Reader model was first used to simulate the aggregate eye-movement data from 15 adults and 75 children to replicate the finding that gross differences in reading skill can be accounted for by differences in lexical processing proficiency. The model was then used to simulate the eye-movement data of individual children so that the best-fitting lexical-processing parameters could be correlated to measures of orthographic knowledge, phonological-processing skill, sentence comprehension, and general intelligence. These analyses suggest that orthographic knowledge accounts for variance in the eye-movement measures that is observed with between-individual differences in reading skill. The theoretical implications of this conclusion will be discussed in relation to computational models of reading and our understanding of reading skill development.

An incremental boundary study on parafoveal preprocessing in children reading aloud: Parafoveal masks overestimate the preview benefit

Parafoveal preprocessing is an important factor for efficient reading and, in eye-movement studies, is typically investigated by means of parafoveal masking: Valid previews are compared to instances in which masks prevent preprocessing. A long-held assumption was that parafoveal preprocessing, as assessed by this technique, only reflects facilitation (i.e., a preview benefit). Recent studies, however, suggested that the benefit estimate is inflated due to interference of the parafoveal masks, i.e., the masks inflict processing costs. With children from Grades 4 and 6, we administered the novel incremental priming technique. The technique manipulates the salience of the previews by systematically varying its perceptibility (i.e., by visually degrading the previews). This technique does not require a baseline condition, but makes it possible to determine whether a preview induces facilitation or interference. Our salience manipulation of valid previews revealed a preview benefit in the children of both Grades. For two commonly used parafoveal masks, we observed interference corroborating the notion that masks are not a proper baseline. With the novel incremental boundary technique, in contrast, one can achieve an accurate estimate of the preview benefit.

Developmental Changes in Eye Movements and Visual Information Encoding Associated With Learning to Read

A great deal of eye-movement research has resulted in sophisticated computational models of skilled adult reading. As yet, insufficient eye-movement research has been conducted with children to allow a more thorough understanding of the developmental trajectory leading up to this end state. I argue that, in order to fully understand how children progress to skilled adult reading, it is necessary to consider changes in both cognitive processing and eye-movement behavior. By recording children’s eye movements during reading, researchers can document how printed text is encoded and incrementally delivered for subsequent cognitive processing, and understand how developmental changes in these two aspects of reading are interdependent.

Using E-Z Reader to examine the concurrent development of eye-movement control and reading skill

Compared to skilled adult readers, children typically make more fixations that are longer in duration, shorter saccades, and more regressions, thus reading more slowly (Blythe & Joseph, 2011). Recent attempts to understand the reasons for these differences have discovered some similarities (e.g., children and adults target their saccades similarly; Joseph, Liversedge, Blythe, White, & Rayner, 2009) and some differences (e.g., children's fixation durations are more affected by lexical variables; Blythe, Liversedge, Joseph, White, & Rayner, 2009) that have yet to be explained. In this article, the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control in reading (Reichle, 2011; Reichle, Pollatsek, Fisher, & Rayner, 1998) is used to simulate various eye-movement phenomena in adults vs. children in order to evaluate hypotheses about the concurrent development of reading skill and eye-movement behavior. These simulations suggest that the primary difference between children and adults is their rate of lexical processing, and that different rates of (post-lexical) language processing may also contribute to some phenomena (e.g., children's slower detection of semantic anomalies; Joseph et al., 2008). The theoretical implications of this hypothesis are discussed, including possible alternative accounts of these developmental changes, how reading skill and eye movements change across the entire lifespan (e.g., college-aged vs. older readers), and individual differences in reading ability.

Children's and adults' on-line processing of syntactically ambiguous sentences during reading

While there has been a fair amount of research investigating children’s syntactic processing during spoken language comprehension, and a wealth of research examining adults’ syntactic processing during reading, as yet very little research has focused on syntactic processing during text reading in children. In two experiments, children and adults read sentences containing a temporary syntactic ambiguity while their eye movements were monitored. In Experiment 1, participants read sentences such as, ‘The boy poked the elephant with the long stick/trunk from outside the cage’ in which the attachment of a prepositional phrase was manipulated. In Experiment 2, participants read sentences such as, ‘I think I’ll wear the new skirt I bought tomorrow/yesterday. It’s really nice’ in which the attachment of an adverbial phrase was manipulated. Results showed that adults and children exhibited similar processing preferences, but that children were delayed relative to adults in their detection of initial syntactic misanalysis. It is concluded that children and adults have the same sentence-parsing mechanism in place, but that it operates with a slightly different time course. In addition, the data support the hypothesis that the visual processing system develops at a different rate than the linguistic processing system in children.

I can read it in your eyes: what eye movements tell us about visuo-attentional processes in developmental dyslexia

Most studies today agree about the link between visual-attention and oculomotor control during reading: attention seems to affect saccadic programming, that is, the position where the eyes land in a word. Moreover, recent studies show that visuo-attentional processes are strictly linked to normal and impaired reading. In particular, a large body of research has found evidence of defective visuo-attentional processes in dyslexics. What do eye movements tell us about visuo-attentional deficits in developmental dyslexia? The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between oculomotor control and dyslexia, taking into account its heterogeneous manifestation and comorbidity. Clinical perspectives in the use of the eye-movements approach to better explore and understand reading impairments are discussed.

Direct lexical control of eye movements in reading: evidence from a survival analysis of fixation durations

Participants' eye movements were monitored in an experiment that manipulated the frequency of target words (high vs. low) as well as their availability for parafoveal processing during fixations on the pre-target word (valid vs. invalid preview). The influence of the word-frequency by preview validity manipulation on the distributions of first fixation duration was examined by using ex-Gaussian fitting as well as a novel survival analysis technique which provided precise estimates of the timing of the first discernible influence of word frequency on first fixation duration. Using this technique, we found a significant influence of word frequency on fixation duration in normal reading (valid preview) as early as 145ms from the start of fixation. We also demonstrated an equally rapid non-lexical influence on first fixation duration as a function of initial landing position (location) on target words. The time-course of frequency effects, but not location effects was strongly influenced by preview validity, demonstrating the crucial role of parafoveal processing in enabling direct lexical control of reading fixation times. Implications for models of eye-movement control are discussed.

Effects of individual differences in verbal skills on eye-movement patterns during sentence reading

This study is a large-scale exploration of the influence that individual reading skills exert on eye-movement behavior in sentence reading. Seventy one non-college-bound 16-24 year-old speakers of English completed a battery of 18 verbal and cognitive skill assessments, and read a series of sentences as their eye movements were monitored. Statistical analyses were performed to establish what tests of reading abilities were predictive of eye-movement patterns across this population and how strong the effects were. We found that individual scores in rapid automatized naming and word identification tests (i) were the only participant variables with reliable predictivity throughout the time-course of reading; (ii) elicited effects that superceded in magnitude the effects of established predictors like word length or frequency; and (iii) strongly modulated the influence of word length and frequency on fixation times. We discuss implications of our findings for testing reading ability, as well as for research of eye-movements in reading.

Reading disappearing text: why do children refixate words?

We compared Finnish adults' and children's eye movements on long (8-letter) and short (4-letter) target words embedded in sentences, presented either normally or as disappearing text. When reading disappearing text, where refixations did not provide new information, the 8- to 9-year-old children made fewer refixations but more regressions back to long words compared to when reading normal text. This difference was not observed in the adults or 10- to 11-year-old children. We conclude that the younger children required a second visual sample on the long words, and they adapted their eye movement behaviour when reading disappearing text accordingly.

[Ocular movements and reading: a review]

A literature review of the important findings discovered over the past three decades on ocular movements during reading is presented herein. This fairly recent function in human evolution is a sophisticated sensorimotor and cognitive activity that brings very complex neurological and motor mechanisms into play. However, knowledge in this field is limited, even though reading problems are very common in children. We collected all the references in PubMed dating from 1969 to 2009 using the following "binocular coordination", "eye movements", "reading", and "dyslexia". When reading, the visual axes move in a very particular way, notably with regard to the parallelism of the ocular axes when saccades are triggered to reach the words to be read and during fixations, which enable decoding. In fact, when reading, the visual axes are often disassociated, even going as far as to intersect in a considerable number of cases. There are relatively few studies that have examined binocular coordination during reading. We are beginning to understand how the ocular axes move during horizontal saccades. Three-dimensional studies could be the next step to providing more precise data.

Word length and landing position effects during reading in children and adults

The present study examined the effects of word length on children's eye movement behaviour when other variables were carefully controlled. Importantly, the results showed that word length influenced children's reading times and fixation positions on words. Furthermore, children exhibited stronger word length effects than adults in gaze durations and refixations. Adults and children generally did not differ in initial landing positions, but did differ in refixation behaviour. Overall, the results indicated that while adults and children show similar effects of word length for early measures of eye movement behaviour, differences emerge in later measures.