What We Can Learn about Reading Development from the Analysis of Eye Movements

Abstract

The paper presents the results of the study on reading mechanisms in children of primary school age performed using eye tracking. The participants were 36 second-grade pupils. Eye movements were registered when reading a specially developed set of sentences containing words with controlled length and frequency. Neuropsychological assessment and reading of words with regular and irregular spelling were also performed. The results confirm the data of reading analysis obtained in other languages and show that characteristics of eye movements during reading depend on the length and frequency of the word. The results indicate a close relationship between the characteristics of the oculomotor activity and the level of the development of reading skills. Analysis of the relationship of eye movements and neuropsychological assessments of the cognitive abilities of children shows that the executive functions and functions for visuospatial information processing are the most important in the second year of reading aquisition. The role of auditory information processing functions requires further investigation.