Visual Perception and Oculomotor Activity during Reading Tasks of Varying Complexity in Children Aged Seven to Ten Years

Abstract

The paper presents the results of comparative analysis of visual perception (VP) and oculomotor activity in reading tasks of varying complexity in children aged seven to ten years with different levels of reading skills. We observed higher VP variables in children with good reading skills compared with poor readers. The formation of the VP system underlying the basic mechanism of reading, especially at the initial stage of learning, can be assessed by the following key parameters: noise tolerance, spatial relationships, and visual analysis/synthesis affording recognition of the graphic configuration of words, spelling (letter order), and semantics (word meaning). The speed of lexical access and eye movement programming, the accuracy of fixation point positioning, the amount of perceived symbolic information and lexemes and general context stored in the working memory are much higher in children with better qualification and reading experience. When a highly complex text beyond the current educational program is read, discrepancy in the oculomotor activity parameters (duration of progressive and adjustable fixations and the reading speed and time) between groups of children with different reading skills decreases.