Eye movements in developing readers: A comparison of silent and oral sentence reading

• Published in: Visual cognition Vol. 22; no. 3-4; pp. 458 - 485
• Main Authors: Vorstius, Christian, Radach, Ralph, Lonigan, Christopher J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hove Routledge 01.04.2014; Psychology Press
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child development; Children; Comprehension; Developmental psychology; Eye Movements; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Language; Oral Reading; Production and perception of written language; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reading Acquisition; Reading aloud; Reading Comprehension; Reading Processes; Silent Reading; Word Frequency; Human; Reading aloud; Verbal comprehension; Word frequency; Cognition; Eye movements; Experimental study; Comprehension; Eye movement; Language; Vision; Language development; Perception; Children; Child; Oral reading; Sentence; Comparative study
• ISSN: 1350-6285; 1464-0716
• DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2014.881445

We present sentence reading data from a large-scale study with children (N = 632), focusing on three key research questions. (1) What are the trajectories of reading development in oral as compared to silent reading? (2) How are word frequency effects developing and are changes differentially affected by reading mode? (3) Are there systematic differences between better and weaker comprehenders when reading silently vs. aloud? Results illuminate a number of differences between reading modes, including more and prolonged fixations in oral reading, along with less inter-word regressions and attenuated effects of word frequency. Weaker comprehenders were slower, especially in oral reading and showed less flexibility in the allocation of word processing time. Differences between reading modes can be explained by additional processing demands imposed by concurrent articulation and eye-voice coordination when reading aloud.