Elsevier

Vision Research

Volume 49, Issue 24, 10 December 2009, Pages 2948-2959
Vision Research

Oculomotor and linguistic determinants of reading development: A longitudinal study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2009.09.012Get rights and content
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Abstract

We longitudinally assessed the development of oculomotor control in reading from second to fourth grade by having children read sentences with embedded target words of varying length and frequency. Additionally, participants completed oculomotor (pro-/anti-saccades) and linguistic tasks (word/picture naming), the latter containing the same item material as the reading task. Results revealed a 36% increase of reading efficiency. Younger readers utilized a global refixation strategy to gain more time for word decoding. Linguistic rather than oculomotor skills determined the development of reading abilities, although naming latencies of fourth graders did not reliably reflect word decoding processes in normal sentence reading.

Keywords

Reading
Children
Development
Eye movements
Naming

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