Authors:
Wiehe, Lea, lea.wiehe@uni-potsdam.de, Universität Potsdam
Weiland, Katharina, weilandk@hu-berlin.de, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Wahl, Michael, michael.arnold-wahl@hu-berlin.de, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Keywords: Eye tracking, Eye movements, Developmental Changes, Dyslexia, Reading disorder, Reading impairment, Reading, Children, Primary school, Elementary school
Abstract:
Background: People with and without reading disorder differ in various eye movement parameters (e.g. fixation duration) when reading (e.g., Dürrwächter et al., 2010). So far, there has only been evidence from cross-sectional studies, which means that no developmental trajectories can be determined. But these developmental trajectories are highly relevant for the potential utilization of eye movements as a diagnostic tool.
Methods: This study is the first to present longitudinal data on eye movement differences and developments in different reading performance groups over the first three years of primary school. For this purpose, N = 194 primary school pupils with severely below-average (n = 23) and marginally below-average (n = 24) as well as average reading performance (n = 147) were examined annually using eye tracking (Tobii 120, 120 Hz). Global eye movement parameters were analysed. The task consisted of reading aloud an age-appropriate text of 53 words in German. The reading performance groups were categorised based on psychometric reading diagnostic performance (decoding: Moll & Landerl, 2014; comprehension: Lenhard & Schneider, 2006) in second grade.
Results: The eye-tracking results were analyzed using robust ANOVA (Mair & Wilcox, 2020; Wilcox, 2022) and show a reduction in the number and duration of fixations in all groups and a significant difference between the three groups over the first three school years. In addition, a prolongation of the progressive intra-word saccade amplitudes can be observed in all groups, whereby the differences between the below-average and average readers only become consistently established from the second grade onwards. The amplitudes do not differ between the two reading impairment groups in the three years of school.
Discussion: Reading disorders can be characterized by different eye movements from the first grade onwards and many of these differences, but not all, are stable over the first three school years.The results of the study imply that readers with reading disorder read using smaller processing units and longer fixation durations than average readers. In addition, the severity of the reading impairment and therefore the type of definition of reading disorders seems to be relevant, as there are differences in eye movement between readers with reading disorder.