What Eye Movements Tell About Identifying Compound Words in Reading and Top-Down Effects in Reading Long Texts

Two lines of research on eye movements in reading are summarized. One line of research examines how adult readers identify compound words during reading. The other line of research deals with how a specific reading goal influences the way long expository texts are read. Both lines of research are conducted using Finnish as the source language. With respect to the first research question, it is demonstrated that compound words are recognized either holistically or via their components, depending on the length of the compound word. Readers begin to process whatever information is readily available in the foveal vision(i.e., either the whole-word form or the initial component). The second line of research demonstrates that(1)a specific reading goal is capable of exerting an early effect on readers’ eye fixation patterns,(2)time course analyses based on eye movement patterns can reveal interesting individual differences, and(3)working memory capacity is linked to the efficiency to strategically allocate attention as well as to encode information to and retrieve it from the long-term memory. It is concluded that the eye-tracking technique is an excellent research tool to tap into the workings of the human mind during the comprehension of written texts.

Eye-movement Patterns of Chinese Children with Developmental Dyslexia during the Stroop Test

Objective To compare the eye-movement patterns of Chinese children with developmental dyslexia（DD children） with those of non-dyslexic children as they perform the Stroop Color and Word Test（SCWT）, and to explore the relationship between their eye-movement patterns and interference effect. Methods An EyeLink II was used to record the eye-movement parameters of 32 DD children and 37 non-dyslexic children as they performed the SCWT. The independent samples t-test and repeated measures were used to analyze behavioral and eye-movement parameters. Results Compared to the control group, Chinese DD children presented lower accuracy（F = 8.488）, slower response time（F = 25.306）, and larger interference effect（t = 2.29）; Chinese DD children also exhibited lower frequency of fixations（F = 6.069）, greater numbers of saccades（F = 7.914） and fixations（F = 5.272）, and shorter mean saccade distance（F = 4.03）. All behavioral and eye-movement parameters differed significantly among the three tasks in the SCWT. There was significant interaction between groups and tasks in accuracy（F = 5.844）, and marginally significant interaction in response time（F = 3.040）. Chinese DD children tended to have lower accuracy and longer response time than the control group in the ＇color-word naming＇ task. Conclusion Compared to non-dyslexic children, Chinese DD children are subject to a stronger interference effect. When performing the SCWT, Chinese DD children exhibit abnormal eye-movement patterns, namely shorter mean saccade distance, lower frequency of fixations, and more fixations and saccades. These abnormal eye movements may be relatively stable oculomotor patterns of DD children performing visual processing, and not influenced by impaired interference effect.