The Influence of Age on Eye Movements during Reading in Early Elementary School Children

Jason Wertli, Andreas Schötzau, Anja Palmowski-Wolfe, Jason Wertli, Andreas Schötzau, Anja Palmowski-Wolfe

Abstract

Purpose: Eye movement disorders have been observed in many eye diseases, such as amblyopia and developmental dyslexia. The detection of pathological eye movement behaviour is difficult and requires more data for comparison. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of age, school level, gender, and mother tongue on eye movements while reading.

Methods: One hundred and twenty-seven normally sighted children aged 7 - 12 were recruited from grades 2 - 5. The children were asked to read aloud two texts of The New International Reading Speed Text (IReST) of similar difficulty. Eye movements while reading were recorded by eyetracking technology (SMI RED 250, SensoMotoric Instruments, Teltow, Germany). The eye movement parameters were obtained from 118 children, and reading speed (words/minute), number of saccades, number of fixations, reading errors, and influence of school grade were analyzed.

Results: We showed a significant influence of age in all eye movement parameters. The main finding of this study is that younger children performed more saccades, a higher number of fixations per word, and more reading errors while taking more time to read the text than older children in higher grades. In early grades, non-native German speakers read more slowly and performed more saccades and fixations, but no more differences were seen by grade 5. Overall, there was no significant influence of gender or school system on reading parameters.

Conclusion: This study highlights the need for an age-appropriate normative database for eye movements during reading.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commecial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Distribution of non-native German speakers.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Boxplots of reading speed in words/minute according to (a) age, (b) school level, (c) mother tongue, and (d) gender. For each boxplot, the bottom of the rectangle indicates the first quartile, the top indicates the third quartile, and the horizontal line in the middle of the rectangle marks the median.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Saccades/word according to (a) age, (b) school level, (c) mother tongue, and (d) gender. For each boxplot, the bottom of the rectangle indicates the first quartile, the top indicates the third quartile, and the horizontal line in the middle of the rectangle marks the median.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Fixations/word according to (a) age, (b) school level, (c) mother tongue, and (d) gender. For each boxplot, the bottom of the rectangle indicates the first quartile, the top indicates the third quartile, and the horizontal line in the middle of the rectangle marks the median.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Reading errors according to (a) age, (b) school level, (c) mother tongue, and (d) gender. For each boxplot, the bottom of the rectangle indicates the first quartile, the top indicates the third quartile, and the horizontal line in the middle of the rectangle marks the median.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Correlation between saccades and fixations per word (a), as well the reading speed and reading errors per word (b).

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