Eye-Movement Patterns in Picture Book Reading for Preschool Children with Hearing Loss

ABSTRACT

Picture book reading is an educational experience that occurs when children attend to the text in a book while simultaneously listening to its narration. Whether preschool children with hearing loss reliant on assistive devices behave similarly to hearing children during reading with a narrator remains unknown. Sixty preschool children aged from 3 to 7, with or without hearing loss, read a picture book independently or with a narrator. Children with hearing loss produced more fixations and longer viewing time on the picture and fewer fixations and less viewing time on the text than hearing children. Overall, children reading with a narrator paid more overall attention to the picture and less attention to the print compared to children reading independently. Although preschool children with hearing loss have difficulties with picture book reading, they may potentially reap the benefit of reading with a narrator.

KEYWORDS:

• Picture book
• reading
• hearing loss
• eye movements

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China 430 [31371058,31500886]; Research Fund for the Talented Person of Beijing City Grant [2014000020124G238]; Major Projects of Department of Education of Capital Normal University [21530420004].