Children’s Reading of Sublexical Units in Years Three to Five: A Combined Analysis of Eye-Movements and Voice Recording

Figures & data

Figure 1. An illustration of the spatial EVS of the target word “ladder”.

Spatial EVS was measured as the number of character spaces between the first letter of the target word when its articulation begins and the eye-fixation position at that time

Table 1. Mean and Standard Deviation (in parenthesis) of Children’s standardized scores on off-line ability measures of participants by year group.

Measure	Year Three	Year Four	Year Five
WASI-II	105.8 (17.9)	106.7 (18.1)	114.7 (9.3)
Vocabulary	54.5 (12.9)	55.6 (10.3)	60.9 (7.0)
Matrix Reasoning	51.2 (7.8)	51.1 (10.5)	53.8 (6.1)
RAN/RAS-Numbers	110.6 (11.2)	108.1 (10.0)	107.7 (12.1)
RAN/RAS-Letters	103.7 (6.5)	101.5 (11.8)	103.0 (10.9)
WIAT-II-T-Spelling	105.2 (11.5)	101.4 (13.7)	107.7 (11.1)
TOWRE-II	111.9 (4.4)	100.6 (9.7)	106.7 (9.4)
TOWRE- Sight Word Efficiency	112.8 (6.1)	100.8(8.5)	103.1 (9.2)
TOWRE- Pseudo Word Decoding	110.0 (6.4)	100.4 (12.0)	109.8 (10.3)
TOWRE-II Sight Word Age Equivalent	9.2 (0.9)	9.2 (0.8)	11.0 (1.9)
Age (years)	7.8 (0.5)	8.8 (0.5)	9.9(0.4)

Note. WASI-II IQ scores are shown as standardized scores while mean T scores are shown for the Vocabulary and Matrix reasoning subtests.

Figure 2. Example of the experimental sentences.

Note. Target words were not formatted in bold in the experiment.

Table 2. Mean target word characteristics as a function of number of syllables and item set (SD in parenthesis).

	Set 1		Set 2
Measure	One-syllable	Two-syllable	One-syllable	Two-syllable
Phonemes	4.5 (0.5)	4.5 (0.5)	4.4 (0.5)	4.4 (0.5)
CPWD Frequency^a	72.1 (93.2)	67.6 (82.2)	67.1 (114.8)	63.8 (101.2)
Target-word-in-sentence rating	1.6 (0.3)	1.6 (0.3)	1.6 (0.3)	1.6 (0.4)
AoA^b	6.2 (1.5)	6.0 (1.8)	6.7 (1.7)	6.0 (2.0)
Orthographic N^c	0.8 (0.8)	0.8 (0.8)	0.5 (0.7)	1.0 (1.1)
Phonological N^c	3.1 (2.3)	2.0 (1.7)	3.1 (2.6)	2.2 (2.3)

Note. ^aCPWD frequencies given as occurrence per million words. ^b From Brysbaert and Biemiller (2017). ^cN= Neighbourhood, from the CPWD (Stuart et al., 2003).

Table 3. Mean and Standard Deviations (in parenthesis) for dependent measures across year group and number of syllables.

	Year Three		Year Four		Year Five
Syllable	One	Two	One	Two	One	Two
Gaze duration (ms)	587 (458)	520 (390)	604 (509)	530 (440)	397 (215)	358 (218)
Articulation duration (ms)	632 (236)	573 (159)	623 (271)	566 (179)	518 (171)	490 (133)
Spatial EVS*	8.6 (4.5)	9.0 (4.0)	9.0 (4.8)	9.4 (4.1)	11.4 (4.7)	11.4 (4.9)
Spatial EVS in words	1.1(1.0)	1.3 (0.9)	1.2 (1.1)	1.3 (1.0)	1.7 (1.1)	1.7 (1.1)

Note. Spatial EVS was measured as number of character spaces between initial letter of the target word when it was articulated and the fixation location in the passage.

Figure 3. Bar plots showing means and ±1 SE for gaze duration, articulation duration and spatial EVS on target words by syllable number and year group.

Table 4. LMM analyses showing gaze duration, articulation duration, and spatial EVS as a Function of year Group and number of syllables.

	b	SE	t	p
Gaze duration^a
Intercept	2.607	0.017	154.505	<0.01
Syllable number	0.022	0.01	2.302	0.024
Year Group 3–4	0.013	0.037	0.339	0.736
Year Group 4–5	−0.147	0.035	−4.233	<0.01
Word Frequency	−0.03	0.01	−3.116	0.003
AoA	0.044	0.01	4.581	<0.01
Syllable number * Year Group 3–4	0.006	0.015	0.388	0.698
Syllable number * Year Group 4–5	0.002	0.014	0.141	0.888
Articulation Duration^b
Intercept	2.734	0.016	175.258	<0.01
Syllable number	0.004	0.008	0.515	0.608
Year Group 3–4	0.002	0.022	0.11	0.913
Year Group 4–5	−0.074	0.02	−3.663	0.001
Word Frequency	−0.007	0.006	−1.037	0.303
AoA	0.035	0.006	5.472	<0.01
Phonological Neighbourhood size	-0.011	0.006	-1.695	0.094
Initial phoneme voicing	0.022	0.007	3.076	0.003
Final phoneme voicing	−0.006	0.016	−0.379	0.706
Syllable number * Year Group 3–4	0	0.008	−0.052	0.959
Syllable number * Year Group 4–5	−0.005	0.007	−0.762	0.45
Spatial EVS^c
Intercept	1.407	0.068	20.838	<0.01
Syllable number	0.035	0.054	0.64	0.524
Year Group 3–4	0.03	0.127	0.24	0.811
Year Group 4–5	0.475	0.117	4.053	<0.01
Word Frequency	−0.007	0.051	−0.146	0.885
AoA	−0.223	0.05	−4.456	<0.01
Phonological Neighbourhood size	0.006	0.049	0.126	0.9
Initial phoneme voicing	-0.099	0.055	-1.804	0.075
Set	0.103	0.061	1.684	0.095
Syllable number * Year Group 3–4	0.019	0.059	0.328	0.744
Syllable number * Year Group 4–5	0.038	0.054	0.691	0.493

Note. Statistically and marginally significant t values are formatted in bold and italics. Frequency and AoA were centered to a mean of 0. Phonological N did not improve the model fit for GD. Tables with random effects structure are included in supplemental file.

Stuart, M., Dixon, M., Masterson, J., & Gray, B. (2003). Children’s early reading vocabulary: Description and word frequency lists. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 73(4), 585–598. https://doi.org/10.1348/000709903322591253

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Data availability statement

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available in the Open Science Framework (OSF) repository, https://osf.io/p2q45/?view_only=d64833a08f614cd5ad2423597aa725c6.