Eye movements in developing readers: A comparison of silent and oral sentence reading

Abstract

We present sentence reading data from a large-scale study with children (N = 632), focusing on three key research questions. (1) What are the trajectories of reading development in oral as compared to silent reading? (2) How are word frequency effects developing and are changes differentially affected by reading mode? (3) Are there systematic differences between better and weaker comprehenders when reading silently vs. aloud? Results illuminate a number of differences between reading modes, including more and prolonged fixations in oral reading, along with less inter-word regressions and attenuated effects of word frequency. Weaker comprehenders were slower, especially in oral reading and showed less flexibility in the allocation of word processing time. Differences between reading modes can be explained by additional processing demands imposed by concurrent articulation and eye–voice coordination when reading aloud.

Keywords:

• Reading aloud
• Eye movements
• Children
• Comprehension
• Word frequency

This research was supported by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, United States Department of Education (R305F100027) to the Florida State University. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and have not been reviewed or approved by the granting agency. We are grateful to Andrea Permaul and Marcel Schlagheck for their help in data analysis and preparation of this manuscript.

This research was supported by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, United States Department of Education (R305F100027) to the Florida State University. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and have not been reviewed or approved by the granting agency. We are grateful to Andrea Permaul and Marcel Schlagheck for their help in data analysis and preparation of this manuscript.

Notes

¹ Supplementary analyses were carried out for single fixation duration, first of two and second of two fixation durations. Main results confirm the trend found initial fixation duration with shorter times from lower to higher grades and longer fixation durations when reading aloud and on low frequency target words. The Reading Mode by Word Frequency interaction was also significant as effects of word frequency were more pronounced when reading silently.

² The levelling off between 4^th and 5^th grade is unlikely to be based on the sentences being too easy to read for most 5^th grade students. As Table 7 indicates, the mean comprehension score of the weaker comprehension subgroup was only 13 of the possible 24 points. When analyses were restricted to this subsample of low performing children, developmental trends remained basically identical.