Readers often prioritize processing and comprehension of information perceived as relevant to a particular intention. Using a repeated-measurement study, we investigated how readers' prior beliefs and external reading perspectives influence processing and comprehension of belief-relevant texts on two socioscientific controversies. University…

Word boundary information is not marked explicitly in Chinese sentences and word ambiguity happens in Chinese texts. This introduces difficulty to parse characters into words when reading Chinese sentences, especially for beginning readers. In an eye-tracking study, we tested whether explicit word boundary information as provided by alternating…

The aim of our study was to determine DEM test performance norms for school-aged children in Latvia, assess how DEM test results correlate with children's reading rates, compare test performance between strong and weak readers. A modified DEM test and a newly developed reading test were administered to 1487 children during a screening survey. Our…

There is an established association between children's oral vocabulary and their word reading but its basis is not well understood. Here, we present evidence from eye movements for a novel mechanism underlying this association. Two groups of 18 Grade 4 children received oral vocabulary training on one set of 16 novel words (e.g., 'nesh', 'coib'),…

Children struggle with the resolution of pronouns during reading, but little is known about the sources of their difficulties. We conducted a longitudinal eye tracking experiment with 70 children in the final years of primary school. The children read sentences with a contextual resolution preference in which gender was either an informative…

Inferring unknown word meanings by using contextual clues is a common strategy employed by EFL learners during reading. This study aims to (a) investigate the effect of familiarity on lexical inferences in EFL reading; (b) examine inference efficiency among EFL readers with different levels of vocabulary knowledge and reading proficiency; and (c)…

The authors' aim was to analyze the relationship of eye movements, auditory perception, and phonemic awareness with the reading process. The instruments used were the King-Devick Test (saccade eye movements), the PAF test (auditory perception), the PFC (phonemic awareness), the PROLEC-R (lexical process), the Canals reading speed test, and the…

In the current study the reading speed of the narration and the difficulty of the text was manipulated and links were explored with children's attention to the printed text in shared book reading. Thirty-nine children (24 grade 1 and 15 grade 2) were presented easy and difficult books at slow (syllable by syllable) or fast (adult reading speed)…

We investigated how letter length, phoneme length, and consonant clusters contribute to the word length effect in 2nd- and 4th-grade children. They read words from three different conditions: In one condition, letter length increased but phoneme length did not due to multiletter graphemes (H"aus"-B"auch"-S"chach"). In…

In this study, we investigated fifth graders' (n = 52) fall literacy, academic language, and motivation and how these skills predicted fall and spring comprehension monitoring on an eye movement task. Comprehension monitoring was defined as the identification and repair of misunderstandings when reading text. In the eye movement task, children…

This research investigated whether text reading and copying involve visual attention-processing skills. Children in grades 3 and 5 read and copied the same text. We measured eye movements while reading and the number of gaze lifts (GL) during copying. The children were also administered letter report tasks that constitute an estimation of the…

Lifelong learning is the only way to sustain proficient learning in a rapidly changing world. Knowledge and information are exploding across the globe. We need accurate ways to facilitate the process of drawing external factual information into an internal perceptive advantage from which to interpret and argue new information. Accurate and…

We examined the impact of the effects of dyslexia on various processing and cognitive components (e.g., reading speed and accuracy) in a language with high phonological and orthographic consistency. Greek dyslexic children were compared with a chronological age-matched group on tasks that tested participants' phonological and orthographic…

By means of the moving window paradigm, we examined how many letters can be identified during a single eye fixation and whether this letter identity span changes as a function of reading skill. The results revealed that 8-year-old Finnish readers identify approximately 5 characters, 10-year-old readers identify approximately 7 characters, and…

The research investigated how comprehenders use verb information during syntactic parsing. Two reading experiments investigated the relationship between verb-specific variables and reading time. These experiments were close replications of prior work; however, two statistical techniques were used, rather than one. These were item-by-item…