Word spacing is important in guiding eye movements during spaced alphabetic reading. Chinese is unspaced and it remains unclear as to how Chinese readers segment and identify words in reading. We conducted two parallel experiments to investigate whether the positional probabilities of the initial and the final characters of a multicharacter word…

The current study investigated the impact of manipulating reading strategy, reading the questions first (QF) or the passage first (PF), during a reading comprehension test, and we explored how reading strategy was related to student characteristics. Participants' eye movements were monitored as they read 12 passages and answered multiple-choice…

This study addressed the concept of reading instructional level. First, we reviewed the history of the concept, including some recent criticisms of its validity (Schwanenflugel & Knapp, 2017; Shanahan, 2014). Next, we examined, from an instructional-level perspective, the oral reading performance of 248 third graders. We divided the sample…

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…

Previous studies mostly examined the role of orthographic knowledge in basic reading processing (i.e., word-reading), however, regarding higher reading processing (i.e., sentence- and text-comprehension), mixed results were reported. In addition, previous research in transparent languages, such as German, focused mostly on typically skilled…

Reading fluency involves a complex interaction of different cognitive skills and abilities that develop with instruction and practice and relies on the automaticity of many distinct reading skills (e.g., pacing, word recognition, expression, phonological awareness). Fluent reading frees cognitive resources, such as working memory, for more…

Reading in alphabetic orthography requires analysis and recognition of specific attributes of visual stimuli, and generation, reactivation, and use of mental images of letters and words. This study evaluated the role of visual analysis and mental imagery in reading performances of students at different stages of reading acquisition. Reading…

Purpose: We investigated the cognitive and linguistic processes that underlie reading in Arabic in relation to a well-defined theoretical framework of reading and the factors that underlie reading. Method: The sample was 201 (101 boys, 100 girls) 3rd-grade Arabic-speaking children. Children were administered measures of Vocabulary, Phonological…

In order to read fluently, children have to form orthographic representations. Despite numerous investigations, there is no clear answer to the question of the number of times they need to read a word to form an orthographic representation. We used length effect on reading times as a measure, because there are large differences between long and…

Books designed for beginning readers typically intermix text with illustrations in close proximity. Prior research suggests this standard layout may reduce literacy skills due to increased attentional competition between text and illustrations. The current study extends this work by examining whether manipulations to the book layout can enhance…

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…

Parsimonious models of word recognition and reading comprehension were validated in a sample of third-grade readers. Word recognition was modeled as phonological awareness, decoding skill, and word processing rate. This model demonstrated the importance of unitization of letter clusters for efficient word reading. A curvilinear relation between…