Associations between young children’s print fixations during book reading and their early literacy skills

Abstract

In the current study, the potentially causal association between young children’s fixations on print and their early literacy ability was explored. The primary purpose was to determine the potentially reciprocal relations between print fixations and literacy abilities, such that print fixations and early literacy skills reciprocally enhance one another rather than one having a direct effect on the other (e.g., fixation on print leads to improvement in early literacy skills). Visual fixations on print for 95 Chinese children ranging in age from 4 to 6 years were recorded using an eye tracker, and their early literacy abilities (vocabulary, orthographic awareness and reading ability) were concurrently examined. Results of structural equation models designed to test different pathways through which print fixations and early literacy skills are related revealed that the reciprocal relationship between print fixations and early literacy skills was not supported, and that fixations on print seem to have a direct effect on children’s literacy skills.