Reading training by means of disappearing text: effects on reading performance and eye movements

Abstract

The Reading Acceleration Program (RAP), which uses adaptively increasing text erasure rates to enforce reading rate improvements, has been positively evaluated in various languages, reader and age groups. The current study compared the established incremental increase of text erasure rate with a training using fixed erasure rates in two groups of young, non-impaired German adults. Eye-tracking measures prior and post training examined training-related changes of eye-movement patterns. Equal gains in reading performance in both training groups led to the conclusion that not the adaptive increase but already text erasure at fixed rates provides an economically efficient tool for the enhancement of reading rates. Furthermore, eye-tracking results suggest that text erasure training affects word processing not only at one specific level, but simultaneously at pre-lexical, lexical, and post-lexical stages. Although these outcomes are promising, further research is necessary to determine the optimal individual erasure rates that preserve good comprehension at varying levels of text difficulty and in different orthographies.