Spelling ability influences early letter encoding during reading: Evidence from return-sweep eye movements.

Adam J Parker,Timothy J Slattery

doi:10.1177/1747021820949150

Adam J Parker, Timothy J Slattery

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021820949150

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Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increase in research concerning individual differences in readers’ eye movements. However, this body of work is almost exclusively concerned with the reading of single-line texts. While spelling and reading ability have been reported to influence saccade targeting and fixation times during intra-line reading, where upcoming words are available for parafoveal processing, it is unclear how these variables affect fixations adjacent to return-sweeps. We, therefore, examined the influence of spelling and reading ability on return-sweep and corrective saccade parameters for 120 participants engaged in multiline text reading. Less-skilled readers and spellers tended to launch their return-sweeps closer to the end of the line, prefer a viewing location closer to the start of the next, and made more return-sweep undershoot errors. We additionally report several skill-related differences in readers’ fixation durations across multiline texts. Reading ability influenced all fixations except those resulting from return-sweep error. In contrast, spelling ability influenced only those fixations following accurate return-sweeps—where parafoveal processing was not possible prior to fixation. This stands in contrasts to an established body of work where fixation durations are related to reading but not spelling ability. These results indicate that lexical quality shapes the rate at which readers access meaning from the text by enhancing early letter encoding, and influences saccade targeting even in the absence of parafoveal target information.

Highlights

Until recently, there has been a paucity of research investigating individual differences in readers’ eye movements
Given that word skipping is dependent on the processing of information in the parafovea, this finding suggests that the precise lexical representations indexed by high spelling ability enhance the parafoveal processing that contributes to oculomotor decisions
The primary goal of this research was to characterise the effects of individual differences related to lexical quality on eye movement control during the reading of multiline texts, with particular emphasis on return-sweep saccades and their adjacent fixations

Summary

Introduction

There has been a paucity of research investigating individual differences in readers’ eye movements. Accurate line-initial fixations are those that land close enough to the target of the return-sweep and are followed by a progressive rightward movement through the text Undersweep fixations are those that are followed by an immediate leftward corrective saccade prior to the readers’ rightward pass. Kuperman et al (2010) reported that fixation times during paragraph reading are influenced by visual boundaries of the text, whereby intra-line fixations show a decrease in duration that varies in relation to a word’s ordinal position on the line This was argued to be independent of lexical, contextual, and oculomotor predictors of eye movement behaviour. If reading skill and lexical quality are linked to rates of foveal and parafoveal encoding, we would expect less-skilled readers to fixate these more extreme positions

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