The Relationship Between Text Reading Fluency and Online Reading Behaviors in Silent Sentence Processing: An Eye-Tracking Study

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Examining Approaches to Supporting Student Reading and Writing Fluency

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of text reading fluency on elementary students' online reading behaviors. Thirty-seven elementary school students participated in this study and their eye movements were recorded during sentence reading tasks. The effects of students’ text reading fluency were investigated for widely-used eye tracking measures such as gaze duration, rereading duration, and skipping probability. Linear mixed-effects regression analyses revealed that children’s performances in text reading fluency predict gaze duration and skipping, but not rereading duration. Results suggest that children with higher text reading fluency have efficient lexical access and syntactic knowledge. This study extends our understanding about the relationship between text reading fluency and eye tracking patterns in elementary children.

Authors

• Sungyoon Lee, Middle Tennessee State University

• Christopher Prickett

• Qinxin Shi, Texas A&M University - College Station

• Huilin Sun, Texas A&M University - College Station

• Julie Thompson, Texas A&M University - College Station

• Steven Woltering, Texas A&M University - College Station