Does visual attention span relate to eye movements during reading and copying?

Marie-Line Bosse (1) , Sonia Kandel (2, 1) , Chloé Prado (3) , Sylviane Valdois (1)

1 LPNC - Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition
2 GIPSA-SLD - GIPSA - Systèmes Linguistiques et Dialectologie
3 CHUGA - Centre Hospitalier Universitaire [CHU Grenoble]

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 number of letters that are processed simultaneously. The tasks were designed to assess visual attention span abilities (VA). The results for both grades revealed that the children who reported more letters, i.e., processed more consonants in parallel, produced fewer rightward fixations during text reading suggesting they could process more letters at each fixation. They also copied more letters per gaze lift from the same text. Furthermore, a regression analysis showed that VA span predicted variations in copying independently of the influence of reading skills. The findings support a role of VA span abilities in the early extraction of orthographic information, for both reading and copying tasks.

Domaines: Psychologie et comportements

Marie-Line Bosse, Sonia Kandel, Chloé Prado, Sylviane Valdois. Does visual attention span relate to eye movements during reading and copying?. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 2013, pp.DOI: 10.1177/0165025413509046. ⟨10.1177/0165025413509046⟩. ⟨hal-00945205⟩