title: The Relation between Reading Skills and Eye Movement Patterns in Adolescent Readers: Evidence from a Regular Orthography.
abstract: Over the past decades, the relation between reading skills and eye movement behavior has been well documented in English-speaking cohorts. As English and German differ substantially with regard to orthographic complexity (i.e. grapheme-phoneme correspondence), we aimed to delineate specific characteristics of how reading speed and reading comprehension interact with eye movements in typically developing German-speaking (Austrian) adolescents. Eye movements of 22 participants (14 females; mean age = 13;6 years;months) were tracked while they were performing three tasks, namely silently reading words, texts, and pseudowords. Their reading skills were determined by means of a standardized German reading speed and reading comprehension assessment (Lesegeschwindigkeits- und -verständnistest für Klassen 6-12). We found that (a) reading skills were associated with various eye movement parameters in each of the three reading tasks; (b) better reading skills were associated with an increased efficiency of eye movements, but were primarily linked to spatial reading parameters, such as the number of fixations per word, the total number of saccades and saccadic amplitudes; (c) reading speed was a more reliable predictor for eye movement parameters than reading comprehension; (d) eye movements were highly correlated across reading tasks, which indicates consistent reading performances. Contrary to findings in English-speaking cohorts, the reading skills neither consistently correlated with temporal eye movement parameters nor with the number or percentage of regressions made while performing any of the three reading tasks. These results indicate that, although reading skills are associated with eye movement patterns irrespective of language, the temporal and spatial characteristics of this association may vary with orthographic consistency.
authors.affiliation: Research Unit iDN-interdisciplinary Developmental Neuroscience, Institute of Physiology, Center for Physiological Medicine, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
authors.forename: Magdalena
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Krieber
authors.affiliation: Research Unit iDN-interdisciplinary Developmental Neuroscience, Institute of Physiology, Center for Physiological Medicine, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
authors.forename: Katrin D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Bartl-Pokorny
authors.affiliation: Research Unit iDN-interdisciplinary Developmental Neuroscience, Institute of Physiology, Center for Physiological Medicine, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria.|Machine Intelligence & Signal Processing Group, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany.|BEE-PRI: Brain, Ears & Eyes-Pattern Recognition Initiative, BioTechMed-Graz, Graz, Austria.
authors.forename: Florian B
authors.initials: FB
authors.lastname: Pokorny
authors.affiliation: Research Unit iDN-interdisciplinary Developmental Neuroscience, Institute of Physiology, Center for Physiological Medicine, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
authors.forename: Christa
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Einspieler
authors.affiliation: Department of Strabism, Pediatric Ophthalmology and Rehabilitation of Visually Impaired, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Langmann
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Psychology & Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
authors.forename: Christof
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Körner
authors.affiliation: Center of Neurodevelopmental Disorders (KIND), Department of Women's and Children's Health, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.|Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Terje
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Falck-Ytter
authors.affiliation: Research Unit iDN-interdisciplinary Developmental Neuroscience, Institute of Physiology, Center for Physiological Medicine, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria.|BEE-PRI: Brain, Ears & Eyes-Pattern Recognition Initiative, BioTechMed-Graz, Graz, Austria.|Center of Neurodevelopmental Disorders (KIND), Department of Women's and Children's Health, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Peter B
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Marschik
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D005133:Eye Movements; D006801:Humans; D011932:Reading; D014787:Vision Tests