Adolescents reading texts in LexiaD, a dyslexia-specific Cyrillic font: A mobile eye-tracking study

Abstract

Recently, LexiaD, a dyslexia-specific Cyrillic font, was tested alongside the widely used Arial font in an experiment during which adolescents with and without dyslexia silently read sentences on a computer screen (Alexeeva et al., 2022). LexiaD showed a worse performance than Arial at the beginning of the experiment, but by the end of it, LexiaD demonstrated a positive effect in feature extraction and similar performance in lexical access, text integration, and global reading processing. We suggest that Arial’s initial advantage can be explained either by its familiarity or by its design features. The current study aims to test these assumptions in adolescents without dyslexia by comparing LexiaD with two popular fonts familiar to adolescents: Times New Roman and Roboto (a default font for the Google applications that is similar to Arial). Participants silently read printed versions of three texts (one in each of the three fonts) while their eye movements were recorded using a mobile eye tracker (Pupil Core glasses). In reading speed measures, Roboto outperformed LexiaD, whereas we found no evidence that Times New Roman’s performance was better than that of LexiaD. Moreover, there was no evidence that the control fonts differed in terms of subjective font familiarity. Therefore, we speculate that it was the design features that contributed the most to Arial becoming a facilitating font in the previous experiment. A study that investigates the efficiency of LexiaD, Arial/Roboto, and Times New Roman in a less experienced group (with participants less accustomed to particular fonts) is required to replicate our results. Involving people with dyslexia in future studies is extremely important.

The effect of a dyslexia-specific Cyrillic font, LexiaD, on reading speed: further exploration in adolescents with and without dyslexia

“…Confirming our familiarity hypothesis regarding FFD results, LexiaD outperformed PT Sans (both for high-and low-frequency words) in this measure both for the controls and participants with dyslexia. However, when we compared LexiaD with PT Serif (a Serif analogue of PT Sans) in an experiment with primary school children (Alexeeva et al, 2020), the results for FFD were the same as in the present study.…”

“…More recently, a special Cyrillic font, LexiaD, for people with reading disorders was developed for the Russian language (Alexeeva et al, 2020). LexiaD (see Figure 1) is a proportional sans serif font designed for larger letter sizes (starting from 14 pins); the spacing between letters, words, and lines is increased; the volume of white inside the letters is larger; the superscript and subscript elements are elongated, and the bases of the letters are thickened.…”

“…The font was created in consultation with a person diagnosed with dyslexia who uses it for prolonged reading in Cyrillic (other Cyrillic fonts do not work for her when she needs to read long texts). The LexiaD font was tested in a silent reading task on primary school children (9-12 years old) with and without reading disorders (Alexeeva et al, 2020). LexiaD was compared with freely available modern fonts PT Sans (sans serif) and PT Serif (serif).…”

“…Following our own previous study (Alexeeva et al, 2020), we assume that first fixation duration mainly reflects feature extraction (determining the letters that make up a word), gaze duration is primarily related to lexical access (determining the meaning of a word), and total viewing time captures text integration (recovering from any semantic or structural failure that causes re-readings). Also, we believe that global eye movement measures reflect general processing across the text/sentence.…”

“…In the previous study involving primary school students with and without dyslexia (Alexeeva et al, 2020), LexiaD was compared with another Sans Serif font -PT Sans. It is a modern freely distributed font that is highly rated by the font experts.…”