Individuals with dyslexia use a different visual sampling strategy to read text

Abstract

Individuals with dyslexia present with reading-related deficits including inaccurate and/or less fluent word recognition and poor decoding abilities. Slow reading speed and worse text comprehension can occur as secondary consequences of these deficits. Reports of visual symptoms such as atypical eye movements during reading gave rise to a search for these deficits’ underlying mechanisms. This study sought to replicate established behavioral deficits in reading and cognitive processing speed while investigating their underlying mechanisms in more detail by developing a comprehensive profile of eye movements specific to reading in adult dyslexia. Using a validated standardized reading assessment, our findings confirm a reading speed deficit among adults with dyslexia. We observed different eye movements in readers with dyslexia across numerous eye movement metrics including the duration of a stop (i.e., fixation), the length of jumps (i.e., saccades), and the number of times a reader’s eyes expressed a jump atypical for reading. We conclude that individuals with dyslexia visually sample written information in a laborious and more effortful manner that is fundamentally different from those without dyslexia. Our findings suggest a mix of aberrant cognitive linguistic and oculomotor processes being present in adults with dyslexia.

Reading Specific Small Saccades Predict Individual Phonemic Awareness and Reading Speed

“…To reconcile our findings with the ones from Bowers and Poletti on microsaccade patterns, we speculate that reading-relevant microsaccades might benefit reading, whereas increased microsaccade spatio-temporal variability might harm it. Such detrimental effect of the increased spatial variability in the landing points during reading has also been suggested in a recent study ( Franzen et al, 2021 ).…”

How to Run Behavioural Experiments Online: Best Practice Suggestions for Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience

“…Additionally, reports have shown impairments in higher order functioning processes, such as working memory capacity in individuals with dyslexia (Beidas et al, 2013;Callens et al, 2012;Reid et al, 2007). In line with these reports, performance on non-linguistic visual processing speed tasks appears to depend on the working memory demands of the task (e.g., Franzen et al, 2021). However, the specific role of visuo-spatial working memory in relation to behavioural performance in adults with dyslexia attending higher education on a non-linguistic task remains to be seen.…”

“…we succeeded in collecting a much larger control group than would have been feasible in the laboratory. As in previous studies, we ensured that we did not include any participants in the control group who were suspected to encounter dyslexia related issues frequently by means of the Adult Dyslexia Checklist (Franzen, 2018;Franzen et al, 2021;Smythe & Everatt, 2001;Stark et al, 2020 1a). This checklist is a self-report questionnaire that can be easily administered and scored online without much effort on the experimenters' side.…”

What Is Going on with Visual Attention in Reading and Dyslexia? A Critical Review of Recent Studies

“…There are clearly a number of issues associated with visual attention and how it relates to reading (see the Supplementary Materials for more articles [ 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 ] that were reviewed and a short discussion on peripheral issues to those examined here). One is simply what task might actually capture the useful variance that is related to reading in the most meaningful manner.…”