Mind the gap: Increased inter-letter spacing as a means of improving reading performance

Dotan, Shahar; Katzir, Tami

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2018.04.010

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 51 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This conclusion, however, has been criticized by Skottun and Skoyles (2012) who pointed out that Zorzi et al (2012) misinterpreted the lack of a significant result in the non-impaired control group as prove for the absence of an effect. And indeed, facilitated word recognition under conditions of increased inter-letter spacing has been reported also for nonimpaired readers in experiments using the lexical decision task (Perea and Gomez, 2012a;Perea et al, 2011Perea et al, , 2012Dotan and Katzir, 2018). In addition, investigations of sentence and text reading using eye movement recordings revealed significantly shorter fixation durations but higher fixation counts (i.e., average numbers of fixations per word) if letter spacing was wider (Perea and Gomez, 2012b;Slattery and Rayner, 2013;Perea et al, 2016;Weiss et al, 2016;Li et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Wider Letter-Spacing Facilitates Word Processing but Impairs Reading Rates of Fast Readers

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Previous reports of improved oral reading performance for dyslexic children but not for regular readers when between-letter spacing was enlarged led to the proposal of a dyslexia-specific deficit in visual crowding. However, it is in this context also critical to understand how letter spacing affects visual word recognition and reading in unimpaired readers. Adopting an individual differences approach, the present study, accordingly, examined whether wider letter spacing improves reading performance also for nonimpaired adults during silent reading and whether there is an association between letter spacing and crowding sensitivity. We report eye movement data of 24 German students who silently read texts presented either with normal or wider letter spacing. Foveal and parafoveal crowding sensitivity were estimated using two independent tests. Wider spacing reduced first fixation durations, gaze durations, and total fixation time for all participants, with slower readers showing stronger effects. However, wider letter spacing also reduced skipping probabilities and elicited more fixations, especially for faster readers. In terms of words read per minute, wider letter spacing did not provide a benefit, and faster readers in particular were slowed down. Neither foveal nor parafoveal crowding sensitivity correlated with the observed letter-spacing effects. In conclusion, wide letter spacing reduces single word processing time in typically developed readers during silent reading, but affects reading rates negatively since more words must be fixated. We tentatively propose that wider letter spacing reinforces serial letter processing in slower readers, but disrupts parallel processing of letter chunks in faster readers. These effects of letter spacing do not seem to be mediated by individual differences in crowding sensitivity.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Wider Letter-Spacing Facilitates Word Processing but Impairs Reading Rates of Fast Readers

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Materials for this phase consisted of two age-appropriate lists of 24 Hebrew words each, one for each age group, taken from norms (Morag, 2010, Unpublished; see also Dotan and Katzir, 2018; Hadad et al, 2018). All words were two-syllables, 3–5 letter nouns with relatively high frequency (4 or 5 on a 1–5 scale, as rated by 10 elementary school teachers; Morag, 2010, Unpublished).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Font Size on Children’s Memory and Metamemory

2018

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recently, there has been a growing interest in the effect of perceptual features of learning materials on adults’ memory and metamemory. Previous studies consistently have found that adults use font size as a cue when monitoring their learning, judging that they will remember large font size words better than small font size words. Most studies have not demonstrated a significant effect of font size on adults’ memory, but a recent meta-analysis of these studies revealed a subtle memory advantage for large font words. The current study extended this investigation to elementary school children. First and fifth–sixth graders studied words for a free recall test presented in either large or small font and made judgments of learning (JOLs) for each word. As did adults, children predicted they would remember large font size words better than small font size words and, in fact, actually remembered the large font size words better. No differences were observed between the two age groups in the effect of font size on memory or metamemory. These results suggest that the use of font size as a cue when monitoring one’s own learning is robust across the life span and, further, that this cue has at least some validity.

show abstract

“…Linguistic parameters such as text complexity (Rayner & Duffy, 1986;Trauzettel-Klosinski et al, 2010), its syntax (von der Malsburg et al, 2015;von der Malsburg & Vasishth, 2013), word length and word frequency (Reichle et al, 1998;Tiffin-Richards & Schroeder, 2015) can influence eye movements. Consequently, intervention strategies should account for the importance of perceptual parameters such as the properties of fonts (e.g., spacing), which are another aspect that has been shown to affect reading performance (Dotan & Katzir, 2018;Hakvoort et al, 2017;Hermena, 2021;Rayner et al, 2010;Sjoblom et al, 2016;Zorzi et al, 2012).…”

Section: Effects Of Word Length and Word Frequency Among Dyslexic Adh...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Linguistic parameters such as text complexity ( 67 ; 93 ), its syntax ( 95 ; 96 ), word length and word frequency ( 73 ; 92 ) can influence eye movements. Consequently, intervention strategies should account for the importance of perceptual parameters such as the properties of fonts (e.g., spacing), which are another aspect that has been shown to affect reading performance ( 20 ; 30 ; 33 ; 71 ; 84 ; 108 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of word length and word frequency among dyslexic, ADHD-I and typical readers

Pereira

Costa²,

Guerreiro³

2022

JEMR

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study aimed to investigate the neuropsycholinguistic functioning of children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder – inattentive subtype (ADHD-I) in a reading task. The psycholinguistic profile of both groups was assessed using a battery of neuropsychological and linguistic tests and compared to typical readers. Participants were submitted to a silent reading task with lexical manipulation of the text. Eye movements were recorded and compared aiming to find cognitive processes involved in reading that could help differentiate groups. The study examined whether word-frequency and word-length effects distinguish between groups. Participants included 19 typical readers, 21 children diagnosed with ADHD-I and 19 children with DD. All participants were attending 4th grade and had a mean age of 9.08 years. Children with DD and ADHD-I exhibited significant different cognitive and linguistic profiles on almost all measures evaluated when compared to typical readers. The effects of word length and word frequency interaction also differed significantly in the 3 experimental groups. The results support the multiple cognitive deficits theory. While the shared deficits support the evidence of a phonological disorder present in both conditions, the specific ones corroborate the hypothesis of an oculomotor dysfunction in DD and a visuo-spatial attention dysfunction in ADHD.

show abstract

Mind the gap: Increased inter-letter spacing as a means of improving reading performance

Cited by 7 publications

References 51 publications

Wider Letter-Spacing Facilitates Word Processing but Impairs Reading Rates of Fast Readers

Wider Letter-Spacing Facilitates Word Processing but Impairs Reading Rates of Fast Readers

The Effect of Font Size on Children’s Memory and Metamemory

Effects of word length and word frequency among dyslexic, ADHD-I and typical readers

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About