Silent Reading Fluency and Comprehension in Bilingual Children

2022

Journal of Vision

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In this article, we present the concept of reading time regularity (RTR) as a measure to capture reading process dynamics. The first study is concerned with examining one of the assumptions of RTR, namely, that process measures of reading, such as eye movement fluctuations and fixation durations, exhibit higher regularity when contingent on sequentially structured information, such as texts. To test this, eye movements of 26 German native speakers were recorded during reading-unrelated and reading-related tasks. To analyze the data, we used recurrence quantification analysis and sample entropy analysis to quantify the degree of temporal structure in time series of gaze steps and fixation durations. The results showed that eye movements become more regular in reading compared to nonreading conditions. These effects were most prominent when calculated on the basis of gaze step data. In a second study, eye movements of 27 native speakers of German were recorded for five conditions with increasing linguistic information. The results replicate the findings of the first study, verifying that these effects are not due to mere differences in task instructions between conditions. Implications for the concept of RTR and for future studies using these metrics in reading research are discussed.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Using measures of reading time regularity (RTR) to quantify eye movement dynamics, and how they are shaped by linguistic information

Tschense

2022

Journal of Vision

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“…Wallot et al (2014) presented a reanalysis of the data and showed that %DET of reading times was predictive of text comprehension (each child and adult answered comprehension questions about the text right after reading) and reading speed and was a significantly better predictor for comprehension that reading speed. Additionally, O'Brien and Wallot (2016) showed that the relation between % DET in reading times and comprehension also held up for bilinguals. Note that only %DET was used in these studies, because the three measures based on diagonal lines in the RP (i.e., %DET, ADL, MDL) showed very high interrelations and %DET of reading times provided the overall best single predictors for text comprehension.…”

Section: Applications Of Rqa In Reading and Writing Researchmentioning

confidence: 91%

Recurrence Quantification Analysis of Processes and Products of Discourse: A Tutorial in R

2017

Discourse Processes

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Processes of naturalistic reading and writing are based on complex linguistic input, stretch-out over time, and rely on an integrated performance of multiple perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes. Hence, naturalistic reading and writing performance is nonstationary and exhibits fluctuations and transitions. However, instead of being just complications for the analysis of such data, they are also informative about cognitive change, fluency, and reading or writing skill. To use and quantify such dynamics, one needs appropriate statistics that capture these aspects. In this article I introduce Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) as a tool to capture such dynamic structure. After a conceptual introduction of the analysis, I present a stepby-step tutorial on how to run RQA using R. Guidance is given with regard to common issues and best practices using this time-series analysis technique. Finally, I review previous results from studies applying RQA to reading and writing and summarize current hypotheses and interpretations of RQA measures in the context of reading and writing.

“…However, to the degree that different levels at which comprehension can take place are distinguishable, a uni-dimensional concept might be misleading. The criticism raised here also applies to our own past work, which has followed the same practice and made the same assumptions (Wallot et al, 2014(Wallot et al, , 2015O'Brien and Wallot, 2016). Accordingly, we are curious to find out, how good this practice of generating one-shot items can be in terms of producing reliable measures of comprehension, and in how far the assumption of uni-dimensionality is warranted in order to potentially improve future work.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Modeling items for text comprehension assessment using confirmatory factor analysis

Tschense

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Reading is a complex cognitive task with the ultimate goal of comprehending the written input. For longer, connected text, readers generate a mental representation that serves as its basis. Due to limited cognitive resources, common models of discourse representation assume distinct processing levels, each relying on different processing mechanisms. However, only little research addresses distinct representational levels when text comprehension is assessed, analyzed or modelled. Moreover, current studies that tried to relate process measures of reading (e.g., reading times, eye movements) to comprehension did not consider comprehension as a multi-faceted, but rather a uni-dimensional construct, usually assessed with one-shot items. Thus, the first aim of this paper is to use confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test whether comprehension can be modelled as a uni-or multi-dimensional concept. The second aim is to investigate how well widely used one-shot items can be used to capture comprehension. 400 participants read one of three short stories of comparable length, linguistic characteristics, and complexity. Based on the evaluation of three independent raters per story, 16 wh-questions and 60 yes/no-statements were compiled in order to retrieve information at micro and inference level, and 16 main contents were extracted to capture information at the macro level in participants’ summaries. Still, only a fraction of these items showed satisfactory psychometric properties and factor loadings – a blatant result considering the common practice for item selection. For CFA, two models were set up that address text comprehension as either a one-dimensional construct (a uni-factor model with a single comprehension factor), or a three-dimensional construct reflecting the three distinct representational levels (three correlated first-order factors). Across stories and item types, model fit was consistently better for the three-factor model providing evidence for a multi-dimensional construct of text comprehension. Our results provide concrete guidance for the preparation of comprehension measurements in studies investigating the reading process.