Visual and linguistic determinants of the eyes' initial fixation position in reading development

Ducrot, Stéphanie; Pynte, Joël; Ghio, Alain; Lété, Bernard

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.01.013

Cited by 31 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 74 publications

(124 reference statements)

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“…It is well known that both the effects of visuo-perceptual and linguistic factors on the recognition of words and the viewing-position effects are modulated by print exposure and reading limitations ( Ducrot et al, 2013 ). By fifth-sixth grade, the size of the visual span of typically developing children and most of the indices of their eye movements during reading are already very much like those of adults ( Rayner, 1986 ; Kwon et al, 2007 ; Häikiö et al, 2009 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading Derived Words by Italian Children With and Without Dyslexia: The Effect of Root Length

et al. 2018

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Children with dyslexia are extremely slow at reading long words but they are faster with stimuli composed of roots and derivational suffixes (e.g., CASSIERE, ‘cashier’) than stimuli not decomposable in morphemes (e.g., CAMMELLO, ‘camel’). The present study assessed whether root length modulates children’s morphological processing. For typically developing readers, root activation was expected to be higher for longer than shorter roots because longer roots are more informative access units than shorter ones. By contrast, readers with dyslexia were not expected to be facilitated by longer roots because these roots might exceed dyslexics’ processing capacities. Two groups of Italian 6th graders, with and without dyslexia, read aloud low-frequency derived words, with familiar roots and suffixes. Word reaction times (RTs) and mispronunciations were recorded. Linear mixed-effects regression analyses on RTs showed the inhibitory effect of word length and the facilitating effect of root frequency for both children with and without dyslexia. Root length predicted RTs of typically developing readers only, with faster RTs for longer roots, over and above the inhibitory effect of word length. Furthermore, typically developing children had faster RTs on words with more frequent suffixes while children with dyslexia were faster when roots had a small family size. Generalized linear regression analyses on accuracy showed facilitating effects of word frequency and suffix frequency, for both groups. The large word length effect on latencies confirmed laborious whole-word processing in children when reading low-frequency derived words. The absence of a word frequency effect along with the facilitating effect of root frequency indicated morphemic processing in all readers. The reversed root length effect in typically developing readers pointed to a stronger activation for longer roots in keeping with the idea that these represent particularly informative units for word decoding. For readers with dyslexia the facilitating effect of root frequency (not modulated by root length) confirmed a pervasive benefit of root activation while the lack of root length modulation indicated that the longest roots were for them too large units to be processed within a single fixation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading Derived Words by Italian Children With and Without Dyslexia: The Effect of Root Length

et al. 2018

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“…The optimal viewing position (OVP) effect refers to the longstanding finding that where the eyes initially fixate within an isolated word influences how easily that word can be recognized. For words in alphabetic languages (e.g., English, French), the OVP is a little to the left of the center of words, and numerous studies show words in these languages are processed most efficiently when fixated at this location (O'Regan et al, 1984 ; Vitu et al, 1990 ; Brysbaert and Meyers, 1993 ; Farid and Grainger, 1996 ; Ducrot et al, 2013 ; Yao-N'Dre et al, 2013 ; Ferrand and Augustinova, 2014 ). This influence of fixation location on word recognition is observed in lexical decision latencies and naming times, which are typically shorter when words are initially fixated at the OVP than other locations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This influence of fixation location on word recognition is observed in lexical decision latencies and naming times, which are typically shorter when words are initially fixated at the OVP than other locations. Moreover, studies including measures of eye movements show that participants make fewer refixations when words are initially fixated at the OVP (e.g., Vitu et al, 1990 ; Hyönä and Bertram, 2011 ; Ducrot et al, 2013 ; Liu and Li, 2013 ; Velan et al, 2013 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies have investigated the role of the informativeness of different parts of words by examining OVP effects for nonwords (i.e., orthographically legal pseudowords) and meaningless strings of letters or symbols, such as z-strings. However, while some studies show an OVP effect for nonwords (Hutzler et al, 2008 ; Liu and Li, 2013 ) and even letter-strings during mindless-reading (Nazir, 1991 ; Vitu et al, 1995 ; Nuthmann et al, 2007 ), others show no such effect (Auclair and Chokron, 2001 ; Nazir et al, 2004 ; Grainger et al, 2010 ; Ducrot et al, 2013 ). Consequently, the extent to which the OVP is influenced by the linguistic characteristics of the stimuli also remains to be more fully determined.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By comparison, words presented to the left visual field first project to the right hemisphere, which is inferior for word recognition, before being passed to the left hemisphere via inter-hemispheric transfer. As a consequence, linguistic stimuli presented to the left visual field are processed less efficiently (e.g., Iacoboni and Zaidel, 1996 ; Simola et al, 2009 ; Ducrot et al, 2013 ). Based on these hemispheric processing asymmetries, it has been proposed that the OVP is to the left of the word center in English and French because this facilitates word recognition by ensuring more letters in words fall in the right visual field and so project directly to the left hemisphere (Brysbaert and Meyers, 1993 ; Brysbaert, 1994 ; Brysbaert and Nazir, 2005 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Aging and the optimal viewing position effect in Chinese

Liu

Han

et al. 2015

Front. Psychol.

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Substantial evidence indicates that where readers fixate within a word affects the efficiency with which that word is recognized. Indeed, words in alphabetic languages (e.g., English, French) are recognized most efficiently when fixated at their optimal viewing position (OVP), which is near the word center. However, little is known about the effects of fixation location on word recognition in non-alphabetic languages, such as Chinese. Moreover, studies to date have not investigated if effects of fixation location vary across adult age-groups, although it is well-established that older readers experience greater difficulty recognizing words due to visual and cognitive declines. Accordingly, the present research examined OVP effects by young and older adult readers when recognizing Chinese words presented in isolation. Most words in Chinese are formed from two or more logograms called characters and so the present experiment investigated the influence of fixation location on the recognition of 2-, 3-, and 4-character words (and nonwords). The older adults experienced generally greater word recognition difficulty. But whereas the young adults recognized words most efficiently when initially fixating the first character of 2-character words and second character of 3- and 4-character words, the older adults recognized words most efficiently when initially fixating the first character for words of each length. The findings therefore reveal subtle but potentially important adult age differences in the effects of fixation location on Chinese word recognition. Moreover, the similarity in effects for words and nonwords implies a more general age-related change in oculomotor strategy when processing Chinese character-strings.

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“Same, same but different”: The optimal viewing position effect in developmental dyslexia, developmental coordination disorder and comorbid disorders

Bellocchi

Ducrot

2021

Dyslexia

Self Cite

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The optimal viewing position (OVP) effect indicates that words are identified most quickly when the eyes fixate near the word centre in alphabetic languages. In two studies, we tested OVP in typically developing readers and children with developmental dyslexia (DD), developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and with both disorders (DD + DCD), using a variable‐viewing‐position technique. Study 1 showed that typically developing readers had developed highly automatized procedures of left‐to‐right attentional scanning resulting in an inverted J‐shape VP curve comparable to what is observed in adult readers and that dyslexics showed non‐prototypical one. In Study 2, we observed more typical procedures of left‐to‐right attentional scanning in children with DCD, isolated or comorbid, compared to DD. Moreover, given the absence of significant group differences between children with DD + DCD and children with isolated DD or DCD, our results reinforce the idea that the comorbid condition does not add to the severity of OVP anomalies. We then concluded that OVP atypicalities are specific to children with DD. Finally, we discussed the usefulness of the OVP effect as a clinical tool to identify possible OVP atypicalities that could be specific of some neurodevelopmental disorders (i.e., DD, DCD or DCD + DD).

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Visual and linguistic determinants of the eyes' initial fixation position in reading development

Cited by 31 publications

References 74 publications

Reading Derived Words by Italian Children With and Without Dyslexia: The Effect of Root Length

Reading Derived Words by Italian Children With and Without Dyslexia: The Effect of Root Length

Aging and the optimal viewing position effect in Chinese

“Same, same but different”: The optimal viewing position effect in developmental dyslexia, developmental coordination disorder and comorbid disorders

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