Breaking down the word length effect on readers’ eye movements

Previous research on the effect of word length on reading confounded the number of letters (NrL) in a word with its spatial width. Consequently, the extent to which visuospatial and attentional-linguistic processes contribute to the word length effect on parafoveal and foveal vision in reading and dyslexia is unknown. Scholars recently suggested that visual crowding is an important factor for determining an individual’s reading speed in fluent and dyslexic reading. We studied whether the NrL or the spatial width of target words affects fixation duration and saccadic measures in natural reading in fluent and dysfluent readers of a transparent orthography. Participants read natural sentences …

A dynamic adjustment model of saccade lengths in reading for word-spaced orthographies : evidence from simulations and invisible boundary experiments

Contemporary models of eye movement control in reading assume a discrete target word selection process preceding saccade length computation, while the selection itself is assumed to be driven by word identification processes. However, a potentially more parsimonious, dynamic adjustment view allows both next word length and its content (e.g. orthographic) to modulate saccade length in a continuous manner. Based on a recently proposed center-based saccade length account (a new regression model of forward saccade length is introduced and validated in a simulation study. Further, additional simulations and gaze-contingent invisible boundary experiments were used to study the cognitive mechanism…

Supplemental Material, Supplementary_File_1 - Brain event-related potentials to phoneme contrasts and their correlation to reading skills in school-age children

Supplemental Material, Supplementary_File_1 for Brain event-related potentials to phoneme contrasts and their correlation to reading skills in school-age children by Urs Maurer, Catherine McBride, Jarmo Hämäläinen, Nicole Landi, Otto Loberg, Kaisa Lohvansuu, Kenneth Pugh, and Paavo H. T. Leppänen in International Journal of Behavioral Development

Brain Source Correlates of Speech Perception and Reading Processes in Children With and Without Reading Difficulties

Neural correlates in reading and speech processing have been addressed extensively in the literature. While reading skills and speech perception have been shown to be associated with each other, their relationship remains debatable. In this study, we investigated reading skills, speech perception, reading, and their correlates with brain source activity in auditory and visual modalities. We used high-density event-related potentials (ERPs), fixation-related potentials (FRPs), and the source reconstruction method. The analysis was conducted on 12–13-year-old schoolchildren who had different reading levels. Brain ERP source indices were computed from frequently repeated Finnish speech stimuli…

Task-oriented reading efficiency : interplay of general cognitive ability, task demands, strategies and reading fluency

AbstractThe associations among readers’ cognitive skills (general cognitive ability, reading skills, and attentional functioning), task demands (easy versus difficult questions), and process measures (total fixation time on relevant and irrelevant paragraphs) was investigated to explain task-oriented reading accuracy and efficiency (number of scores in a given time unit). Structural equation modeling was applied to a large dataset collected with sixth-grade students, which included samples of dysfluent readers and those with attention difficulties. The results are in line with previous findings regarding the dominant role of general cognitive ability in the accuracy of task-oriented reading…

Attentional Processes in Children With Attentional Problems or Reading Difficulties as Revealed Using Brain Event-Related Potentials and Their Source Localization.

Visual attention-related processes include three functional sub-processes: alerting, orienting, and inhibition. We examined these sub-processes using reaction times, event-related potentials (ERPs), and their neuronal source activations during the Attention Network Test (ANT) in control children, attentional problems (AP) children, and reading difficulties (RD) children. During the ANT, electroencephalography was measured using 128 electrodes on three groups of Finnish sixth-graders aged 12–13 years (control = 77; AP = 15; RD = 23). Participants were asked to detect the direction of a middle target fish within a group of five fish. The target stimulus was either preceded by a cue (center, d…

Supplemental Material, Supplementary_File_2 - Brain event-related potentials to phoneme contrasts and their correlation to reading skills in school-age children

Supplemental Material, Supplementary_File_2 for Brain event-related potentials to phoneme contrasts and their correlation to reading skills in school-age children by Urs Maurer, Catherine McBride, Jarmo Hämäläinen, Nicole Landi, Otto Loberg, Kaisa Lohvansuu, Kenneth Pugh, and Paavo H. T. Leppänen in International Journal of Behavioral Development

Neural Processing of Congruent and Incongruent Audiovisual Speech in School-Age Children and Adults

Brain event-related potentials to phoneme contrasts and their correlation to reading skills in school-age children

Development of reading skills has been shown to be tightly linked to phonological processing skills and to some extent to speech perception abilities. Although speech perception is also known to play a role in reading development, it is not clear which processes underlie this connection. Using event-related potentials (ERPs) we investigated the speech processing mechanisms for common and uncommon sound contrasts (/ba/-/da/-/ga/ and /ata/-/at: a/) with respect to the native language of school-age children in Finland and the US. In addition, a comprehensive behavioral test battery of reading and phonological processing was administered. ERPs revealed that the children could discriminate betw…

Discriminatory Brain Processes of Native and Foreign Language in Children with and without Reading Difficulties

The association between impaired speech perception and reading difficulty has been well established in native language processing, as can be observed from brain activity. However, there has been scarce investigation of whether this association extends to brain activity during foreign language processing. The relationship between reading skills and neuronal speech representation of foreign language remains unclear. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) with high-density EEG to investigate this question. Eleven- to 13-year-old children typically developed (CTR) or with reading difficulties (RD) were tested via a passive auditory oddball paradigm containing native (Finn…

Semantic anomaly detection in school-aged children during natural sentence reading : A study of fixation-related brain potentials

In this study, we investigated the effects of context-related semantic anomalies on the fixation-related brain potentials of 12–13-year-old Finnish children in grade 6 during sentence reading. The detection of such anomalies is typically reflected in the N400 event-related potential. We also examined whether the representation invoked by the sentence context extends to the orthographic representation level by replacing the final words of the sentence with an anomalous word neighbour of a plausible word. The eye-movement results show that the anomalous word neighbours of plausible words cause similar first-fixation and gaze duration reactions, as do other anomalous words. Similarly, we obser…

Detection of developmental dyslexia with machine learning using eye movement data

Dyslexia is a common neurocognitive learning disorder that can seriously hinder individuals’ aspirations if not detected and treated early. Instead of costly diagnostic assessment made by experts, in the near future dyslexia might be identified with ease by automated analysis of eye movements during reading provided by embedded eye tracking technology. However, the diagnostic machine learning methods need to be optimized first. Previous studies with machine learning have been quite successful in identifying dyslexic readers, however, using contrasting groups with large performance differences between diagnosed and good readers. A practical challenge is to identify also individuals with bord…

Auditory P3a response to native and foreign speech in children with or without attentional deficit

The aim of this study was to investigate the attentional mechanism in speech processing of native and foreign language in children with and without attentional deficit. For this purpose, the P3a component, cognitive neuromarker of the attentional processes, was investigated in a two-sequence two-deviant oddball paradigm using Finnish and English speech items via event-related potentials (ERP) technique. The difference waves reflected the temporal brain dynamics of the P3a response in native and foreign language contexts. Cluster-based permutation tests evaluated the group differences over the P3a time window. A correlation analysis was conducted between the P3a response and the attention sc…

Effects of conversation content on viewing dyadic conversations

People typically follow conversations closely with their gaze. We asked whether this viewing is influenced by what is actually said in the conversation and by the viewer’s psychological condition. We recorded the eye movements of healthy (N = 16) and depressed (N = 25) participants while they were viewing video clips. Each video showed two people, each speaking one line of dialogue about socio-emotionally important (i.e., personal) or unimportant topics (matter-of-fact). Between the spoken lines, the viewers made more saccadic shifts between the discussants, and looked more at the second speaker, in personal vs. matter-of-fact conversations. Higher depression scores were correlated with les…

Attentional processes in typically developing children as revealed using brain event-related potentials and their source localization in Attention Network Test

AbstractAttention-related processes include three functional sub-components: alerting, orienting, and inhibition. We investigated these components using EEG-based, brain event-related potentials and their neuronal source activations during the Attention Network Test in typically developing school-aged children. Participants were asked to detect the swimming direction of the centre fish in a group of five fish. The target stimulus was either preceded by a cue (centre, double, or spatial) or no cue. An EEG using 128 electrodes was recorded for 83 children aged 12–13 years. RTs showed significant effects across all three sub-components of attention. Alerting and orienting (responses to double …

Parafoveal previews and lexical frequency in natural reading: Evidence from eye movements and fixation-related potentials.

Participants' eye movements and electroencephalogram (EEG) signal were recorded as they read sentences displayed according to the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm. Two target words in each sentence were manipulated for lexical frequency (high vs. low frequency) and parafoveal preview of each target word (identical vs. string of random letters vs. string of Xs). Eye movement data revealed visual parafoveal-on-foveal (PoF) effects, as well as foveal visual and orthographic preview effects and word frequency effects. Fixation-related potentials (FRPs) showed visual and orthographic PoF effects as well as foveal visual and orthographic preview effects. Our results replicated the early preview …

A co-registration investigation of inter-word spacing and parafoveal preview: Eye movements and fixation-related potentials

Participants’ eye movements (EMs) and EEG signal were simultaneously recorded to examine foveal and parafoveal processing during sentence reading. All the words in the sentence were manipulated for inter-word spacing (intact spaces vs. spaces replaced by a random letter) and parafoveal preview (identical preview vs. random letter string preview). We observed disruption for unspaced text and invalid preview conditions in both EMs and fixation-related potentials (FRPs). Unspaced and invalid preview conditions received longer reading times than spaced and valid preview conditions. In addition, the FRP data showed that unspaced previews disrupted reading in earlier time windows of analysis, com…

Influence of reading skill and word length on fixation-related brain activity in school-aged children during natural reading

Word length is one of the main determinants of eye movements during reading and has been shown to influence slow readers more strongly than typical readers. The influence of word length on reading in individuals with different reading skill levels has been shown in separate eye-tracking and electroencephalography studies. However, the influence of reading difficulty on cortical correlates of word length effect during natural reading is unknown. To investigate how reading skill is related to brain activity during natural reading, we performed an exploratory analysis on our data set from a previous study, where slow reading (N = 27) and typically reading (N = 65) 12-to-13.5-year-old children …

Somatosensory Brain Function and Gray Matter Regional Volumes Differ According to Exercise History : Evidence from Monozygotic Twins

Associations between long-term physical activity and cortical function and brain structure are poorly known. Our aim was to assess whether brain functional and/or structural modulation associated with long-term physical activity is detectable using a discordant monozygotic male twin pair design. Nine monozygotic male twin pairs were carefully selected for an intrapair difference in their leisure-time physical activity of at least three years duration (mean age 34 ± 1 years). We registered somatosensory mismatch response (SMMR) in EEG to electrical stimulation of fingers and whole brain MR images. We obtained exercise history and measured physical fitness and body composition. Equivalent ele…

Sixth graders’ evaluation strategies when reading Internet search results : an eye-tracking study

Eye-tracking technology was used to examine Internet search result evaluation strategies adopted by sixth-grade students (N = 36) during ten experimental information search tasks. The relevancy of the search result’s title, URL, and snippet components was manipulated and selection of search results as well as looking into probabilities on the search result components was analysed. The results revealed that during first-pass inspection, students read the search engine page by first looking at the title of a search result. If the title was relevant, the probability of looking at the snippet of the search result increased. During second-pass inspection, there was a high probability of students…

Attentional bias towards interpersonal aggression in depression – an eye movement study

Depressed individuals exhibit an attentional bias towards mood-congruent stimuli, yet evidence for biased processing of threat-related information in human interaction remains scarce. Here, we tested whether an attentional bias towards interpersonally aggressive pictures over interpersonally neutral pictures could be observed to a greater extent in depressed participants than in control participants. Eye movements were recorded while the participants freely viewed visually matched interpersonally aggressive and neutral pictures, which were presented in pairs. Across the groups, participants spent more time looking at neutral pictures than at aggressive pictures, probably reflecting avoidanc…

What information should I look for again? : Attentional difficulties distracts reading of task assignments

This large-scale eye-movement study (N = 164) investigated how students read short task assignments to complete information search problems and how their cognitive resources are associated with this reading behavior. These cognitive resources include information searching subskills, prior knowledge, verbal memory, reading fluency, and attentional difficulties. In this study, the task assignments consisted of four sentences. The first and last sentences provided context, while the second or third sentence was the relevant or irrelevant sentence under investigation. The results of a linear mixed-model and latent change score analyses showed the ubiquitous influence of reading fluency on first…