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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Color stabilizes textbook visual processing

subject

description

We report that pages with color illustrations elicit more homogeneous duration of fixations in 12 elementary school children. For six first graders, we compared the reading of the color cover and a greyscale illustrated text page of an abcbook. For six second grade pupils, we demonstrated a color and a greyscale fairytale book page. The fixations we recorded are concordant with the duration for preschoolers reported elsewhere. Average duration of fixations on a page with color elements are shorter than on greyscale ones, 425 (SE=13.4) and 461 (18.3) ms, respectively. The correlation analysis lends support that a color page is processed differently than its greyscale version. Fixation duration for color and greyscale condition was correlated neither for text (r=.567, p=.241) nor for images (r=.517, p=.294) for the second graders. Our research suggests that color elements on textbook pages encourage emergent readers to perform better in acquisition.