The differential effects of phonics versus sight-recognition methods of teaching reading on the eye movements of good and poor second-grade readers

The purpose of this study was to investigate how children who had been taught reading by different methods and who differed in reading achievement scan tachistoscopically- presented words. Twenty second-grade children were grouped according to phonics or sight-recognition methods of initial reading acquisition and according to low or high reading achievement scores. As four-letter stimulus words were presented tachistoscopically, electrooculograms (EOG's) were recorded for each subject. The EOG's were averaged by the use of a digital/analog minicomputer and this analog record was digitalized. Three dependent measures were obtained from these averaged records: total amount of eye movements evoked by the stimulus word, direction of the eye scan, and scanning time. For the total amount of eye movements, it was found that both good and poor readers taught by a phonics method moved their eyes less than poor sight-recognition readers. However, good readers taught by a sight-recognition method moved their eyes less than any other group