Children’s eye movements when reading aloud

Decoding text is an essential skill that a child must develop before being able to read for meaning. In typical development children use two strategies when reading, phonetic decoding and sight word recognition. The way in which the strategies are utilised changes during childhood, with both strategies seen as crucial for children to successfully develop from novice to expert readers. In this study, children were asked to read regular words, irregular words and nonwords taken from Castles & Coltheart’s reading test 2 (CC2; Castles et al., 2009). Eye movements were tracked and correlations between number of fixations per word and letter, number of regressions within a word and reading ability examined. The relationship between measures of children’s oculomotor control, exact age and school level may have implications for primary school education