Orthographic learning of new words: from looking to memorizing

International audienceMemorization of new words' orthography increases across exposures Eye movement variations reflect orthographic learning Processing time decreases as a function of exposures Higher visual-attention span induces faster visual processing time To 1. Better memorization performance with increased exposure to novel words 2. Fewer fixations and shorter processing times across exposures during reading 3. Early orthographic learning effects on eye movement patterns 4. Better orthographic learning for participants with higher vs. lower VAS Only a few studies have examined eye movements during the repeated reading of new words (Joseph et al., 2014; Joseph et al., 2018) and their implicit memorization. Recently, Nation et al. (2017) suggested that monitoring eye movements during novel word reading might be particularly useful for the real-time study of orthographic learning. We used eye-tracking to examine the exposure-by-exposure evolution of eye movement patterns while French adults were reading novel words. A spelling task and an orthographic lexical decision task were administered offline to measure orthographic learning. The participants' visual-attention span (VAS) was further assessed