The perceptual span during reading in primary school children

In recent decades, one of the largest areas of research in psycholinguistics has been the mechanisms of reading and the assimilation of reading skills. Reading includes visual perception (both foveal, i.e. within the current fixation, and parafoveal, i.e. to the right of the current fixation when reading from left to right), as well as successful language processing. Thus, violations at any of these levels hinder the mastery of reading, which negatively affects the quality of life.

One of the indicators of successful reading is the size of the perceptual span during reading. The perceptual span is the amount of visual information (in symbols) that can be processed within one fixation (Rayner, 1975). For English-speaking adults, it has been confirmed that its size is about three characters to the left of the fixation point (Binder et al., 1999; Jordan et al., 2014) and 14-15 characters to the right of the fixation point (Bélanger et al., 2012; Buurman et al., 1981; Leung et al., 2014; Rayner et al., 2009).

Few experimental data on the size of the perceptual span in children who learn to read agree that it is smaller than in adults. In English, it reaches three characters to the left of the fixation point and up to eleven characters to the right of the fixation point for second and fourth graders (Rayner, 1986). In Finnish, it reaches five characters to the left and right for second graders and seven characters on both sides for fourth graders (Häikiö et al., 2009). In German for second graders, it reaches four characters on both sides (Sperlich et al., 2015, 2016). Although there are many studies of the perceptual span and its development among readers in European languages, no studies of the perceptual span for Russian and Cyrillic have been conducted.

It is important to note that the size of the perceptual span in experienced adult readers may depend on individual skills. Choi et al. (2015) found that the better a person's language skills are, the wider their perceptual span is. The authors also concluded that individual differences in visual processing do not affect the size of the perceptual span. Since individual skills affect the size of the perceptual span, it is important to take them into account in further research.

Our study is the first to assess the size of the perceptual span for Russian-speaking children, as well as the impact of language and cognitive skills on it. In our study, we are going to use the moving window technique to study the perceptual span, as well as a set of linguistic and cognitive tests to assess individual skills. Our participants will be Russian-speaking children of grades 1-4. We plan to conduct a longitudinal study for two years (in the first year – from grades 1 to 3, in the second – from grades 2 to 4) to determine how the size of the perceptual span changes with age.

An eye-tracking experiment with a moving window technique was programmed for the study (McConkie & Rayner, 1975). Participants will read sentences on the computer screen in which some letters to the left and right of the fixation point will be visible to them, and the rest will be replaced with Xs. The mask of open letters will be the same all the time and will move along with the participant's gaze along the line. The task of the participants will be to read the sentences at their usual speed and answer questions on some of them. During the experiment, the eye movements of the participants will be recorded using the equipment of the HSE Language and Brain Center. In addition to the experiment, participants will undergo a battery of linguistic and cognitive behavioral tests.

If you want to take part in the research in our laboratory, please write to Vladislava Staroverova by email staroverovavlada@yandex.ru!