New standardised texts for assessing reading performance in four European languages

Area of Science:

• Ophthalmology and Visual Science
• Linguistics and Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Accurate assessment of reading speed is crucial for understanding visual performance.
• International research requires standardized tools for cross-linguistic comparisons.
• Existing reading speed tests may lack comparability across different languages.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a set of standardized, homogeneous, and comparable reading texts.
• To facilitate reliable repeated measurements of reading speed.
• To support international studies in reading and low vision research.

Main Methods:

• Ten reading texts were developed by linguistic experts in English, Finnish, French, and German.
• Texts were matched for length and syntactic complexity, targeting a sixth-grade reading level.
• Reading speed was assessed in 100 young (18-35 years) and 100 older (60-85 years) native speakers per language.

Main Results:

• At least seven texts showed no significant difference in reading speed within each language.
• Maximum reading speed variation between texts in the same language was 6.8% (Finnish).
• Older readers demonstrated statistically significant lower average reading speeds compared to younger readers across all languages.

Conclusions:

• A standardized, homogeneous, and comparable set of reading texts was successfully developed in four European languages.
• These texts provide a valuable tool for international research on reading speed and low vision.
• The developed texts enable consistent and reliable reading speed assessments in diverse populations.