Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 4, 2025
Eye-tracking to Distinguish Comprehension-based and Oculomotor-based Regressive Eye Movements During Reading
Published on: October 18, 2018
Word and pseudoword reading in young adults: an eye-tracking study
Fernanda Marchezini1, Peter Maurice Erna Claessens2, Maria Teresa Carthery-Goulart2,3,4
1Programa de Pós-graduação em Neurociência e Cognição, Universidade Federal de ABC - UFABC - São Bernardo do Campo (SP), Brasil.
Purpose:
To evaluate and characterize the oculomotor behavior during the reading of words and pseudowords in Brazilian Portuguese organized by frequency, length and regularity and verify its association with performance on neuropsychological tests.
Methods:
21 university students, with a mean age of 20.9 years, were submitted to a word and pseudoword reading task (TLPP) from the Anele Battery, in addition to verbal fluency and phonological working memory tests. The patterns of first fixation duration, gaze duration and rate of refixation were studied.
Results:
The first fixation duration and the gaze duration were significantly lower for words if compared to pseudowords and the gaze duration was also lower for high-frequency and short words. Significant interactions were also found between verbal fluency performance and the first fixation duration.
Conclusion:
Our results demonstrate the applicability of eye tracking to study reading patterns at the word-level in Brazilian Portuguese. The eye tracker can be an additional tool in the investigation of acquired and developmental reading disorders and can assist in the detection of reading difficulties based on comparisons of the oculomotor behavior between fluent and non-fluent readers.
