Spatial parameters of eye-movement control during reading in Russian-speaking children

Skilled readers plan and execute saccades to target the center of upcoming words, ensuring optimal placement for recognition. Accurate saccadic targeting is crucial for efficient reading. This study examines whether children at the end of their first year at school target saccades toward the center of words, whether this behavior is influenced by reading proficiency, and whether children are able to rapidly adapt their eye movements to visual input. Seventy-three Russian-speaking first graders (36 girls and 37 boys; mean age = 7) read sentences composed of words of uniform (3, 4, or 5 letters) and nonuniform length (3-to-5 letters) while their eye movements were tracked. Children's saccades and fixation locations were compared to a matched adult dataset from Parshina et al. (2024). Results revealed that, unlike adults, children tended to land near the beginning of the word, with longer saccades and landing positions shifting slightly closer to the beginning of the word as word length increased. Children's reading proficiency was associated with longer saccades and landing positions closer to the word center, suggesting that more fluent readers process words more efficiently, resembling adults. At the same time, children were able to quickly adapt their eye movements in uniform sentences. These findings indicate that efficient saccadic targeting is shaped by reading proficiency rather than by maturation of the eye-movement system, and that at the end of their first year at school, children have not yet accumulated sufficient proficiency to fully resemble adult-like saccade targeting.