[PS-2.8] Basic characteristics of deaf children?s eye movements during reading natural texts

Gomez Merino, N. , Fajardo Bravo, I. & Ferrer Manchón, A. .

Reading Research Center. Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology.University of Valencia.

The aim of this study was to have an insight on the eye-movements measures produced by deaf children during natural text reading. For this purpose, twenty children with bilateral profound to severe prelingual deafness (average age= 12:08) were asked to read two short texts (one expository and one narrative) from the text comprehension sub-test from the PROLEC-R battery. Their eye-movements were recorded while they read the texts; after the reading they had to answer orally four questions for each text. In relation to the eye-movements measures, we analyzed the global measures of text reading such as: fixation count, revisits counts, saccade length, mean fixation duration and total reading time. We also tested working memory,receptive vocabulary, word and non-word reading and reading comprehension using off-line tasks.During the Workshop we will provide descriptive data and an analysis of how do the eye-movement measures relate to other reading variables and to variables that are external to the reading process (The type of assistive technology used and age of fitting or implant)