Oculomotor Referents of Reading Activity in 9–11 Year Aged Dyslexic Children

— Impaired processing of written text in dyslexic children is of current interest but poorly studied problem. Integration of the activity theory and eye-tracking methods enabled to manage a systemic structural and functional analysis of reading process as an activity. This study aimed examined the oculomotor measures as referents of mental actions performed in the process of reading a printed text by 9–11 year old children with dyslexia. Eye movements during the text reading were recorded using an eye-tracker. Each participant received four texts: two scientific texts and two fiction texts. Characteristics of gaze movements, such as the duration and number of fixations, amplitude, and frequency of occurrence of micro, short, medium, and long regressive saccades, were analyzed. Statistical ANOVA analysis of the data revealed significant differences between the dyslexic children and their typically developing peers in all oculomotor characteristics. These results suggest that children with dyslexia have a reading activity dysfunction not only at the lexical but also at the propositional and semantic levels.