👤 Stéphanie Ducrot

Children's reading time at home plays a critical role in their reading development. However, existing measures of reading time, based on self-reports, are often biased. Logged data from mobile apps may offer a more reliable alternative, as shown in studies examining screen time in digital media use. This study compared logged and self-reported measures of reading time and examined their associations with reading skills in French primary school children. One hundred and nine children from Grade 1 to Grade 5 and their parents participated. Parents completed a retrospective questionnaire estimating weekly reading time (self-reported measure). They then used a mobile application to record their child's reading activities in real time over a 14-day period (logged measure). All children were assessed on their reading fluency. The self-reported measure yielded significantly higher reading time estimates (M = 6.26 hours/week) than the logged measure (M = 2.11 hours/week), with a moderate correlation between the two (r = .45). Crucially, the logged measure showed stronger predictive validity for reading fluency (r = .39) than the self-reported measure (r = .25). Regression analyses confirmed that when both measures were included simultaneously, only the logged reading time remained a significant predictor of reading performance. These findings suggest that logged measures obtained via ambulatory assessment (here, using a mobile app) provide more accurate estimates of reading time and superior predictive validity compared to traditional self-reports. This methodology offers promising avenues for future research on reading habits and literacy development. Show less

The initial saccade of experienced readers tends to land halfway between the beginning and the middle of words, at a position originally referred to as the preferred viewing location (PVL). This study investigated whether a simple physical manipulation-namely, increasing the saliency (brightness or color) of the letter located at the PVL-can positively influence saccadic targeting strategies and optimize reading performance. An eye-movement experiment was conducted with 25 adults and 24 s graders performing a lexical decision task. Results showed that this manipulation had no effect on initial landing positions in proficient readers, who already landed most frequently at the PVL, suggesting that PVL saliency is irrelevant once automatized saccade targeting routines are established. In contrast, the manipulation shifted the peak of the landing site distribution toward the PVL for a cluster of readers with immature saccadic strategies (with low reading-level scores and ILPs close to the beginning of words), but only in the brightness condition, and had a more compelling effect in a cluster with oculomotor instability (with flattened and diffuse landing position curves along with oculomotor and visuo-attentional deficits). These findings suggest that guiding the eyes toward the PVL may offer a novel way to improve reading efficiency, particularly for individuals with oculomotor and visuo-attentional difficulties. Show less

One essential skill believed to consolidate during the preschool years is children's ability to recognize the different letters of the alphabet. The aim of the present study was to track how visual representations of letters change and are consolidated with exposure to print and the graphomotor experience a child has. A secondary goal of this study was to investigate the emergence of the right visual field advantage for letter identification, reflecting children's sensitivity to the directionality of print. Eighty-one preschool children (aged 4 to 5 years) participated in a longitudinal study where they were shown isolated uppercase letters in both normal upright format and rotated 180°. The letter stimuli were mixed randomly with symbol stimuli in a letter/non-letter lateralized classification task. The results indicated that accuracy in classifying rotated letters as letters-rather than symbols-significantly improved among 4-year-old preschoolers between testing in December (mid-year) and in June (end of the school year). In contrast, little further development was observed in 5-year-old preschoolers, although they still exhibited a slight disadvantage in accuracy when classifying rotated letters. Additionally, behavioral and eye-movement data highlighted a left-to-right deployment of attention by the end of the second year of formal preschool education, evidenced by the emergence of a right visual field advantage. Our results suggest that letter representations undergo significant consolidation during the second year of formal preschool education, which typically corresponds to 4-year-old children in France, with a close relationship between letter identification skills, sensitivity to the directionality of print, and visuo-motor integration skills. Show less

The present study examines the role of morphemic units in the initial word recognition stage among beginning readers. We assess whether and to what extent sublexical units, such as morphemes, are used in processing French words and how their use varies with reading proficiency. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the perceptual and morphological effects on the recognition of words presented in central vision, using a variable-viewing-position technique. To explore changes during elementary school years, we tested children from the second and fourth grades, as well as adult readers. The percentage of correct word identification was highest near the center of the word, indicating an optimal viewing position for all three participant groups. Viewing position effects were modulated by age and the properties of the stimuli (length and morphological structure). Experiment 1 demonstrated that lexical decisions are influenced by morphological structure to a decreasing extent as reading skill develops. Experiment 2 revealed that morphological processing in children primarily relies on the orthographic information provided by morphemes (surface morphology), whereas proficient readers process morphological information at a more abstract level, exhibiting a genuine morphological-facilitation effect. Overall, our study strongly indicates that morphemic units play a crucial role in the initial stage of word identification in early reading development. This conclusion aligns with the "word and affix" model, which posits that morphological representations become increasingly independent of orthography as reading ability and word exposure improve. Show less

Procedural learning has been mainly tested through motor sequence learning tasks in children with neurodevelopmental disorders, especially with isolated Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) and Reading Disorder (RD). Studies on motor adaptation are scarcer and more controversial. This study aimed to compare the performance of children with isolated and associated DCD and RD in a graphomotor adaptation task. In total, 23 children with RD, 16 children with DCD, 19 children with DCD-RD, and 21 typically developing (TD) children wrote trigrams both in the conventional (from left to right) and opposite (from right to left) writing directions. The results show that movement speed and accuracy were more impacted by the adaptation condition (opposite writing direction) in children with neurodevelopmental disorders than TD children. Our results also reveal that children with RD have less difficulty adapting their movement than children with DCD. Children with DCD-RD had the most difficulty, and analysis of their performance suggests a cumulative effect of the two neurodevelopmental disorders in motor adaptation. Show less

This systematic review aimed to examine the possible implication of visual-perceptual, visuo-attentional and oculomotor processing in the reading deficits frequently experienced by children with Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), as previously shown in dyslexia. Using PRISMA methodological guidelines, we examined 49 studies; most of these reported visual-processing deficits in this population, raising the importance of directly studying the visuo-perceptual and visuo-attentional processes and eye-movement control involved in the learning-to-read process in NF1. The discussion provides a reflection for a better understanding of how visual-processing skills interact with reading deficits in NF1, as well as new avenues for their screening and care. Show less