Eye doesn’t look at every letter while reading

New research in eye movement and miscue analysis, a diagnostic tool to understand the reading process, shows that a reader doesn’t look at every letter or every word, making the “sound it out” strategy ineffective.

Koomi Kim, a professor in language, literacy and culture at New Mexico State University’s College of Education, conducted a 2007 study with fellow researchers Marge Knox and Joel Brown from the University of Arizona in which the eye movement of young readers was recorded in order to discover what strategies are used while reading and how the reader constructs meaning.

“The myth is that we look at every single word and letter when we read,” Kim said. “We are finding out that children look at about 70 percent of the text and adults look at about 60 percent.”

The researchers concluded that while reading, the eye of the reader spends a varied amount of time in different parts of a text. They read ahead to gain information, skip parts of the text and make predictions. The reader also uses different strategies when reading, including scanning, inferring, predicting, correcting, confirming and integrating. Also, a reader brings prior understanding of structure or content of a written or musical text to their reading.

Kim said this shows that a reader may skip words and make predictions about what they are reading or are about to read. She said teachers and parents shouldn’t force children to use the “sound it out” strategy. Instead they should encourage other comprehension-related strategies and consider the reader’s cultural and social backgrounds, which can influence the comprehension of what they are reading.

Kim said the eye tracker that recorded the eye movement worked by calibrating just one of the reader’s eyes. The machine then uses infrared light to bounce off the eye and record the eye movement.

At NMSU, Kim said she wants to expand the reading literacy program and use it in the College of Education teaching block courses so practicing teachers and pre-service teachers can bring in students and observe how they read. She will conduct her work at the NMSU Myrna’s Children’s Village.