Eye Movements in Reading

In the late 19th century Emilo Javal, a French ophthalmologist, discovered that when a person reads his eyes do not move continuously along a line of text, but engage in a series of rapid movements (saccades) with intermittent short stops (fixations). The more often the eyes have to pause for fixations, the slower the reading speed will be.

The normal beginner reader makes an average of two fixations per word or, in other words, sees or recognizes less than one whole word at each fixation. This statistic was determined by photographing the reading of over a thousand first graders with The Reading Eye, a camera made especially for this purpose. Each child read a selection of approximately 100 words. During the reading the average child made 224 fixations, about two fixations per word or an eye span of .45 of a word. This average span of recognition increases very slowly to 1.11, or slightly more than one word per fixation, for normal college students at an average speed of 280 words per minute. The average number of words seen at each fixation does not reach one whole word until the eleventh grade.

Regressions occur when the eyes move towards the left to look again at words which have already been covered.

A dyslexic person will be inclined to pause more often for fixations, and the duration of each fixation will also be longer than that of the typical reader. The dyslexic person is also inclined to more regressions that the normal reader.

RESOURCE:

Audiblox: Overcoming Dyslexia and Reading Difficulties
Effective in overcoming dyslexia and reading difficulties by addressing the underlying shortcomings that interfere with reading performance.