Visual-orthographic complexity of Akshara and eye movements in reading: A study in Kannada alphasyllabary

Eye movement patterns in reading vary across languages depending upon the grain size and transparency of the orthography. We studied eye movements in reading Kannada akshara, an alphasyllabary used in South India. Kannada is a very transparent orthography in which the complexity of script layout of orthographic syllables, called akshara, increases when vowel ligatures or more consonants are incorporated into them. There are three levels of such akshara complexity in Kannada: akshara representing vowel alone or a consonant with inherent shwa (basic letters), akshara representing consonant and vowel ligature combination, and akshara representing conjunct consonants and vowel combination. We recorded eye movement patterns from 51 children—17 typically developing (TD), 17 with reading disability (RD) and 17 reading-level-matched typically developing readers (RL) when reading sentences made of different types of akshara. The results showed that the visual-orthographic complexity of akshara in conjunct consonant form increased processing difficulty. The effect was more pronounced in the RD group.