The “Digital Generation” is Learning to Read: Linguistic Factors of Eye Movement Parameters of Russian Schoolchildren of the 1st – 3rd Grades

The level of reading literacy of the modern "digital generation" is an acute and significant topic. To explore this problem in dynamics it is necessary to objectively record the parameters of reading skills development in modern children. The article presents the results of an experimental study of the reading mechanism of elementary school students, performed using eye tracking. Fifty-three pupils in grades 1–3 of Moscow schools participated in the experiment, with real texts from Russian textbooks as stimulus material. Eye movements were recorded while reading texts from the screen, and after each text a comprehension question was asked. The results indicated a direct correlation between oculomotor characteristics and reading skill. From grade 1 to grade 3, the duration and number of fixations, amplitude duration, and reading time for both word and letter decreased, while the number of words with one or missing fixation increased. There was also a grade-independent effect of word length and word frequency factors on reading speed and oculomotor activity for students in all grades. Both factors had a significant effect on reading time, the average fixation duration was more sensitive to the frequency factor than to the word length factor, while word length alone influenced the first fixation duration.