Eye Tracking

How do your eyes move when you read?

Fluent Readers

When fluent readers read they see around 8 letters at once:

Their eyes move in jumps from one word to the next. They fixate on a point long enough to read the surrounding letters, then they jump to the next point:

They don't look at all the words, especially short words.

Sometimes they have to jump backwards to look at a word - particularly if it's longer or harder.

Fluent readers tend to jump from the middle of one word, to the middle of the next. They spend slightly longer fixating on complicated or surprising words than on predictable words.

Struggling Readers

Struggling readers don’t read like fluent readers.

Their eyes jump around the page, forwards and backwards and even up and down.

They make over double the amount of backward jumps that fluent readers do.

  • Fluent readers make around 10 - 25% backwards jumps (depending on the complexity of the text).
  • Struggling Readers make around 50% backwards jumps.

They fixate on more points per minute than fluent readers.

  • Fluent readers fixate on around 150 points per minute.
  • Struggling readers fixate on up to 1,000 points per minute.

Struggling readers find reading hard because:

  1. They're receiving 1,000 pieces of information per minute, instead of 150.

    All their brain power is needed to process the extra information. So, they don’t have any brain power left to think about what they're reading.

  2. They’re making so many backwards jumps, that they’re not reading the words in order.

    They are scanning right to left as often as they are scanning left to right.

This is why they confuse 'b' and 'd' and 'saw' and 'was'.

Video of Abby Reading

The red cursor shows where Abby was looking when she read.



Convergence

Eye tracking is only half the story - we have 2 eyes - and they both need to converge on the same point.

To read you need to be able to converge both eyes on the same letter. And you need to be able to do that at reading distance.

When you go to the opticians for an eye test they place an eye chart far away and ask you what letters are on it. It’s much easier to converge your eyes to a faraway point, then it is to a near point.

But when asked to read the same eye test on a small chart, held close like a book, you can might a different result. Struggling readers may not even be able to see the letters, let alone read.

Sustaining Convergence

It's not enough to be able to convergence your eyes – you need to be able to sustain it.

Struggling readers can’t converge their eyes quickly and they can’t sustain convergence.

This means their eyes are rarely looking at the same letter at the same time.

When a struggling reader starts to read, they may be able to ‘force’ their eyes to converge. However, the longer they are asked to read, the less they can do this. Their reading deteriorates the longer they read.

Symptoms of Poor Convergence

  • Difficulty learning to read
  • Losing your place when reading, skipping words or skipping lines
  • Words seem to move, or look blurry, or are double
  • Getting eyestrain or tiring easily when reading
  • Needing coloured overlays or coloured glasses to read
  • Difficulty copying from the board
  • Reading slowly

The symptoms of convergence insufficiency overlap heavily with symptoms of dyslexia.

But actually all these are symptoms of vision problems. In fact, 30% of struggling readers only have a vision problem, not dyslexia.

For this 30%, once their vision has improved, they are able to read as well as their peers.

How common are these vision problems?

Dr Levinson tested eye tracking in 1,500 3 year olds and found a 95% correlation between children with eye tracking problems and children who later had difficulty learning to read.

George Pavidis found struggling readers make significantly more eye movements when reading - particularly they make significant more regressions.

He found a high degree of correlation between eye movements and reading performance.

Our own studies have shown 98% of struggling readers have a convergence problem.

How to help

You can improve both convergence and tracking by playing Engaging Eyes.

It is suitable for pupils Y2 and above, takes 10 minutes a day, and can be played independently

You can also use it to screen for convergence problems

Engaging Eyes can be played at home or at school. Children love the 3d games.