A dual-route perspective on eye movements of dyslexic readers

摘要

This study assessed eye movement abnormalities of adolescent dyslexic readers and inter-preted the findings by linking the dual-route model of single word reading with the E-ZReader model of eye movement control during silent sentence reading. A dysfunction ofthe lexical route was assumed to account for a reduced number of words which receivedonly a single fixation or which were skipped and for the increased number of words withmultiple fixations and a marked effect of word length on gaze duration. This pattern wasinterpreted as a frequent failure of orthographic whole-word recognition (based on ortho-graphic lexicon entries) and on reliance on serial sublexical processing instead. Inefficiencyof the lexical route was inferred from prolonged gaze durations for singly fixated words.These findings were related to the E-Z Reader model of eye movement control. Slow acti-vation of word phonology accounted for the low skipping rate of dyslexic readers. Frequentreliance on sublexical decoding was inferred from a tendency to fixate word beginningsand from short forward saccades. Overall, the linkage of the dual-route model of singleword reading and a model of eye movement control led to a useful framework for under-standing eye movement abnormalities of dyslexic readers.