Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Learning to read is often considered the most important skill taughtin school because reading is a gateway to other learning. Manychildren struggle to acquire this fundamental skill. Suboptimaldesign of books for beginning readers may contribute to thedifficulties children experience as close proximity between textand illustrations could promote attentional competition hamperingliteracy skills. The present work utilized eye-tracking technologyto examine how beginning readers allocate attention and whetherthese patterns are related to fluency (Experiment 1) andcomprehension (Experiment 2). Results suggest when readingbooks in which text and illustrations are in close proximity,children frequently shift attention away from the text. This patternof attention was negatively associated with fluency, but notassociated with comprehension. This line of research aims toprovide theoretical insights about design principles for readingmaterials that can be employed to optimize instructional materialsand promote literacy development in young children.