Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Tübingen, Osianderstrasse 14-16, 72076, Tübingen, Germany.
Ann Dyslexia. 2010 Jun;60(1):86-101. doi: 10.1007/s11881-010-0034-9. Epub 2010 Mar 12.
We combined independently the word length and word frequency to examine if the difficulty of reading material affects eye movements in readers of German, which has high orthographic regularity, comparing the outcome with previous findings available in other languages. Sixteen carefully selected German-speaking dyslexic children (mean age, 9.5 years) and 16 age-matched controls read aloud four lists, each comprising ten unrelated words. The lists varied orthogonally in word length and word frequency: high-frequency, short; high-frequency, long; low-frequency, short; low-frequency, long. Eye movements were measured using a scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO). In dyslexic children, fixation durations and the number of saccades increased both with word length and word frequency. The percentage of regressions was only increased for low-frequency words. Most of these effects were qualitatively similar in the two groups, but stronger in dyslexic children, pointing to a deficient higher-level word processing, especially phonological deficit. The results indicate that reading eye movements in German children are modulated by the degree of difficulty, and orthographic regularity of the language can determine the nature of modulation. The findings suggest that, similar to Italian but unlike English readers, German children prefer indirect sub-lexical strategy of grapheme-phoneme conversion.
我们将单词长度和单词频率结合起来，研究了在具有高度正字法规则的德语中，阅读材料的难度是否会影响读者的眼球运动，并将结果与其他语言中的先前发现进行了比较。我们招募了 16 名经过精心挑选的德语诵读困难儿童（平均年龄 9.5 岁）和 16 名年龄匹配的对照组，让他们大声朗读四个单词列表，每个列表包含十个不相关的单词。这些列表在单词长度和单词频率上是正交变化的：高频、短；高频、长；低频、短；低频、长。我们使用扫描激光检眼镜（SLO）测量眼球运动。诵读困难儿童的注视持续时间和扫视次数都随着单词长度和频率的增加而增加。只有低频单词的回扫次数增加。这些效应在两组中大部分是相似的，但在诵读困难儿童中更为明显，表明存在高级别单词处理缺陷，尤其是语音缺陷。研究结果表明，德语儿童的阅读眼球运动受到难度和语言正字法规则的调节。与英语读者不同，意大利语和德语读者可能偏好不同的语音转换策略。
