Children's Reading of Sublexical Units in Years Three to Five: A Combined Analysis of Eye-Movements and Voice Recording

PurposeChildren progress from making grapheme-phoneme connections to making grapho-syllabic connections before whole-word connections during reading development (Ehri, 2005a). More is known about the development of grapheme-phoneme connections than is known about grapho-syllabic connections. Therefore, we explored the trajectory of syllable use in English developing readers during oral reading.MethodFifty-one English-speaking children (mean age: 8.9 years, 55% females, 88% monolinguals) in year groups three, four, and five read aloud sentences with an embedded target word, while their eye movements and voices were recorded. The targets contained six letters and were either one or two syllables.ResultChildren in grade five had shorter gaze duration, shorter articulation duration, and larger spatial eye-voice span (EVS) than children in grade four. Children in grades three and four did not significantly differ on these measures. A syllable number effect was found for gaze duration but not for articulation duration and spatial EVS. Interestingly, one-syllable words took longer to process compared to two-syllable words, suggesting that more syllables may not always signify greater processing difficulty.ConclusionOverall, children are sensitive to sublexical reading units; however, due to sample and stimuli limitations, these findings should be interpreted with caution and further research conducted.

Automated summary

This study examined the trajectory of syllable use in developing English readers during oral reading. The results showed that fifth graders had shorter gaze duration, shorter articulation duration, and larger spatial eye-voice span compared to fourth graders. Gaze duration was influenced by syllable number, while articulation duration and spatial eye-voice span were not affected.