The development of reading skills among Russian-speaking schoolchildren

Reading is a complex cognitive process in which language processing actively interacts with the visual system and with other cognitive functions. The stages and mechanisms of mastering the reading skill in children are still far from being fully understood. There is a hypothesis about the differential contribution of phonological (related to speech sounds) and orthographic (related to the graphical representation of these sounds) information to reading in children of different ages. In the early stages of mastering reading, children rely on phonological information, that is, they translate letters into sounds to understand the meaning of a word; however, over time, more experienced readers increase their reliance on orthographic information, that is, the transition from letters to the meaning of the word.

Most of the works investigating the development of reading skills in children are based on data from the English language and reading the Latin alphabet. There are few works devoted to the study of reading in Cyrillic, despite the fact that the Cyrillic writing system ranks fifth in the world in terms of the number of people who use it for writing and reading.

The purpose of our study was to consistently study for the first time the development of reading skills in Russian-speaking schoolchildren from 1st to 6th grade by recording their eye movements while reading. This would allow us to understand with a high degree of detail which skills (phonological or orthographic) are critical for the successful development of reading at different ages and how the reading mechanisms of Russian-speaking children differ from the reading mechanisms in other languages.

The practical task of our work is to develop computerized tests with normative data of children in grades 1-6, which will allow predicting and tracking the success of mastering the reading skill. These tests can be used in schools.

The study involved 222 schoolchildren from grades 1 to 6. The study included:

- measurement of nonverbal intelligence,

- hearing check,

- measuring the speed of reading aloud and reading comprehension,

- two tasks to assess the skills of complex phonological processing,

- two tasks for rapid automatized naming, evaluating orthographic skills,

- recording eye movements during silent reading.

Students of grades 2 and 4 separately performed a task evaluating their parafoveal processing skills. Parafoveal processing is the preprocessing of a word with lateral vision until it is directly read. Previously, it was unknown what information students receive from the parafoveal region: phonological or orthographic. In the study, children read sentences with the invisible border technique while an eye-tracker recorded their eye movements.

Eye movements were recorded using an eye-tracker (a special small camera) EyeLink Portable Duo. The technique of remote registration of eye movements has been used for more than 30 years in research with children and cannot harm the child's health or cause them inconvenience (Holmqvist et al., 2012; Liversedge et al., 2011 — generalization of many research papers).

According to the results, both phonological and orthographic processing make a significant contribution to the development of reading skills in Russian. The age of schoolchildren also contributes to the variability of reading speed: from 6 to 10 years, reading speed increases every year, while at the age of 10-12 years, reading speed may vary, but there is no further increase in it.

According to eye-tracking data, it turned out that the duration of fixation on words decreases in children from 1st to 6th grade, but in 6th grade it still does not reach the adult level. A qualitative leap in reading occurs between grades 1 and 2, as well as between grades 3 and 4. Children process short low-frequency words the fastest, and nouns and adjectives are read faster than other parts of speech.

Finally, the results of the parafoveal processing study showed that both second- and fourth graders rely on orthographic information from the parafoveal region. Unlike children who read in other languages, they do not preprocess the word phonologically.

The project was supported by RFBR grant No. 19-313-51014 (2019 - 2021), the head is O.V. Dragoy. The study was conducted jointly with NTU “Sirius”.

Publications

Здорова Н. С., Каприелова А. В., Лопухина А. А., Барцева К. В., Веденина О. Д., Гольдина С. М., Староверова В. Н., Драгой О. В. Вклад фонологической и орфографической обработки в формирование навыка чтения у русскоязычных младших школьников // Российский журнал когнитивной науки. – 2021. Т. 8. № 1–2. С. 4-13.

Lopukhina A., Zdorova N., Staroverova V., Ladinskaya N., Kaprielova A., Goldina S., Vedenina O., Bartseva K., Dragoy O. Benchmark measures of eye movements during reading in Russian children //Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. – under review

Staroverova, V., Lopukhina, A., Zdorova, N., Ladinskaya, N., Vedenina, O., Goldina, S., ... & Dragoy, O. (2023). Phonological and orthographic parafoveal processing during silent reading in Russian children and adults.  Journal of Experimental Child Psychology , 226, 105571.

Conference talks

Здорова Н. Постерный доклад “The impact of phonological and orthographic processing in Russian children reading development”. Summer Neurolinguistics School on Child Language Development, 22-24 июня 2020 г., Москва, Россия.

Староверова В. Постерный доклад “Development of phonological and orthographic parafoveal processing during reading in Russian”. Summer Neurolinguistics School on Child Language Development, 22-24 июня 2020 г., Москва, Россия.

Староверова В. Постерный доклад “Development of phonological and orthographic parafoveal processing during reading in Russian”. The 26th Architectures and Mechanisms of Language Processing Conference, 3-5 сентября 2020 г., Потсдам, Германия.

Здорова Н. Постерный доклад “The role of phonological and orthographic processing in Russian children reading development”. IX Международная конференция по когнитивной науке, 12-16 октября 2020 г., Москва, Россия.

Здорова Н. Устный доклад “Phonological and orthographic processing affect reading fluency in Russian children”. 4th International Neurobiology of Speech and Language Conference, 13-14 октября 2020 г., Санкт-Петербург, Россия.

Староверова В. Устный доклад “Development of phonological and orthographic parafoveal processing during reading in Russian”. 4th International Neurobiology of Speech and Language Conference, 13-14 октября 2020 г., Санкт-Петербург