Eye Movements Behaviour in Reading Different Text Sizes among University Students

Reading efficiency is one of the main concerns among the teachers, publishers, and also eye care practitioners. The size of the text was among factor that might affect the reading. The eye movement behaviour was studied in six different text legibility. The saccades and fixation were recorded and tracked among twenty-five university students. Significant changes in eye movements behaviour in term of saccades and fixations occurred when the university students read passages with different text legibility. The eye movements behaviour was able to adapt to the changes in shape, and size of presented reading materials for better understanding of reading.Keywords: eye movements; saccadic; fixation; readingeISSN: 2398-4287 © 2019. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/e-bpj.v4i12.191

Text Size Affects Eye Movement during Reading among Young Adults and Adults with Presbyopia

Objective: Reading is an activity that indirectly informs a person’s visual capacity to distinguish letters and words. Reading begins with eye movements, then substantial cognitive processing and synthesis, before becoming voice reading. Therefore, text is a factor that could impact reading quality through its control of eye movements. This study examined the eye movements of young adults and adults with presbyopia using texts of different sizes. Materials and Methods: Twenty-five young adults and twenty-two adults with presbyopia and good vision were included in this study. Six text sizes of a passage were chosen as the reading stimuli. The eye movement of participants in saccades and fixation were captured, tracked, and analyzed using the Dikablis eye tracker glasses. Results: Eye movement of young adults differed significantly (p<0.05) when reading texts of different sizes. The eyes moved more and had a wider saccadic angle as the font size increased. An increase in fixations or stopping of the eyes were observed with larger texts. Adults with presbyopia had significantly different eye movement patterns than young adults (p<0.05), whereby these participants stopped more frequently at longer periods and had a narrower saccadic angle. Conclusion: Eye movements changed when reading texts of varied sizes and the movements differed between younger and older adults. These translate to altered visual searching and attention strategies with varied text readability, indicating that the oculomotor system adapts to the pattern, shape, and size of the presented reading material. This behavior could imply that cognitive processes have been altered to facilitate comprehension