Finger Movements and Eye Movements During Adults’ Silent and Oral Reading

Using a common tablet and a web application, we can record the finger movements of a reader that is concurrently reading and finger-pointing a text displayed on the tablet touchscreen. In a preliminary analysis of “finger-tracking” data of early-graders we showed that finger movements can replicate established reading effects observed in more controlled settings. Here, we analyse and discuss reading evidence collected by (i) tracking the finger movements of adults reading a short essay displayed on a tablet touchscreen, and (ii) tracking the eye movements of adults reading a comparable text displayed on the screen of a computer. Texts in the two conditions were controlled for linguistic complexity and page layout. In addition, we tested adults’ comprehension in both silent and oral reading, by asking them multiple-choice questions after reading each text. We show and discuss the reading evidence that the two (optical and tactile) protocols provide, and to what extent they show comparable effects. We conclude with some remarks on the importance of ecology and portability of protocols for large-scale collection of naturalistic reading data.