Individuals with dyslexia use a different visual reading strategy to sample text: Comprehensive evidence from eye-tracking

Individuals with dyslexia present with reading-related deficits including slow reading speed, and worse text comprehension and word encoding. Reports of visual symptoms such as atypical eye movements during reading gave rise to a search for these deficits’ underlying mechanisms. This study sought to replicate established behavioural deficits in reading and cognitive processing speed while investigating their underlying mechanisms in more detail by developing a comprehensive profile of eye movements specific to reading in adult dyslexia. Using a validated standardized reading assessment, our findings confirm a persistent reading speed deficit among adults with dyslexia. These individuals exhibited slower cognitive processing speed on one type of processing speed task, which correlated with reading speed across all readers. We observed different eye movements in readers with dyslexia across numerous eye movement metrics including the duration of a stop (i.e., fixation), the length of jumps (i.e., saccades), and the number of times a reader’s eyes expressed a jump atypical for reading. We conclude that individuals with dyslexia visually sample written information in a laborious and more effortful manner that is fundamentally different from those without dyslexia. Our findings suggest a mix of aberrant cognitive linguistic and oculomotor processes being present in adults with dyslexia.