Tuesday 22 January 2013

An effect on a student's eye movement management during reading of screen optimisation?




This is a short report on the effect of using an optimised computer screen on the reading performance of an FE student who has had major problems all the way through his education.

Can you spot what might have been the problem?

The first graph shows the student ‘s eye movements reading on a default computer screen.


To read the 83 words/493 characters his eyes had to stop 122 times. He was processing around 4 characters per fixation.

The second graph shows his eye movements when reading from an optimised computer screen.



To read 88 words/ 515 characters his eyes had to stop only 38 times. He was processing over 13 characters per fixation.

His eyes showed much greater symmetry of movement, not perfect, but we do not yet really know what is ‘perfect’.

His reading speed had gone from 178 words per minute to 447 words per minute.
We do not know for certain yet how this will affect his concentration, but his self confidence took a boost.

The question I ask is this.

Was his Phonological processing speed being controlled by the visual components of the task on the default background?
Or was the visual processing speed being controlled  by the phonological processing speed?

Optimum Settings
Red
Green
Blue
255
172
255

There was an improvement in  Oral Reading Fluency of 44%.  But the change in prosody, which cannot be quantified was absolutely immense.


There was no evidence of any focussing issues with his eyes.


I suppose this sort of anecdotal data can just be ignored. But what if robust psychophysical data is published?

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