**4.1 Sample and data collection**

The 67 grade 8 and 9 learners who form the sample for this study attended two schools in densely populated areas of extreme poverty and high unemployment, 50 km from the nearest town, Bloemfontein, in South Africa. The sample was relatively academically strong for the context, since 50 of the learners had been identified, by their teachers, as being among the strongest in mathematics and natural sciences in their class, with the others being randomly chosen to increase the ability range. Each participant read a comprehension text about lighting, with a Flesch-Kincaid reading difficulty level [50] of grade 9, and answered four multiple choice questions about this text, individually, on a computer fitted with a Tobii TX300 eye-tracker. Tobii Studio 3.4.5, installed on the computer, was used for data extraction, including the generation of a screen-capture video showing eye-movements and mouse clicks, for each learner. The data collected for this article were obtained as the learners engaged with two screens. Screen 1 consisted of 5 lines of text about lighting, with an illustrative diagram below the text. Screen 2 was divided into two with the left-hand half being a repeat of the first screen and the right-hand half displaying the multiple choice questions one at a time. The learner progressed through the four questions once he/she had answered a question correctly.

Consistent with Pretorius and Spaull's [10] statistics about poor South African learners' reading abilities, 2 of the original 69 learners in this relatively strong sample did not even show evidence of being able to decode the text they were given to read since they moved their eyes randomly around the screen for a while before claiming they had finished reading. These 2 learners were therefore excluded from this study. The remaining 67 learners' eyes did track the text systematically, at least for parts of the text, suggesting, to the extent to which this is possible from eye tracking data, that they were engaging in text decoding, and so were admitted into the sample for this study.

These learners were divided into the categories shown in **Table 2**, which is based on the learners' reading behaviour and comprehension scores, informed both by a qualitative analysis of the learners' eye movements during the question answering process and by the scores the software displayed in response to their choices. Guessing was inferred if the learner did not read sufficient text in the question or


#### **Table 2.**

*Division of the sample into reading categories.*

chosen distractor to be able to answer the question with comprehension. Use of superficial text matching was inferred if the learner chose the distractor designed to have superficial ties to the question and comprehension text. For example, for the question "Why do you know that conditions are right for lightning if you feel your hair standing up in a storm?", the distractor "This means that you have a tingling feeling." has superficial correspondence to the text: "If you ever feel your hair standing up or get a tingling feeling during a storm it could mean charges are moving onto you and you may be in danger of being hit by lightning!". The comprehension score was derived as the average of the four scores obtained for the four-question multiple choice test, where each of these four scores was obtained as follows: If the learner engaged in guessing, inferred as described above, he/she was assigned 0% for that question. Otherwise, the learner was assigned 100% if he/she answered the question correctly on his/her first attempt, with 25% being subtracted for each successive incorrect attempt at the answer.

This classification system groups those who could be described as reading at the instructional or independent levels, according to Halladay's [19] comprehension criterion, together in the group 'Moderate readers'. The 23 barkers did not answer any of the 4 multiple choice questions correctly on the first attempt, except for a few cases of lucky guessing, i.e. happening to choose the correct option despite not having read the text of the option chosen or, frequently, even the question itself. From this we can deduce their comprehension of the text was minimal, well below the 50% minimum for inclusion in Halladay's [19] frustration level. The poor readers showed at least some evidence of trying to answer the questions from comprehension, rather than guessing or superficial text-matching, but were clearly poor comprehenders. They fall into the upper end of Halladay's [19] frustration level as well as in the unnamed category between the frustration and instructional levels. It should be noted that it is impossible, from the data at our disposal, to apply the decoding accuracy section of Halladay's [19] classification system. We assume that evidence of the eyes systematically tracking the text is indicative of engagement in a high degree of decoding accuracy. Particularly for the jumping barkers, whose eyes only tracked some of the text systematically, this assumption may not be valid.

#### **4.2 Metrics**

The following metrics were extracted from the eye-tracking data gathered as the learners read the 5-line text about lighting on screen 1:

**367**

*Eye Movements during Barking at Print DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.81898*

attempting to read it.

skew the data.

analysis.

**4.3 Data analysis**

word on the first pass read.

the passage.

• Reading speed: similar to the method in [47] reading speed was calculated as milliseconds per character calculated using the total time the participant read

• Fixation duration: this indicates the length of fixations during the reading and is measured in milliseconds. The fixation duration was calculated as the mean fixation duration for each participant. For this measure, both those who were

• Fixation count: the total number of fixations captured during the reading process. Additionally the number of fixations per word was also calculated. This gives an indication of the distribution of the fixations over the piece and, on average, how many fixations were required per word in the piece. For this measure, those who were jumping were removed as they would naturally have less fixations as a result of their behaviour. Consequently, they would have much fewer fixations and this would not be due to them experienced no difficulty in reading, but rather in skipping large areas of the text without

• Saccadic amplitude: as previously mentioned, the saccadic amplitude measures the distance between successive fixations. The mean saccadic amplitude per participant was calculated over the whole reading piece. Saccades which were longer than 8 degrees were considered to be a line sweep and were discarded. However regressive saccades were not discarded from this measurement. In this instance, participants who were jumping were also removed from the analysis, as they have very large saccades in order to facilitate their skipping behaviour. Even though the saccades were shorter than the length estimated for a line sweep, they would be fairly large and may unnecessarily

• Number of regressions: the total number of regressions was counted manually for each participant and defined as any fixation that has an upward and left movement in order to fixate on a piece of text that was previously read.

• First fixation duration: the mean first fixation duration was calculated for each participant and each word as an indication of the length that was required per

• Visit count: the mean number of visits to each word was calculated for each participant as an indication of how many times, on average, each word is looked at. A visit is defined as distinct viewings of the word, in other words, separate fixations on each word within a single reading of the word constitutes a single visit. In order for another visit to be registered, the participant must read another word and return to a previously read word. As with fixations, the jumping barkers were removed for this

As briefly mentioned above, for the analysis of all duration metrics, reading speed and regressions, the regular barkers and the jumping barkers were classed as a single category collectively referred to as "Barkers". Since the jumping barkers exhibited large saccades and few fixations as a result of their inherent reading behaviour which differs from regular barking they were excluded from the

jumping and using regular barking were included.

*Visual Impairment and Blindness - What We Know and What We Have to Know*

Barkers Jumping 10 23 Learner either

**Category n Criteria**

guessed or used superficial textmatching for all 4 questions on screen 2

Regular 13 Eyes faithfully tracked

Eyes tracked some text and jumped over other text on screen 1

the entire text on screen 1

Learner may have guessed or used superficial text-matching for some, but not for all, of the 4 questions on screen 2

screen 2

chosen distractor to be able to answer the question with comprehension. Use of superficial text matching was inferred if the learner chose the distractor designed to have superficial ties to the question and comprehension text. For example, for the question "Why do you know that conditions are right for lightning if you feel your hair standing up in a storm?", the distractor "This means that you have a tingling feeling." has superficial correspondence to the text: "If you ever feel your hair standing up or get a tingling feeling during a storm it could mean charges are moving onto you and you may be in danger of being hit by lightning!". The comprehension score was derived as the average of the four scores obtained for the four-question multiple choice test, where each of these four scores was obtained as follows: If the learner engaged in guessing, inferred as described above, he/she was assigned 0% for that question. Otherwise, the learner was assigned 100% if he/she answered the question correctly on his/her first attempt, with 25% being subtracted for each

Poor readers 25 Comprehension score was below 75%.

Moderate readers 19 Comprehension score was 75% or higher for

This classification system groups those who could be described as reading at the instructional or independent levels, according to Halladay's [19] comprehension criterion, together in the group 'Moderate readers'. The 23 barkers did not answer any of the 4 multiple choice questions correctly on the first attempt, except for a few cases of lucky guessing, i.e. happening to choose the correct option despite not having read the text of the option chosen or, frequently, even the question itself. From this we can deduce their comprehension of the text was minimal, well below the 50% minimum for inclusion in Halladay's [19] frustration level. The poor readers showed at least some evidence of trying to answer the questions from comprehension, rather than guessing or superficial text-matching, but were clearly poor comprehenders. They fall into the upper end of Halladay's [19] frustration level as well as in the unnamed category between the frustration and instructional levels. It should be noted that it is impossible, from the data at our disposal, to apply the decoding accuracy section of Halladay's [19] classification system. We assume that evidence of the eyes systematically tracking the text is indicative of engagement in a high degree of decoding accuracy. Particularly for the jumping barkers, whose eyes only tracked some of the text systematically, this assumption

The following metrics were extracted from the eye-tracking data gathered as the

learners read the 5-line text about lighting on screen 1:

successive incorrect attempt at the answer.

*Division of the sample into reading categories.*

**366**

may not be valid.

**4.2 Metrics**

**Table 2.**

