Educationally-oriented measures of handwriting fluency--tasks such as written alphabet recall and sentence copying--conflate graphomotor skill and various higher-level abilities. Direct measurement of pen control when forming letters requires analysis of pen-tip velocity associated with the production of sub-letter features that, in a skilled…

To explore the dynamics of processing in manuscript production, it is necessary to possess a system for recording the writer's graphic activity. This work describes the new version of the Eye and Pen program (version 3.01). In addition to the fact that it is now freely available (https://www.eyeandpen.net), the improvements described focus on its…

There is widespread concern about declining literacy skills in recent young Japanese. The present study investigated how higher-level reading and writing proficiencies are underpinned by basic literacy skills in Japanese adolescents. From a large database of the most popular literacy exams in Japan, we retrospectively analyzed word- and text-level…

To investigate whether audiovisual associative learning uniquely contributed to Chinese character reading (accuracy and fluency), the current study examined it along with phonological processing skills, including phonological memory, phonological awareness, and rapid automatized naming (hereafter, RAN). Hierarchical regression analyses found that…

Four experiments were designed to investigate the possible effect of orthographic neighborhood frequency (NF) on Chinese character recognition. Orthographic neighbors were operated under two conditions: stroke based and radical based. With the lexical decision and repeated-matching tasks adopted, the results showed an inhibitory NF effect on…

The relative importance of phonological versus morphological processes in reading varies depending on the writing system's orthographic consistency and morphological complexity. This study investigated the interplay between phonology and morphology in Hebrew reading acquisition, a language offering a unique opportunity for such examination with…

Assessments of reading and reading-related skills which measure acquired knowledge may pose problems for the prediction of future reading performance. Such static measures often result in floor effects in the early stages of reading instruction, and may be particularly inaccurate predictors for children from culturally and linguistically diverse…

This study explores the effectiveness of machine learning and eye movement features in predicting Chinese reading proficiency. Unlike previous research, which focused on one or two specific levels of eye movement features, this study integrates passage-, sentence- and word-level eye movement features to predict reading proficiency. By analyzing…

Although most studies in the field of literacy development suggest that writing and reading are two sides of the same coin, very little is known about writing in kindergarten in comparison to the vast number of studies on reading. In this study, we explored the connections between writing and reading using correlation and regression analyses…

Establishing relations between concepts and ideas is vital for university-level reading. However, students often understand expository text only superficially (Graesser, 2007), especially in the case of a second language (L2). Insufficiently developed linguistic competence, inadequate prior knowledge or weaker reading skills may all lead to a lack…

According to the tripartite model of text representation (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983), readers form representations of the text surface and textbase, and construct a situation model. In this study, an experiment was conducted to investigate whether these levels of representation would be affected by adding illustrations to narrative text and…

Derivational suffixes are known to play a crucial role in assigning stress to multi-syllabic words among native English speakers. However, it is unclear whether second language (L2) learners of English can effectively use derivational suffixes as stress cues in written words. To address this gap, we studied if native Chinese-speaking adults…

The purpose of this study was to investigate if a group of sixth-grade low achievement language minority (LM) students' reading skills could be improved by an intervention designed to train reading fluency, a critical component of reading development, defined as integrating speed and accuracy (reading rate) as well as prosody. The study included…

Existing approaches to measuring writing performance are insufficient in terms of both technical adequacy as well as feasibility for use as a screening measure. This study examined the validity and diagnostic accuracy of several approaches to automated text evaluation as well as written expression curriculum-based measurement (WE-CBM) to determine…

This study set out to examine the basic reading skills (accuracy and fluency in decoding, word and text reading) and some of the reading-related language skills (phonological awareness and rapid-naming) of 54 adults with low reading comprehension, who read the transparent German orthography. Participants were born in Germany and showed a typical…