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Adolescent students’ reading during writing behaviors and relationships with text quality: an eyetracking study

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Abstract

This study employed eyetracking technology to investigate adolescent students’ reading processes as they composed and to explore relationships between these reading processes and text quality. A sample of 32 adolescent students composed narrative and expository texts while eyetracking equipment recorded their eye movements. Eye movements upon a computer monitor indicating reading processes during composing were coded according to their position in the emerging text, and were coded as: reading at the point of inscription (monitoring recently composed words); local reading (reading recently composed sentences); global reading (reading paragraphs); or prompt reading. It was hypothesized that two reading during writing behaviors, global reading and local reading, would be related to text quality. Results of the multinomial multilevel logistic regression analysis indicated significant relationships between two reading processes (local reading and reading at the point of inscription, but not global reading), composing rate, and text quality.

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Notes

  1. For example, changing the step size or initial window.

  2. Recall, the transformation of the data was such that correlations among the residuals were expected.

  3. Additional tables can be provided upon request.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Judy Ramey and Rich DeSantos for their assistance with the eyetracking equipment in the LUTE Lab at the College of Technical Communication (University of Washington). We also thank John Gottman of the Relationship Research Institute for the use of coding equipment used in this study.

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Correspondence to Scott F. Beers.

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Beers, S.F., Quinlan, T. & Harbaugh, A.G. Adolescent students’ reading during writing behaviors and relationships with text quality: an eyetracking study. Read Writ 23, 743–775 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-009-9193-7

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