Does Finger-Tracking Point to Child Reading Strategies?

Abstract

The movement of a child’s index finger that points to a printed text while (s)he is reading may provide a proxy for the child’s eye movements and attention focus. We validated this correlation by showing a quantitative analysis of patterns of “finger-tracking” of Italian early graders engaged in reading a text displayed on a tablet. A web application interfaced with the tablet monitors the reading behaviour by modelling the way the child points to the text while reading. The analysis found significant developmental trends in reading strategies, marking an interesting contrast between typically developing and atypically developing readers.