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TrilingualChildStudy
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Description: In this study, we investigated developmental aspects of eye movements during reading of three languages that vary widely in their orthographic consistency: English, German, and Finnish. Three groups of children, each native readers of one of the three languages, matched on years of reading instruction, along with a group of adult proficient readers in each language were tested. All participants read stimulus materials that were carefully translated and back-translated across all three languages. The length and frequency of 48 target words were manipulated experimentally within the stimulus set. Results showed that orthographic consistency influenced eye movement characteristics in children, but not in adults. For children, length effects were stronger in Finnish and German than in English. In addition, length effects were moderated by word frequency in Finnish and German, but not in English. This indicates that children learning to read consistent orthographies engage more strongly in sublexical decoding but are also more adaptive in adjusting their processing according to word frequency. Adults’ reading behavior, in contrast, was remarkably similar across languages. Our results, thus, demonstrate that eye movements are sensitive to language-specific features in children’s reading, but become continuously more homogenous as the reading skill develops.