The Effect of Relevance on Children's Multiple Text Reading

Evidence From Eye Movements

Bibliographic Data

ID21392089
AuthorsTuomo Häikiö (0000-0001-6272-0255, Department of Psychology and Speech‐Language Pathology University of Turku Turku Finland, corresponding author), Oksana Kanerva (0000-0001-7309-0623, Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki University of Helsinki Helsinki Finland), Norbert Erdmann (0000-0001-9475-1785, Department of Teacher Education University of Turku Turku Finland), Mirjamaija Mikkilä-Erdmann (0000-0003-1569-794X, University of Turku), Mirjamaija Mikkilä‐Erdmann (Department of Teacher Education University of Turku Turku Finland), Johanna K Kaakinen (0000-0002-2970-826X, Department of Psychology and Speech‐Language Pathology University of Turku Turku Finland)
Year2026
Publication date2026-04-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScandinavian Journal of Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0036-5564 • E-ISSN: 1467-9450
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/sjop.70099
PMID41989046
OpenAlexW4403215454
LanguageEN
References cited39

We examined how Finnish children read and integrate information across multiple expository texts when given an inquiry task. We were interested in how task‐relevance of text information affects readers' eye movements and whether the eye movements are connected to the quality of an essay written after reading. We were also interested in differentiating between the effects of technical reading skill and reading comprehension in respect to these processes. In total, 24 5th and 6th grade Finnish native‐speakers completed the experiment. Prior to testing, the participants were told that at the end of the testing session, they would have to complete an inquiry task (e.g., “What's the difference between human and dog hearing?”). During an eye tracking experiment, the participants read two science texts on the topic of the inquiry task. The texts contained both task‐relevant and task‐irrelevant text segments. After the reading task, the children wrote an essay to complete the inquiry task. Furthermore, participants' technical reading skill and reading comprehension were measured with an independent classroom test. It was shown that the task‐relevant segments were read longer than the task‐irrelevant segments during first‐pass reading. Moreover, reading skills modulated the effect of relevance, as weaker comprehenders were less likely to regress within an irrelevant segment. Furthermore, the relevance effect was more pronounced for the better technical readers with respect to look‐backs. No reliable effects were found for the essay‐writing task. The results imply that the participants were able to detect which parts of the text were relevant and adjusted their reading accordingly, based on their reading skills. However, they did not seem to form a coherent memory representation of the relevant text contents in order to perform well in the essay writing task

Cognitive psychology · Eye movement · Linguistics · Political science · Reading (process) · Relevance (law) · Neuroscience · Philosophy · Psychology · Reading and Literacy Development

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