Eye-Movement Patterns in Picture Book Reading for Preschool Children with Hearing Loss

Picture book reading is an educational experience that occurs when children attend to the text in a book while simultaneously listening to its narration. Whether preschool children with hearing loss reliant on assistive devices behave similarly to hearing children during reading with a narrator remains unknown. Sixty preschool children aged from 3 to 7, with or without hearing loss, read a picture book independently or with a narrator. Children with hearing loss produced more fixations and longer viewing time on the picture and fewer fixations and less viewing time on the text than hearing children. Overall, children reading with a narrator paid more overall attention to the picture and less attention to the print compared to children reading independently. Although preschool children with hearing loss have difficulties with picture book reading, they may potentially reap the benefit of reading with a narrator.