Influence of increased letter spacing and font type on the reading ability of dyslexic children

Duranovic, Mirela; Senka, Smajlagic; Babic-Gavric, Branka

doi:10.1007/s11881-018-0164-z

Cited by 18 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Overall, our results are consistent with other findings obtained with crowding-free modalities such as Word Mode (30) or increasing inter-letter spacing (27,29) that have shown a positive effect on reading. Another study has degraded visually parafoveal stimuli, i.e.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Previous studies support the effectiveness of reducing clutter during reading in vulnerable populations using a variety of methods (inter-letter spacing, word by word presentation…) (26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32). The cost of clutter can also be reduced by a pointing gesture to focus attention on relevant items (33), an approach similar to cueing in crowding context (32).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

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Learning to read by reducing parafoveal crowding with a digital interface

Nguyen¹,

Lio²,

Perret³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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One source of difficulty in reading acquisition for first‐graders is that they are hindered by acrowding effect whereby the identification of a target letter or syllable is interfered with bysurrounding letters. We tested a reading protocol inspired by the Digit‐tracking method wherethe reading text was blurred to reduce visual clutter and attentional interference. As the indexfinger moved through the blurred text, the letters just above the finger position were unblurredand visible in foveal vision. We hypothesized that this approach might facilitate orthographicdecoding and promote efficient ocular‐digital scanning. Fifty‐four first‐grade children weredivided into two groups in a crossover design: half of the children did digit‐tracking exercises first,followed by plain paper exercises; the reverse order was used for the other half. Results showedthat progress in letters and syllables reading after digit‐tracking training was higher than afterpaper training. Using recorded finger trajectories as a proxy for eye movements, we found thattext scanning patterns (saccade length, landing position, regressive saccades) predicted children’sreading text difficulty and orthographic decoding skills. We conclude that digit‐tracking improvesfirst graders' reading and provides a sensitive metric of reading competences.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Learning to read by reducing parafoveal crowding with a digital interface

Nguyen¹,

Lio²,

Perret³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…Their results clearly showed that it is possible to obtain the same facilitatory effect obtained with Dyslexie on sentence reading, even when Arial has the same spacing as Dyslexie, and that a dedicated letterform is not necessary. This "increased spacing" effect has partially been replicated by Duranovic, Senka, and Babic-Gavric (2018), who found an improvement in accuracy, but not in reading speed, in a group of children with dyslexia, all native Bosnian speakers. Kuster et al (2017, Experiment 1) tested a large group of 170 children with dyslexia with the DF font Dyslexie, without finding evidence of a dedicated letterform effect.…”

mentioning

confidence: 82%

Inter-letter spacing, inter-word spacing, and font with dyslexia-friendly features: testing text readability in people with and without dyslexia

Galliussi

Perondi

Chia³

et al. 2020

Ann. of Dyslexia

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Over the last years, several studies have suggested a possible link between dyslexia and deficits in low-level visual processing (e.g., excessive crowding). At the same time, specially designed "dyslexia-friendly" fonts appeared on the market. This class of fonts presents two main features: the particular graphic characteristics of the letterform designed to avoid confusion between similarly shaped letters, and wider inter-letter and inter-word spacing to limit crowding. The literature testing the efficacy of "dyslexiafriendly" fonts in improving reading accuracy and increasing reading speed is controversial. We evaluated the impact of letterform (with vs. without dyslexia-friendly graphic features), inter-letter spacing (standard vs. increased), and inter-word spacing (standard vs. increased) on reading accuracy and speed. Two groups of 64 children each, with and without dyslexia, read aloud 8 equivalent texts. The data collected failed to show any effect from the letterform. As regards spacing, the data showed that reading speed is impaired by an increase in inter-letter spacing not combined with an adequate increase in inter-word spacing.

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“…A trend that has had extensive development in recent years is that of the "Dyslexia Friendly" typeface, a research area to which I personally contributed (Perondi et al, 2017;Galliussi et al, 2020). On this subject, in previous articles we have reported a series of ev-idences (Marinus et al, 2016;Duranovic et al, 2018;Kuster et al, 2017;Wery et al, 2017;Bollini et al, 2020) who compared Times New Roman, Simoncini Garamond, Verdana, Futura, Comic Sans, OpenDyslexic, EasyReading, Biancoenero in legibility and readability tasks) in which the differences found in the reading performances were not statistically significant, like in the experiments we conducted (Perondi et al, 2017;Galliussi et al, 2020).…”

Section: Serif Vs Sans and Other Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Typefaces Are All Almost the Same. Non-systematic Review of Scientific Findings on the Impact of Typographic Features on Reading Performance

Perondi

2021

Diid

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"The interest in discovering the limits of legibility has not ceased to interest those who use letters in typography and, to a certain extent, those who study the reading process. Sometimes the debate on the subject is marred by sensationalism. The research does not aim to identify a particular typeface and to promote it as “best for legibility”. The research aims to identify what are the possible reasons that make one typeface better than another and to make this knowledge available to the community, so that the typefaces can guarantee better reading performance, if this is possible."

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Influence of increased letter spacing and font type on the reading ability of dyslexic children

Cited by 18 publications

References 36 publications

Learning to read by reducing parafoveal crowding with a digital interface

Learning to read by reducing parafoveal crowding with a digital interface

Inter-letter spacing, inter-word spacing, and font with dyslexia-friendly features: testing text readability in people with and without dyslexia

Typefaces Are All Almost the Same. Non-systematic Review of Scientific Findings on the Impact of Typographic Features on Reading Performance

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