Evaluating the reading quality of Brazilian undergraduates, assessed through eye-tracking and lexical quality measures

• Grant number: 20/15916-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: October 01, 2021
• End date: December 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Cognitive Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Katerina Lukasova
• Grantee: Isabel Almeida Bender Verrone
• Host Institution: Centro de Matemática, Computação e Cognição (CMCC). Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC). Ministério da Educação (Brasil). Santo André , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research aims to measure the reading ability of university students based on the Lexical Quality construct (PERFETTI, 2002, 2017) and the use of the preview benefit in word recognition. Given the chronic problem of reading performance of a large portion of the Brazilian high school students, and as well as the belief that those arriving at the university must have overcome this difficulty, we propose to measure the reading ability of newly arrived students in the light of the Lexical Quality construct and the use of parafoveal reading; to identify whether the Brazilian Portuguese spelling (PBT-BR) plays the same role reportedby native speakers of English reading it. Several tasks are to be applied to collect data regarding the orthographic, semantic, and syntactic recognition of words which were fully supplied by the subjects of the high school curriculum. Students' reading practice of these words will be evidenced by the lexical quality of the freshmen. To study the use of the parafovea we will use the Flexible Frontier Paradigm (MCONKIE and RAYNER, 1975) in the eye tracker. The work is also to measure the reading ability of senior students, with the same procedure used with the new students, to investigate if the reading demanded during the graduation ends up improving the individual reading ability, as well as whether university indicators of school performance reflect this supposed progress. (AU)