Is There a Relationship between Prereaders’ Visual Attention and Their Storytelling Performance? Evidence from Eye-Tracking and Qualitative Data

Abstract

In the Malaysian context, numerous studies explored young learners’ literacy skills but none uses the eye-tracking device to track the cognitive processes of prereaders when they are reading picture storybooks. For this project 22 prereaders (4-5 years old) listened to brief stories in four conditions: (a) only static text with narration (text condition), (b) oral narration, and a picture that was congruent with the narration (congruent condition),

(c) oral narration and an incongruent picture (incongruent condition), and (d) only picture with text but no oral narration (control condition). Inferential statistics were used to analyse the relationship between eye fixation, gender, and story-telling performance. The quantitative analysis revealed that the prereaders’ story-telling performance did not depend on treatment conditions, gender, or fixation patterns on the predefined areas of interest (AOI). To further understand this phenomenon a qualitative analysis was undertaken to explore the patterns of the prereaders’ storytelling performance (STP). The qualitative analysis suggested affective factors such as the prereaders’ state of mind and their level of attentiveness could have affected their STP. Hence, they may appear to be focusing on the screen but their attention could have been somewhere else or they could have been confused. In addition, their lack of proficiency in a language that was not their first/native language and their general inability to communicate well verbally could have  been contributory factors.