Reading & Answering Processes of Secondary School Students for Poetry & Prose

GW
eye tracking
reading processes
reading comprehension
secondary school students
Author

Corina Breukink, Huub van den Bergh, Ewout van der Knaap

Published

September 26, 2025

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Citation Metadata

Persistent Identifier doi:10.34894/RU8RFG
Title Reading & Answering Processes of Secondary School Students for Poetry & Prose
Subtitle An eye-track study
Author Corina Breukink (Utrecht University) - ORCID
Huub van den Bergh (Utrecht University) - ORCID
Point of Contact Corina Breukink (Utrecht University)
Description With four comprehension reading tasks for poetry and four for prose, eye movement registrations were used to study reading and response processes for poetry and prose among 38 students in grades 8, 10 and 12 of secondary school. First, the time taken by a student to read a line of text for the first time (area of interest, abbreviated as AOI) was measured. This reading measure - the Initial Reading Time, i.e. ‘first pass first gaze’ - is an indication of the extent to which the explicit text content (textbase) is processed. In all grades, the Initial Reading Time for the reading process shows little difference between poetry and prose. Secondly, the extent to which the Total Reading Time in an AOI differs between poetry and prose was examined. The Total Reading Time represents all the times that a reader has looked back at a line of text, making this reading measure an indication of the construction of a situation model of a text. The Total Reading Time for the reading process shows significant differences between poetry and prose. Students need more time to construct a situation model of a poetry text compared to a prose text. Furthermore, the Total Reading Time for the reading process of poetry and prose, significant differences have also been demonstrated between grades 8 & 12, while the values for year four fall between these two extremes. 12th graders make (more) effort to build a situation model from a poetry text by connecting parts of the text to each other and to their background knowledge. For the response process, the Total Reading Times between poetry and prose differ significantly for an average text-before-question AOI. After reading a question, 10th and 12th graders spend considerably more time reading a text-after-question poetry AOI. The reading process, as measured, does not appear to be related to answering text comprehension questions; no difference can be demonstrated in the reading process of students who answer a question correctly and students who answer a question incorrect. The longer reading times for poetry text AOIs compared to prose text AOIs are supported by findings from the interviews, namely that students from all grades find the poetry texts more difficult than the prose texts. (2025-12-16)
Subject Arts & Humanities; Social Sciences
Keyword eye tracking
reading processes
reading comprehension
secondary school students
Related Publication Is Supplement To: Breukink, C. (2024). Aandacht voor het leesproces: Onderzoek naar een leesprogramma voor poëzie en proza, gebaseerd op eye movement modeling examples van peers, voor leerlingen in de havo- en vwo-bovenbouw . [Doctoral thesis 1 (Research UU / Graduation UU), Universiteit Utrecht]. Utrecht University. doi: https://doi.org/10.33540/2522
Language Dutch, English
Production Location Zeist, The Netherlands
Contributor Researcher: Breukink, Corina
Supervisor: van den Bergh, Huub
Funding Information Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO): Promotiebeurs voor Leraren (023.011.07)
Distribution Date 45639
Depositor Moopen, Neha
Deposit Date 2025-12-15
Date of Collection Start Date: 2020-03-01; End Date: 2021-11-01
Data Type experimental data (recordings); experimental data (tabular); interview data (transcripts)
Software Experiment Center, Version: 3.7
SMI BeGaze, Version: 3.7
Fixation
Characteristic of Sources The SMI red mobile eye-tracker (version 3.6) was used to collect the eye-tracking data.

Social Sciences & Humanities Metadata

Unit of Analysis Individuals
Universe Secondary school students from grades 8, 10, 12. Aged 12-18, living in the Netherlands.
Time Method cross-sectional
Data Collector Breukink, Corina
Frequency one session with experimental tasks
Target Sample Size 38
Collection Mode eye-tracking experiment; stimulated recall interviews
Type of Research Instrument structured (eye-tracking experiment); semi-structured (stimulated recall interviews)
Characteristics of Data Collection Situation The eye-tracking experiment involved self-paced reading from a laptop screen, monitored by the researcher. Thereafter, the stimulated recall interviews involved presenting the gaze replays to the participants and having them reflect on their (significant) reading patterns, such as long fixations or skipping text.
Actions to Minimize Losses There was repeated calibration and validation of participants’ gaze, as well as monitoring of the experimental process by the researcher.
Control Operations To enhance data quality, participants’ gaze was directed to a (starting) fixation point on every screen.
Cleaning Operations The software Fixation (Cozijn, 2006) was used to clean the data.

Dataset Terms

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Restricted Files + Terms of Access

Data Access Place to be updated
Availability Status to be updated
Study Completion The study is completed.