ABSTRACT

Children are normally considered to have learned to read once they are reading silently without moving their lips and without tracing the words with their fingers. But in terms of the fantastic amount of visual information that the brain can take in and retain, they are all very poor readers. Learning to read is seen as learning to recognize the letters and put them into words. Peripheral vision performs a most valuable function during reading. Words that lie ahead of the point of fixation will be partially received by the eye and transmitted to the brain. On the basis of this slightly blurred view of what is coming, the brain will tell the eye where to move to next. The eye does not move along the line in a regular series of jumps but skips redundant words and concentrates on the most useful and distinguishing parts of the text.