Eye-Movement and Performance during Reading by Cerebral Palsy Patients

Abstract

This chapter introduced the characteristics of CP patients reading Japanese documents in comparison with fully abled students through two experiments. Experiment 1 was designed to study the characteristics in reading Japanese still documents and Experiment 2 was designed to study the characteristics in reading Japanese scrolling documents. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that the CP patients needed more time to read the documents than the students regardless of the difficulty of the documents. The eye fixation duration of the CP patients was generally the same as the students, although slightly longer with the most difficult documents. The frequency of eye fixation of the CP patients was greater than the students regardless of the difficulty. The distribution map of the intervals between the eye fixations revealed that the CP patients performed more eye movements. The results of Experiment 2 revealed that the most comfortable scrolling speed of CP patients was slower than that of the students regardless of the size of the scrolling window. The most comfortable scrolling speed of CP patients was stable regardless of the window size, while the most comfortable scrolling speed of the students increased as the window size increased from 3 to 5 characters and the scrolling speed was stable in 5 characters or more. Further discussions of the occurrence of the characteristics of CP patients reading both the still document and the scrolling document were done.