Abstract
This is a brief summary of a monograph published by the author in 1920 (Supplementary Educ. Mono. No. 17). Studies were made of the relationship between eye and voice in reading by means of photographic records of eye movements which were synchronized with dictaphone records of the voice. Good readers were found to differ from poor ones in length of eye-voice span, the eye keeping farther ahead of the voice in good readers; in length of the fixation pauses, the pauses being shorter in good readers; in number of fixations per line of print, the better readers having fewer fixations; and finally in relative length of eye-voice span in different parts of the sentence, the poor readers having a rather uniform and shorter span throughout the sentence, and the good readers having a long span at the beginning and a short span at the end of a sentence.The eye-voice span was found to be quite flexible and dependent on the character of the matter read, much more than on the mechanical arrangement of the printed matter. The knowledge of these differences between good and poor readers should be of great service in determining methods of instruction in reading.
