Reading, eyetracking, and diagnostics

Recent estimations show that 10 per cent of children population of Argentina suffers of Specific Learning Disorder (SLD). Attention disorders and SLD present, generally, large comorbidity making difficult to distinguish them clinically, in a quantitative way. In Argentina, the diagnosis of these disorders is performed by neurologists, basing on neuro-psychological evaluations performed by psycho-pedagogues. It is the aim of our studies to add or enhance the already existent tools based on the inclusion of physiological magnitudes. The eye movements can serve as a direct source of information about what is happening in the brain (Luna, Velanova, & Geier, 2008). Track the eyes of children while reading, gives a great amount of data to study the way reading is being process (Kliegl, Nuthmann, & Engbert, 2006). Analyzing statiscally the data, permits to obtain the number of fixation, the fixation duration, the saccade amplitude, among other other metrics (Duchowski, 2002). However more sophisticated quantities like reading speed processing can be also generated. In this work, we present the results of studies related to reading. We registered neurotypical and dyslexic children eye movements while reading. We process mathematically the data with the objective of introducing variables allowing clearly differentiate between both groups.