A Proposed Modification Of The King-Devick Saccade Test And Its Correlation To Reading Level In A Second Grade Population.

In light of the intimate relationship between saccadic eye movements and reading, measurements of saccadic fixation ability are often utilized as indicators of poor reading ability. The Pierce Saccade Test is a standardized test which has been used in the past for this purpose. This test has some shortcomings, in that the saccades involved are widely
separated and equally spaced, resulting in contamination due to habituation and anticipation. Further, the amplitudes and line width of the required saccades are far greater than those habitually encountered in normal reading tasks. The King-Devick modification of the Pierce Test added more fixations to each line, thus reducing the amplitudes of the required fixations, and subsequently found that their test better differentiated between good and poor readers than did the Pierce Test. However, the King-Devick Test still utilizes a greater line width, and somewhat larger saccadic amplitudes than are commonly encountered in normal reading. In an effort to simulate the magnitude of saccades and line widths
most commonly used in everyday reading material, a new saccade test was
devised, based on the modification of King-Devick Test III. This test,
along with K-D III (King-Devick III), was run on 33 second grade students
in the Big Rapids area, whose age ranges were seven years and four months
to nine years and one month. Each of the students were classified as
either adequate or inadequate readers by the estimation of their classroom
teacher, with whom they had worked for approximately seven months. Mean
values and standard deviations were determined for each of the groups, and
-icorrelations
between reading abilities and test scores were determined for
each of the tests administered.