The aim of the present study was to investigate the perceptual (or the span of effective vision) of
normal elementary school students with still-developing reading skills and visuo-attentional processes,
using the “moving-window display change technique.” Twenty normal elementary school students
participated. They read 60 difficult sentences (Choi & Koh, 2009; 2014) and 48 age-appropriate
sentences. Six different window sizes were used in the experiment. These sizes included 3, 5, 7, and
11 characters as well as a whole line. The reading rate, number of fixations, saccadic distance,
fixation duration, and regression rate were compared between each window-size condition and the
whole line condition. Considering the pattern of eye-movement measures above, the size of the
perceptual span of normal elementary school students in Korean reading may be estimated to be 9
characters, that is, 4 characters to the right of the fixation. Although beginning readers apparently
have smaller spans than more proficient readers, sentences appropriate to their reading level could be
read more proficient. The results indicate that the size of the perceptual span varies depending on
reading skill, but the perceptual span is quite similar across languages in terms of information
obtained.