Cognitive engagement and reading comprehension of French pupils aged between 9- and 11-Years old are influenced by task relevance: evidence from concurrent recordings of postural and eye movements

Abstract The relevance effect refers to the influence that instructions have on readers’ attention and learning. The present study examined whether relevance influences elementary school students’ reading comprehension and cognitive engagement. To measure the latter, eye movements and postural sway were recorded in 42 French speaking students aged 9.3–11.6 years. Eye movements were recorded with infrared-based eye-tracking glasses, and postural sway with an infrared-based motion capture system. Children read two texts, one task-relevant and one task-irrelevant, and answered surface and inference questions right after reading it. Results showed that children scored better on surface and inference questions about the relevant text than about the irrelevant one. As for eye movements, readers made more fixations on the relevant text and spent more time reading it. There was also less postural sway during the reading of the relevant text. These results indicate that cognitive engagement during reading is embodied in fourth- and fifth-grade students, with postural stability probably reflecting cognitive engagement and promoting the construction of meaning during reading tasks.