Features of oculomotor activity in children with intellectual disabilities when reading text

The article presents an analysis of oculomotor activity observed during visual perception, reading text in primary school children with intellectual disabilities. There is a need to expand knowledge on visual perception of text reading in this category of children, since the heterogeneity of intellectual disabilities is expanding. Previous studies show that such children have a slow speed of perception, difficulties in establishing associative links, a slow rate of comprehension, a low level of self-control, and a limited ability to predict. With increasing technological capabilities, there is a need to study oculomotor activity in children with intellectual disabilities in order to identify features such as where the gaze is directed, how long the gaze is held on a certain word, what is the trajectory of the gaze forward, backward, up, down. The eye tracking method, or eye movement registration, is considered one of the most promising approaches. It meets the requirements of the ecological validity of the experiment. It becomes relevant to study how a child sees, perceives and reads the text. The question is raised about studying such parameters as fixation time; time of the first fixation; number of returns; amplitude and number of all saccades. In order to record these parameters, the child was presented with a text that he should simply read out loud. The program records all indicators. As a result of data processing, it was revealed that children with intellectual disabilities have difficulties with the search task, as well as difficulties in deciphering the text and, in particular, the words that make up the text. The time of the first fixation is increased. The number of all fixations and the number of returns indicate that the reading process is a cognitive load for them due to the fact that the process of forecasting and self-control is not formed in them.