Eye Movements During Reading in Bilingual Primary School Children: a Scoping Review

There is a growing interest in the reading development of bilingual children. Surprisingly, however, little research has been conducted on bilingual children’s reading acquisition and development. This scoping review synthesized the findings of existing studies on bilingual primary school childrens’ eye movements during reading and outlined future research directions. In the review, we mapped the differences between monolingual and bilingual children’s eye movements during reading, as well as the differences in bilingual children’s eye movements during reading in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Additionally, we summarized the factors shown to influence monolingual and bilingual children’s eye movements during reading. These factors fell into two categories: linguistic and language-related factors, and factors related to individual differences. The results of the review revealed that differences - or the absence thereof - in the eye movements of bilingual and monolingual readers, as well as the variations in bilingual children’s reading in L1 and L2, are influenced by a variety of individual and language-related factors. However, due to the scarcity of existing studies, no definitive conclusions can be drawn at this time. Further eye-movement research is needed to shed light on the reading development of bilingual children.