Processing event nominalizations in developing readers: eye-tracking evidence from bilingual and dyslexic readers

Introduction Event nominalizations are a central feature of academic language: they compress complex events into nominal structures, increasing informational density while reducing the transparency of thematic-role assignment. The present eye-tracking study examined whether nominalizations impose greater processing demands than corresponding active and passive constructions in developing readers, and whether these effects vary across readers with different linguistic and literacy profiles. Methods Seventy-nine fifth- and sixth-grade children participated in the study: 28 typically developing monolingual Italian children, 21 monolingual Italian children with developmental dyslexia, and 30 typically developing bilingual children with migrant background and Italian as the societal language. Participants silently read short passages in which the same target event was expressed either as a nominalization, a passive construction, or an active construction, and then answered comprehension questions while their eye movements were recorded. Accuracy, standard eye-movement measures, and scanpaths were analyzed to capture comprehension outcomes and online reading strategies. Results Nominalizations did not significantly reduce comprehension accuracy, but they affected online processing during both initial reading and the question-answering phase. Scanpath dissimilarity was higher for nominalizations than for both verbal constructions during initial reading, and than for passives during question-answering in correctly answered trials. In these trials, nominalizations were also associated with a higher probability of partial rescanning and a lower probability of minimal rescanning relative to active texts, indicating greater reliance on rereading when answering questions correctly. Moreover, children with dyslexia showed a generalized increase in processing effort, whereas bilingual children displayed an intermediate profile, with increased reliance on rereading during question-answering. Discussion These findings indicate that nominalizations significantly influence online reading processes even when questions are answered correctly, suggesting additional demands in retrieving information about event participants. Overall processing patterns differed across reader groups, and children with dyslexia showed the greatest effort in both online reading and question-answering.