Do easy-to-read adaptations really facilitate sentence processing for adults with a lower level of education? An experimental eye-tracking study

The Easy-to-Read guidelines recommend visual support and lexical simplification to facilitate text processing, but few studies have empirically verified the efficacy of these guidelines. This study examined influence recommendations on sentence processing by examining eye movements at text- word-level in adult readers. We tested 30 non-university adults (low education level) university (high level). experimental task consisted 60 sentences. Half were accompanied an image half not, contained a low-frequency word high-frequency word. Results showed that facilitated both groups adults, significantly slower than processing. However, resulted faster adults’ group. Conclusions focus mechanisms which adaptations benefit readers, practical implications for reading comprehension.