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Dark‐interval‐threshold, illumination level and children's reading performance
Author(s) -
Riding R. J.,
Pugh J. C.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
journal of research in reading
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.077
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1467-9817
pISSN - 0141-0423
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9817.1987.tb00279.x
Subject(s) - interval (graph theory) , psychology , reading (process) , audiology , mathematics , combinatorics , linguistics , medicine , philosophy
Nine‐year‐old children were given a test of dark‐interval threshold (DIT), and two parallel forms of the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability, one at low and the other at high illumination. DIT was measured by determining the shortest interval which caused a white disc viewed in a tachistoscope to disappear when the experimenter switched briefly to a second (black) field for an interval which ranged from 20 ms to 300 ms. A reasonable range of individual differences in DIT was found. There was a significant interaction (p<0.05) between DIT and illumination level in their effect on reading accuracy. Children who had a short DIT read more accurately in high than in low illumination, and the performance was reversed for long DIT subjects.