Abstract
While reading silently, we process only the visual information of the text. Conversely,
while reading texts orally, we process the visually presented text and produce the au-
ditory information of the text through articulatory movement. These activities are
assumed to facilitate the memory and comprehension of textual information. Although
we cannot use such auditory nor motor information while reading silently, there is little
difference between the degree of comprehension based on silent and oral reading for
adult readers. The purpose of this study is to explain how we compensate the loss of
multisensory process during silent reading by comparing the visual processing process
during silent and oral reading. In Experiment 1, we measured the eye-movement dur-
ing reading garden-path and normal sentences silently and orally. In Experiment 2,
we compared the eye-movement during reading more common paragraph silently and
orally. The results showed that silent reading took shorter time for comprehension than
oral reading, and readers had more visual fixation points and read back frequently dur-
ing reading silently than orally. These reading strategies during silent reading seemed
to compensate the loss of multisensory process and support the text comprehension.
