Abstract
This paper investigated the effects of three different teaching methods (tracing letters with a stick, underlined a sentence, and reading a sentence) on the eye movements of students with intellectual disabilities while they read letters in a picture book. Twenty-three of the participants were autistic, while another 12 participants also had intellectual disabilities but were not autism. When they read a picture book, their eye movements were monitored by an eye tracker monitor that was linked to a computer. Participants’ length of visual fixation, fixation count, and first fixation duration on letters were analyzed. In the case of tracing letters with a stick and underlining a sentence, scores for fixation length and first fixation duration on letters were high. The cut-in illustration in the picture book did not influence the eye movements of the students. These results suggest that tracing letters with a stick and underlined a sentence are effective methods that help autistic and non-autistic students with intellectual disabilities to pay attention to letters.
