Animated adverts impair children’s online reading and text comprehension

In this study we examined the effects of animated adverts on children’s online reading. We conducted an eye-tracking experiment with authentic web pages to assess whether (1) advert animation primarily affects overt visual attention, or (2) animated adverts primarily affect text comprehension, or (3) both eye movements and comprehension are affected. 59 children in third grade (9-year-olds) participated in the study. The stimulus material con- sisted of 6 factual texts that were presented on a news website. Online banner adverts were presented in a column on the right side of the texts. The adverts were presented in two conditions: static and animated. After reading each text the children provided answers to multiple choice comprehension questions. The results showed that advert animation af- fected several text processing measures, such as fixation duration and regressive saccades. This effect was stronger among children with poor gaze control (as measured with an anti- saccade task). More importantly, however, the present study showed that animated adverts had a significant negative effect on children’s text comprehension. The study discusses how these findings could be used to regulate commercial content on children’s websites. Also, suggestions for using individual differences in eye movement measures to predict reading comprehension are explored. (Less)