Effects of orthographic consistency on eye movement behavior: German and English children and adults process the same words differently.

The current study investigated the time course of cross-linguistic differences in word recognition. We recorded eye movements of German and English children and adults while reading closely matched sentences, each including a target word manipulated for length and frequency. Results showed differential word recognition processes for both developing and skilled readers. Children of the two orthographies did not differ in terms of total word processing time, but this equal outcome was achieved quite differently. Whereas German children relied on small-unit processing early in word recognition, English children applied small-unit decoding only upon rereading-possibly when experiencing difficulties in integrating an unfamiliar word into the sentence context. Rather unexpectedly, cross-linguistic differences were also found in adults in that English adults showed longer processing times than German adults for nonwords. Thus, although orthographic consistency does play a major role in reading development, cross-linguistic differences are detectable even in skilled adult readers.

Training device for dental students to practice mirror-inverted movements.

The goal of this study was to explore whether the ability of precise mirror-inverted movements can be learned and improved with the device Mirroprep and whether practice success can be transferred to the clinical situation. Three groups of students at different levels of dental study and different achievement levels were asked to perform a drawing exercise with indirect vision using Mirroprep. Further, the group of most senior students were asked whether the motor skills learned with this device were helpful in clinical tooth preparations by use of the dental mirror. According to the test results, we were able to show that mirror-inverted motor functions can be learned and improved by practice and that it is also helpful for performing tooth preparations. Because of this, it is deemed reasonable for students to start practicing with the training device during their preclinical studies and to have their skills tested.