An analysis of L1 readers’ meaning-making processes through producing and answering questions regarding picture books: Eye-tracking measurements and interviews

The aim of this research was to investigate readers’ meaning-making processes from words and pictures in picture books. Ten junior university students were engaged in eye-tracking analyses and interviews, and their eye movements and fixations from the words to the corresponding picture parts were analyzed. The results showed that the students produced some original questions when they were viewing and tracking on the double-page spread, and they demonstrated many types of approaches to producing and solving their own questions, utilizing structural relationships among the visual cues corresponding to their questions. The results of the study revealed tendencies that have implications for the processes of identifying how readers create structural relationships among visual cues in reading texts, and how they utilize these relationships to ask questions. It was concluded that these tendencies as well as the readers’ questions may be helpful in identifying students’ reading/viewing states.