Why older people struggle to read fine print: It's not what you think

Unique research into eye-movements of young and old people while reading discovers that word recognition patterns change as we grow older.

Psychologists from the University of Leicester have carried out unique eye tests to examine reading styles in young and old people -- and discovered for the first time that the way we read words changes as we grow older.

The team from the School of Psychology used an innovative method of digitally manipulating text combined with precise measures of readers' eye movements. This provides novel insights into how young and older adults use different visual cues during reading.

Their results have been published in the journal Psychology and Aging.

The researchers conducted experiments that used very precise measures of readers' eye movements to assess how well they read lines of text that had been digitally manipulated to enhance the salience of different visual information. For instance, sometimes the text was blurred and other times the features of the individual letters were sharply defined.