@ARTICLE{MARZI_2025_ARTICLE_MNLSTPF_549321, 
 AUTHOR = {Marzi, C. and Nadalini, A. and Lento, A. and Srivastava, M. and Todesco, A. and Pirrelli, V. and Ferro, M.}, 
 TITLE = {Oral text reading as a multi-sensory task}, 
 YEAR = {2025}, 
 ABSTRACT = {Reading aloud involves the complex interplay of visual, motor and lexical processes. While eye movements have been extensively investigated in the reading literature, less is known about the coordination of voice, eye and finger movements in oral and finger-point reading. Here we propose a multimodal perspective on these dynamics, emphasising the contribution of integrating eye-tracking, finger-tracking, and voice recording to a more comprehensive understanding of reading proficiency. Our results show that finger and eye movements are strongly coupled in early readers. Conversely, skilled readers show a more flexible coordination of sensorimotor signals and a more adaptive sensitivity to prosodic structures, with voice articulation slowing at key structural points, such as chunk heads and sentence-final boundaries. These findings provide novel insights into how multimodal coordination evolves with reading expertise, contributing to a more fine-grained understanding of reading fluency}, 
 KEYWORDS = {reading development, multimodal integration, eye-voice span, finger-voice span, adaptive reading.}, 
 PAGES = {141-156}, 
 URL = {https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1418/117447}, 
 VOLUME = {XXIV (1)}, 
 DOI = {10.1418/117447}, 
 ISSN = {1720-9331}, 
 JOURNAL = {LINGUE E LINGUAGGIO}, 
}

@ARTICLE{NADALINI_2025_ARTICLE_NMFCCC_548023, 
 AUTHOR = {Nadalini, A. and Marzi, C. and Ferro, M. and Cinini, A. and Cutugno, P. and Chiarella, D.}, 
 TITLE = {Inferential Reading Skills in High School: A Study on Comprehension Profiles}, 
 YEAR = {2025}, 
 ABSTRACT = {Reading comprehension of connected texts is a key skill in high school education, yet students exhibit varying proficiency levels, particularly in inferential reasoning. This study investigates reading behavior by means of finger-tracking technique and question answering among Italian 10th, 11th, and 12th year high school students, analyzing their performance on different types of questions: synonymy and reference vs. inference-based questions. Despite similar reading times and lexical effects across grades, students’ accuracy in answering inferential questions reveals significant variability. Subsequently, we identify three comprehension profiles—poor, medium, and good comprehenders—with the first two groups showing markedly lower performance on inference-based questions. These findings suggest that schooling alone may not be sufficient for all students to develop strong inferential skills, and some may benefit from targeted instructional support}, 
 KEYWORDS = {reading strategies, comprehension profiles, inferential processing, finger-tracking, cognitive reading processes}, 
 URL = {https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/15/6/654}, 
 VOLUME = {15 (6)}, 
 DOI = {10.3390/educsci15060654}, 
 ISSN = {2227-7102}, 
 JOURNAL = {EDUCATION SCIENCES}, 
}

@ARTICLE{MARZI_2023_ARTICLE_MMV_452198, 
 AUTHOR = {Marzi, C. and Melloni, C. and Vender, M.}, 
 TITLE = {Finger-tracking reading profiles in monolingual and bilingual early graders}, 
 YEAR = {2023}, 
 ABSTRACT = {In this paper we propose an analysis of the reading behaviour of a group of Italian monolingual (n= 24) and bilingual (n= 35) 2nd schoolgraders, engaged in the tasks of reading aloud lists of isolated words and nonwords (from the DDE-2 test battery), as well as narrative connected textsdisplayed on the touch-screen of a common tablet, to be read either aloud or silently. A finger-tracking technique is illustrated, which provides detailed information about the reading behaviour and attention focus of early graders. Our results reveal various differences between groups. In particular, a different tracking pattern emerged in reading long, morphologically-complex word forms, correlating with a higher decoding error rate and comprehension difficulties in bilingual children compared with their monolingual peers. We suggest that the unsteady, discontinuous reading pattern for long noun and verb forms may be due to a (proto)-morphological reading strategy, with monolingual children being more successful in benefiting from a morpheme-based reading route. We also discuss the potentials of the finger-tracking technique as a tool to offer a more profound and comprehensive analysis of the reading profiles of both monolingual and bilingual readers}, 
 KEYWORDS = {developing readers, bilingualism, L2 literacy, connected text reading, morphological processing, finger-tracking}, 
 PAGES = {327-361}, 
 URL = {https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1418/109051}, 
 VOLUME = {XXII (2)}, 
 DOI = {10.1418/109051}, 
 ISSN = {1720-9331}, 
 JOURNAL = {LINGUE E LINGUAGGIO}, 
}

@ARTICLE{NADALINI_2023_ARTICLE_NMFTLCP_501822, 
 AUTHOR = {Nadalini, A. and Marzi, C. and Ferro, M. and Taxitari, L. and Lento, A. and Crepaldi, D. and Pirrelli, V.}, 
 TITLE = {Eye-voice and finger-voice spans in adults’ oral reading of connected texts}, 
 YEAR = {2023}, 
 ABSTRACT = {The present paper investigates the interaction between eye movements, voice articulation and the movements of the index finger dynamically pointing to a text line in oral finger-point reading of Italian. During finger-point reading, the finger appears to be ahead of the voice most of the times, by a margin that is significantly modulated by the distribution of phrasal and prosodic units in the reading text. Eye movements replicate the same effects on a different time scale. The eye is ahead of both voice and finger by a wide margin (confirming evidence observed for English and German sentence reading), while showing a tendency to re-synchronise with voice articulation at the right edge of strong prosodic units (sentence boundaries). Our evidence suggests a multicomponent view of the time span between the eye/finger and the voice. The span is shown to be the dynamic outcome of an optimally adaptive reading strategy, resulting from the interaction between individual decoding skills, the reader's phonological buffer capacity, and the structural complexity of a reading text. Proficient readers modulate their span to compensate for the different timing between word fixation and word articulation, read faster, and dynamically adjust their processing window to the meaningful, prosodic units of a text}, 
 KEYWORDS = {finger-point reading, eye-tracking, finger-tracking, eye-voice span, finger-voice span, eye-finger coordination, parallel processing, working memory, phonological buffer, adaptive reading}, 
 PAGES = {366-400}, 
 URL = {https://benjamins.com/catalog/ml.00025.nad}, 
 VOLUME = {18 (3)}, 
 DOI = {10.1075/ml.00025.nad}, 
 ISSN = {1871-1340}, 
 JOURNAL = {THE MENTAL LEXICON}, 
}

@ARTICLE{MARZI_2022_ARTICLE_MNMMP_419693, 
 AUTHOR = {Marzi, C. and Narzisi, A. and Milone, A. and Masi, G. and Pirrelli, V.}, 
 TITLE = {Reading behaviors through patterns of finger-tracking in Italian children with autism spectrum disorder}, 
 YEAR = {2022}, 
 ABSTRACT = {The paper proposes an ecological and portable protocol for the large-scale collection of reading data in high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) children based on recording the finger movements of a subject reading a text displayed on a tablet touchscreen. By capitalizing on recent evidence that movements of a finger that points to a scene or text during visual exploration or reading may approximate eye fixations, we focus on recognition of written content and function words, pace of reading, and accuracy in reading comprehension. The analysis showed significant differences between typically developing and ASD children, with the latter group exhibiting greater variation in levels of reading ability, slower developmental pace in reading speed, less accurate comprehension, greater dependency on word length and word frequency, less significant prediction-based processing, as well as a monotonous, steady reading pace with reduced attention to weak punctuation. Finger-tracking patterns provides evidence that ASD readers may fail to integrate single word processing into major syntactic structures and lends support to the hypothesis of an impaired use of contextual information to predict upcoming stimuli, suggesting that difficulties in perception may arise as difficulties in prediction}, 
 KEYWORDS = {reading, autism, finger-tracking, deleloping readers, prediction-driven processing}, 
 PAGES = {1-17}, 
 URL = {https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/12/10/1316}, 
 VOLUME = {12 (1316)}, 
 DOI = {10.3390/brainsci12101316}, 
 ISSN = {2076-3425}, 
 JOURNAL = {BRAIN SCIENCES}, 
}

@INCOLLECTION{CREPALDI_2022_INCOLLECTION_CFMNPT_415388, 
 AUTHOR = {Crepaldi, D. and Ferro, M. and Marzi, C. and Nadalini, A. and Pirrelli, V. and Taxitari, L.}, 
 TITLE = {Finger movements and eye movements during adults' silent and oral reading}, 
 YEAR = {2022}, 
 ABSTRACT = {Using a common tablet and a web application, we can record the finger movements of a reader that is concurrently reading and finger-pointing a text displayed on the tablet touchscreen. In a preliminary analysis of "finger-tracking" data of early-graders we showed that finger movements can replicate established reading effects observed in more controlled settings. Here, we analyse and discuss reading evidence collected by (i) tracking the finger movements of adults reading a short essay displayed on a tablet touchscreen, and (ii) tracking the eye movements of adultsreading a comparable text displayed on the screen of a computer. Texts in the two conditions were controlled for linguistic complexity and page layout. In addition, we tested adults' comprehension in both silent and oral reading, by asking them multiple-choice questions after reading each text. We show and discuss the reading evidence that the two (optical and tactile) protocols provide, and to what extent they show comparable effects. We conclude with some remarks on the importance of ecology and portability of protocols for large-scale collection of naturalistic reading data}, 
 KEYWORDS = {Reading, finger-tracking, digital technology}, 
 PAGES = {443-471}, 
 URL = {https://link.springer.com/book/9783030998905}, 
 PUBLISHER = {Springer (Dordrecht, NLD)}, 
 ISBN = {978-3-030-99890-5}, 
 CONFERENCE_PLACE = {Dordrecht}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {Developing language and literacy-Studies in Honor of Dorit Diskin Ravid}, 
 EDITOR = {Levie, R. and Bar On, A. and Ashkenazi, O. and Dattner, E. and Brandes, G.}, 
}

@INCOLLECTION{CAPPA_2021_INCOLLECTION_CFG_444774, 
 AUTHOR = {Cappa, C. and Ferro, M. and Giulivi, S.}, 
 TITLE = {Valutare l'efficienza di lettura in classe, fra "ecologia" e tecnologie}, 
 YEAR = {2021}, 
 ABSTRACT = {La sperimentazione AEREST ha consentito la creazione di un protocollo in grado di offrire una valutazione accurata e dettagliata delle abilità di lettura e comprensione del testo. Lo strumento si è rivelato semplice da utilizzare per gli insegnanti, ed è stato accolto con curiosità e interesse dagli allievi, certamente attratti dal supporto utilizzato per la somministrazione (il tablet), ma anche dai testi, che sono stati scelti e adattati con particolare cura. L'analisi dei dati ha consentito di identificare una considerevole varietà di profili di lettori, per i quali sarà possibile progettare percorsi di potenziamento mirati. Come già accennato, si è potuta constatare l'efficacia dello strumento nell'identificazione di allievi le cui difficoltà (pur evidenti agli occhi degli insegnanti) non vengono rilevate dai test comunemente utilizzati per la valutazione, ma la cui lettura non può essere considerata 'efficiente'. Costituiscono esempi in questo senso gli allievi che decodificano in modo accurato e veloce, con buone prestazioni nella comprensione all'ascolto, ma che manifestano difficoltà nella comprensione di un testo in lettura silente, poiché in questa attività devono integrare la decodifica con l'accesso al significato. Un ulteriore esempio è costituito dagli allievi che ottengono buoni risultati in tutti i test, impiegando però un tempo eccessivamente lungo per svolgerli. Nella prospettiva qui adottata, anche per questi allievi è necessario individuare strategie di supporto volte a evitare che le attività scolastiche, in particolare i compiti a casa, occupino una parte troppo ampia del tempo dell'allievo, togliendo spazio al gioco, allo svago, agli interessi personali e alla socializzazione. Questi ultimi sono aspetti che, come sottolinea la Carta internazionale dei diritti dei bambini (1959), rivestono un'importanza cruciale per il processo di crescita e il benessere generale di ciascuno. Oltre alle difficoltà, il protocollo AEREST consente di mettere in evidenza le prestazioni eccellenti, grazie alla struttura dei test e alle caratteristiche dei testi e delle domande che li accompagnano. Capire a fondo come "funzionano" gli allievi è indispensabile per poterli sostenere al meglio negli apprendimenti, indipendentemente dalla presenza o meno di un'"etichetta" diagnostica. Gli insegnanti hanno in questo senso una grande responsabilità, e uno strumento come AEREST, grazie anche all'implementazione su piattaforma tecnologica, può aiutarli in quella che forse è la loro principale sfida quotidiana: fare in modo che le difficoltà scolastiche non siano vissute come barriere all'apprendimento, al successo scolastico, alle opportunità professionali, alla realizzazione personale, ma come soglie da superare e da trasformare in trampolini di lancio}, 
 KEYWORDS = {efficienza di lettura, decodifca, comprensione, scuola primaria}, 
 PAGES = {49-69}, 
 URL = {https://buponline.com/prodotto/disturbi-specifici-dellapprendimento-e-insegnamento-linguistico/}, 
 PUBLISHER = {Bononia University Press (Bologna, ITA)}, 
 ISBN = {978-88-6923-829-1}, 
 CONFERENCE_PLACE = {Bologna}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {Didattica dell'italiano}, 
 EDITOR = {Garulli, V. and Pasetti, L. and Viale, M.}, 
}

@INCOLLECTION{GIULIVI_2021_INCOLLECTION_GCF_444779, 
 AUTHOR = {Giulivi, S. and Cappa, C. and Ferro, M.}, 
 TITLE = {Le difficoltà di lettura. Limiti o soglie calpestabili?}, 
 YEAR = {2021}, 
 ABSTRACT = {'Se alzi un muro, pensa a ciò che resta fuori', scrive Italo Calvino in uno dei suoi romanzi più celebri, Il barone rampante. Quante volte alziamo muri, nelle situazioni e negli ambiti più disparati, magari senza che ce ne sia volontà o consapevolezza? La scuola, paradossalmente, è forse uno dei contesti in cui più spesso ciò accade. Non per negligenza, né per carenza di competenze-almeno nella maggioranza dei casi-ma perché la complessità dell'universo educativo, e di una classe, è spesso difficile da afferrare, accettare, accogliere, gestire, percepire come un valore. Il problema è che, in certi casi, a restare fuori dal muro sono le opportunità di apprendimento degli allievi, il loro benessere scolastico ed extrascolastico, le loro possibilità future. La lettura e le opportunità di accesso al testo possono costituire uno dei migliori trampolini di lancio, oppure una delle maggiori barriere, verso un'educazione adeguata, verso la possibilità di partecipazione attiva nella società, verso future opportunità accademiche e professionali. Le abilità legate alla lettura, la maggiore o minore efficienza con cui l'allievo le sviluppa costituiscono anche una delle principali fonti di complessità in classe. Da qualche tempo si assiste in Ticino a una crescente attenzione verso le difficoltà e i disturbi della lettura. I docenti sono sempre più sensibili, informati e aggiornati sul tema. Ciò che ancora sfugge, tuttavia, è l'estrema eterogeneità dei profili dei 'piccoli lettori', e la reale natura delle difficoltà che possono manifestarsi in età scolare. Consideriamo, per esempio, una delle cause di tali difficoltà: la dislessia, il disturbo specifico dell'apprendimento (DSA) che impedisce l'automatizzazione della decodifica del testo scritto. Si tratta di un disturbo di origine neurobiologica; ciò non significa, tuttavia, che si manifesti in modi sempre uguali o costanti nel tempo. Ogni dislessia (o altro DSA) è diversa da ogni altra e ogni dislessia evolve nel tempo insieme all'allievo. Come ricorda Giovanni Bollea, fondatore della neuropsichiatria infantile in Italia, "i disturbi dei bambini sono disturbi che cambiano in persone che cambiano" (Bollea, 1980). I DSA possono cambiare per una molteplicità di fattori, che spaziano dalle caratteristiche cognitive ed emotive del singolo, a quelle dei contesti in cui vive, agisce, apprende: la scuola, la famiglia, gli spazi di svago e socializzazione. Riuscire a gestire a scuola questo genere di complessità significa creare le condizioni per trasformare potenziali barriere in trampolini di lancio; significa permettere a tutti gli allievi, anche a coloro che devono fare i conti con un disturbo o una difficoltà di lettura, di trarre il massimo dal luogo primariamente preposto agli apprendimenti e all'educazione}, 
 KEYWORDS = {scuola primaria, didattica, apprendimento}, 
 PAGES = {32-37}, 
 URL = {https://iris.cnr.it/handle/20.500.14243/444779}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {Scuola Ticinese}, 
 EDITOR = {Biffi, C. and Falconi, R.}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{FERRO_2024_INPROCEEDINGS_FMNTLP_501843, 
 AUTHOR = {Ferro, M. and Marzi, C. and Nadalini, A. and Taxitari, L. and Lento, A. and Pirrelli, V.}, 
 TITLE = {ReadLet: a Dataset for Oral, Visual and Tactile Text Reading Data of Early and Mature Readers}, 
 YEAR = {2024}, 
 ABSTRACT = {The paper presents the design and construction of a time-stamped multimodal dataset for reading research, including multiple time-aligned temporal signals elicited with four experimental trials of connected text reading by both child and adult readers. We present the experimental protocols, as well as the data acquisition process and the post-processing phase of data annotation/augmentation. To evaluate the potential and usefulness of a time-aligned multimodal dataset for reading research, we present a few statistical analyses showing the correlation and complementarity of multimodal time-series of reading data, as well as some results of modelling adults’ reading data by integrating different modalities. The total dataset size amounts to about 2. 5 GByte in compressed format and is available through the CLARIN infrastructure}, 
 KEYWORDS = {text reading, eye movements, finger movements, eye-finger span, synchronisation, parallel processing, multimodality}, 
 PAGES = {13595-13609}, 
 URL = {https://aclanthology.org/volumes/2024.lrec-main/}, 
 PUBLISHER = {ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA) (Parigi, FRA)}, 
 ISBN = {978-2-493814-10-4}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024)}, 
 CONFERENCE_PLACE = {Parigi}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024)}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{LENTO_2024_INPROCEEDINGS_LNFMPDKSTK_513008, 
 AUTHOR = {Lento, A. and Nadalini, A. and Ferro, M. and Marzi, C. and Pirrelli, V. and Dimitrova, T. and Kukova, H. and Stefanova, V. and Todorova, M. and Koeva, S.}, 
 TITLE = {Assessing Reading Literacy of Bulgarian Pupils with Finger-tracking}, 
 YEAR = {2024}, 
 ABSTRACT = {The paper reports on the first steps in developing a time-stamped multimodal dataset of reading data by Bulgarian children. Data are being collected, structured and analysed by means of ReadLet, an innovative infrastructure for multimodal language data collection that uses a tablet as a reader’s front-end. The overall goal of the project is to quantitatively analyse the reading skills of a sample of early Bulgarian readers collected over a two-year period, and compare them with the reading data of early readers of Italian, collected using the same protocol. We illustrate design issues of the experimental protocol, as well as the data acquisition process and the post-processing phase of data annotation/augmentation. To evaluate the potential and usefulness of the Bulgarian dataset for reading research, we present some preliminary statistical analyses of our recently collected data. They show robust convergence trends between Bulgarian and Italian early reading development stages}, 
 KEYWORDS = {Finger Tracking, Reading, Learning, Text Comprehension.}, 
 PAGES = {140-149}, 
 URL = {https://dcl.bas.bg/clib/proceedings/}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {Sixth International Conference on Computational Linguistics in Bulgaria (CLIB 2024)}, 
 CONFERENCE_PLACE = {BGR}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Computational Linguistics in Bulgaria (CLIB 2024)}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{LENTO_2024_INPROCEEDINGS_LNKPMF_519724, 
 AUTHOR = {Lento, A. and Nadalini, A. and Khlif, N. and Pirrelli, V. and Marzi, C. and Ferro, M.}, 
 TITLE = {Comparative Evaluation of Computational Models Predicting Eye Fixation Patterns During Reading: Insights from Transformers and Simpler Architectures}, 
 YEAR = {2024}, 
 ABSTRACT = {Eye tracking records of natural text reading are known to provide significant insights into the cognitive processes underlying word processing and text comprehension, with gaze patterns, such as fixation duration and saccadic movements, being modulated by morphological, lexical, and higher-level structural properties of the text being read. Although some of these effects have been simulated with computational models, it is still not clear how accurately computational modelling can predict complex fixation patterns in connected text reading. State-of-the-art neural architectures have shown promising results, with pre-trained transformer-based classifiers having recently been claimed to outperform other competitors, achieving beyond 95% accuracy. However, transformer-based models have neither been compared with alternative architectures nor adequately evaluated for their sensitivity to the linguistic factors affecting human reading. Here we address these issues by evaluating the performance of a pool of neural networks in classifying eye-fixation English data as a function of both lexical and contextual factors. We show that i) accuracy of transformer-based models has largely been overestimated, ii) other simpler models make comparable or even better predictions, iii) most models are sensitive to some of the major lexical factors accounting for at least 50% of human fixation variance, iv) most models fail to capture some significant context-sensitive interactions, such as those accounting for spillover effects in reading. The work shows the benefits of combining accuracy-based evaluation metrics with non-linear regression modelling of fixed and random effects on both real and simulated eye-tracking data}, 
 KEYWORDS = {eye-tracking, eye fixation time prediction, neural network, contextual word embeddings, lexical features}, 
 PAGES = {10}, 
 URL = {https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3878/}, 
 VOLUME = {VOL-3878}, 
 PUBLISHER = {CEUR (Aachen, DEU)}, 
 ISBN = {979-12-210-7060-6}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it)}, 
 CONFERENCE_PLACE = {Aachen}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of the Tenth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it 2024)}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{BRUNO_2021_INPROCEEDINGS_BGCMF_446977, 
 AUTHOR = {Bruno, E. and Giulivi, S. and Cappa, C. and Marini, M. and Ferro, M.}, 
 TITLE = {Evaluating the accuracy of decoding in children who read aloud}, 
 YEAR = {2021}, 
 ABSTRACT = {Digital tools based on automatic speech recognition (ASR) could be a useful support for teachers in assessing the reading skills of the students. We focus on the evaluation of the decoding accuracy of children with grade level ranging from the 3rd to the 6th performing a reading aloud task on a narrative text displayed on an ordinary tablet using the ReadLet platform. On the basis of previously collected data, we built a gold dataset with sentences characterised by the audio data, the original text to be read, and the text actually spoken by the child. By using the open-source Kaldi toolkit an ASR system based on the GMM-HMM model was trained on the training portion of the gold dataset. The accuracy of the ASR system was calculated as the ability to correctly decode the test audio data with respect to the annotated text, and the decoding accuracy of the children was estimated by measuring the gap between the results obtained with the annotated text and the original text. A consistent trend with increasing grade level was found in terms of word correctness, substitutions and insertions, while the trained model appears to be significantly able to evaluate the children decoding accuracy}, 
 KEYWORDS = {speech recognition, decoding accuracy, reading aloud, voice parameters, Kaldi, GMM-HMM acoustic model}, 
 PAGES = {145-148}, 
 URL = {https://iris.cnr.it/handle/20.500.14243/446977}, 
 DOI = {10.36253/978-88-5518-449-6}, 
 PUBLISHER = {Firenze University Press (Firenze, ITA)}, 
 ISBN = {978-88-5518-449-6}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {12th International Workshop on Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications (MAVEBA'21)}, 
 CONFERENCE_PLACE = {Firenze}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications (MAVEBA'21)}, 
 EDITOR = {Manfredi, C.}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{TAXITARI_2021_INPROCEEDINGS_TCFMNP_423945, 
 AUTHOR = {Taxitari, L. and Cappa, C. and Ferro, M. and Marzi, C. and Nadalini, A. and Pirrelli, V.}, 
 TITLE = {Using mobile technology for reading assessment}, 
 YEAR = {2021}, 
 ABSTRACT = {The enormous potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for addressing critical educational issues is generally acknowledged, but its use in the assessment of the complex skills of reading and understanding a text has been very limited to date. The paper contrasts traditional reading assessment protocols with ReadLet, an ICT platform with a tablet front-end, designed to support online monitoring of silent and oral reading abilities in early graders. ReadLet makes use of cloud computing and mobile technology for large-scale data collection and allows the time alignment of the child's reading behaviour with texts tagged using Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools. Initial findings replicate established benchmarks from the psycholinguistic literature on reading in both typically and atypically developing children, making the application a new ground-breaking approach in the evaluation of reading skills. Index Terms-reading assessment, reading research, mobile technology, NLP, cloud computing, special education needs}, 
 KEYWORDS = {reading assessment, reading research, mobile technology, NLP, cloud computing, special education needs}, 
 PAGES = {1-6}, 
 URL = {http://www.ieee.ma/cist20/component/content/?id=26\&Itemid=185}, 
 ISBN = {9781728166469}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {6th IEEE Congress on Information Science \& Technology (IEEE CIST'20)}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of the 6th IEEE Congress on Information Science and Technology (CiSt)}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{FERRO_2020_INPROCEEDINGS_FGC_423948, 
 AUTHOR = {Ferro, M. and Giulivi, S. and Cappa, C.}, 
 TITLE = {The AEREST reading database}, 
 YEAR = {2020}, 
 ABSTRACT = {Aerest is a reading assessment protocol for the concurrent evaluation of a child's decoding and comprehension skills. Reading data complying with the Aerest protocol were automatically collected and structured with the ReadLet web-based platform in a pilot study, to form the Aerest Reading Database. The content, structure and potential of the database are described here, together with the main directions of current and future developments}, 
 KEYWORDS = {reading database, reading efficiency, decoding, comprehension, multimodal analysis}, 
 PAGES = {1-6}, 
 URL = {http://www.scopus.com/record/display.url?eid=2-s2.0-85097912116\&origin=inward}, 
 VOLUME = {2769}, 
 PUBLISHER = {Accademia University Press (Torino, ITA)}, 
 ISBN = {9791280136282}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {7th Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLIC-IT'20)}, 
 CONFERENCE_PLACE = {Torino}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{MARZI_2020_INPROCEEDINGS_MRNTP_382398, 
 AUTHOR = {Marzi, C. and Rodella, A. and Nadalini, A. and Taxitari, L. and Pirrelli, V.}, 
 TITLE = {Does finger-tracking point to child reading strategies?}, 
 YEAR = {2020}, 
 ABSTRACT = {The movement of a child's index finger that points to a printed text while (s)he is reading may provide a proxy for thechild's eye movements and attention focus. We validated this correlation by showing a quantitative analysis of patterns of "finger-tracking" of Italian early graders engaged in reading a text displayed on a tablet. A web application interfaced with the tablet monitors the reading behaviour by modelling the way the child points to the text while reading. Theanalysis found significant developmental trends in reading strategies, marking an interesting contrast between typically developing and atypically developing readers}, 
 KEYWORDS = {reading assessment, reading strategies, mobile technology, special educiation needs}, 
 PAGES = {1-7}, 
 URL = {http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2769/paper_60.pdf}, 
 VOLUME = {2769}, 
 PUBLISHER = {CEUR-WS. org (Aachen, DEU)}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics 2020}, 
 CONFERENCE_PLACE = {Aachen}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of the Seventh Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{TAXITARI_2020_INPROCEEDINGS_TCFMNP_501841, 
 AUTHOR = {Taxitari, L. and Cappa, C. and Ferro, M. and Marzi, C. and Nadalini, A. and Pirrelli, V.}, 
 TITLE = {Using mobile technology for reading assessment}, 
 YEAR = {2020}, 
 ABSTRACT = {The enormous potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for addressing critical educational issues is generally acknowledged, but its use in the assessment of the complex skills of reading and understanding a text has been very limited to date. The paper contrasts traditional reading assessment protocols with ReadLet, an ICT platform with a tablet front-end, designed to support online monitoring of silent and oral reading abilities in early graders. ReadLet makes use of cloud computing and mobile technology for large-scale data collection and allows the time alignment of the child’s reading behaviour with texts tagged using Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools. Initial findings replicate established benchmarks from the psycholinguistic literature on reading in both typically and atypically developing children, making the application a new ground-breaking approach in the evaluation of reading skills}, 
 KEYWORDS = {reading assessment, reading research, mobile technology, NLP, cloud computing, special education needs}, 
 PAGES = {302-307}, 
 URL = {https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9357173}, 
 VOLUME = {2020-JUNE}, 
 DOI = {10.1109/CiSt49399.2021.9357173}, 
 ISBN = {978-1-7281-6646-9}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {6th IEEE Congress on Information Science and Technology (CiSt)}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of the 6th IEEE Congress on Information Science and Technology (CiSt)}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{FERRO_2018_INPROCEEDINGS_FCGMNCP_350556, 
 AUTHOR = {Ferro, M. and Cappa, C. and Giulivi, S. and Marzi, C. and Nahli, O. and Cardillo, F. A. and Pirrelli, V.}, 
 TITLE = {ReadLet: Reading for Understanding}, 
 YEAR = {2018}, 
 ABSTRACT = {This paper focuses on motivation, objectives, design issues and preliminary results of ReadLet, an ICT platform for assessing reading efficiency in primary school children. Test data are discussed on a sample of 200 early graders, reading French, Italian and Standard Modern Arabic (SMA)}, 
 KEYWORDS = {Reading, text comprehension, Specific Learning Disorders, multimodal signal processing, cloud computing, portable assistive technology}, 
 PAGES = {404-409}, 
 URL = {https://publications.cnr.it/doc/390504}, 
 PUBLISHER = {IEEE (New York, USA)}, 
 ISBN = {978-1-5386-4385-3}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {IEEE-CIST2018 LED-ICT}, 
 CONFERENCE_PLACE = {New York}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of the IEEE Congress on Information Science and Technology (CiSt)}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{MARZI_2022_INPROCEEDINGS_MNFMMVPTP_413387, 
 AUTHOR = {Marzi, C. and Narzisi, A. and Ferro, M. and Masi, G. and Milone, A. and Viglione, V. and Pelagatti, S. and Tomassini, I. and Pirrelli, V.}, 
 TITLE = {Patterns of finger-tracking in Italian early readers with Autism Spectrum Disorder}, 
 YEAR = {2022}, 
 ABSTRACT = {Background: Of late, the synergistic interaction of eye and hand movements in the exploration of a visual scene displayed on a computer touchscreen was shown to provide a congruent signature of the "attention maps" of subjects with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A familiar context where this visual and tactile interaction is exploited is when children use the finger of their dominant hand to point the letters of written words as they are reading, particularly at early stages of their literacy development. In the present work, a dedicated app running on a common tablet is used to capture and analyse the finger-tracking behaviour of children with ASD while they are reading few episodes of a connected text on the tablet touchscreen. The reader's voice is also recorded through the tablet built-in microphone. The sliding movements of the finger across the tablet touchscreen are discretized into a series of densely distributed "touch events", which are then mapped onto the text lines in much the same way eye fixations are projected onto a sequence of words using an eye-tracker. Reading texts are linguistically annotated, to control for levels of reading difficulty, and finger-tracking times are associated with linguistic glosses. Objectives: Investigate patterns of finger-tracking as a potential non biological marker for identification of children with ASD. Methods: A preliminary analysis is offered of evidence of the finger-tracking behaviour of 20 Italian children with high functioning ASD, aged 7-11 years, while they are engaged in reading. A grade-matched control group of children with typical development was included. Patterns of finger-tracking are assessed in connection with three complementary aspects of reading behaviour: (1) word recognition, (2) pace of reading of multi-word intonation units, and (3) text comprehension, controlled by asking children a few multiple-choice questions on text content after each reading session. Results: Considerable variation in levels of reading ability was observed in the ASD sample, with a few children showing clear evidence of impaired reading comprehension. However, fluent readers with ASD exhibit the same correlation between accurate decoding (assessed by measuring per-word reading speed) and high levels of reading comprehension found in controls. Likewise, decoding rates were found to significantly increase with increasing grade levels, following the typical developmental pattern observed in controls. On a less local level of linguistic analysis, the reading pace of ASD readers fails to be modulated according to major syntactic structures, punctuation marks and direct speech turns, an effect concomitant with a flat prosodic intonation of oral reading. Conclusions: Preliminary findings confirm the heterogeneous nature of reading skills in children with ASD, showing that the use of a tablet screen as a tactile interface for visual perception analysis can offer a robust experimental protocol for large-scale, multimodal collection of naturalistic data for extensive assessment of readers with ASD}, 
 KEYWORDS = {reading, autism, finger-tracking, developing readers, prediction-driven processing}, 
 PAGES = {192-192}, 
 URL = {https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.autism-insar.org/resource/resmgr/files/insar_2022/2022_Abstract_Book.pdf}, 
 VOLUME = {2022}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {INSAR}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {2022 annual meeting abstract book}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{MARZI_2021_INPROCEEDINGS_MTFNP_426392, 
 AUTHOR = {Marzi, C. and Taxitari, L. and Ferro, M. and Nadalini, A. and Pirrelli, V.}, 
 TITLE = {Valutare la lettura "in tempo reale": un esempio di integrazione tra linguistica computazionale e linguistica applicata}, 
 YEAR = {2021}, 
 ABSTRACT = {In anni recenti, linguistica computazionale e linguistica applicata hanno ampliato i loro rispettivi ambiti d'indagine, utilizzando l'ontologia formale della linguistica teorica e i modelli cognitivi della psicolinguistica per studiare le difficoltà che i parlanti incontrano nello svolgimento di "compiti" linguistici specifici. Nell'ambito della lettura, le tecnologie per il Trattamento Automatico del Linguaggio (TAL) si sono dimostrate capaci di classificare il livello di leggibilità di un testo, basandosi sulla distribuzione di alcuni parametri linguistici in testi pre-classificati per età dei lettori destinatari, o per grado di scolarità, o per livello di sviluppo cognitivo. Ad esempio, parole o frasi più lunghe, o parole più rare tendono a distribuirsi in testi di più difficile comprensione, o destinati a lettori più maturi. E' possibile così assegnare a un testo, o a ogni singola frase, un punteggio di leggibilità in funzione (inversa) della complessità lessicale, morfologica, sintattica o pragmatica dell'unità testuale analizzata. In Linguistica Applicata (LA) la valutazione della difficoltà di lettura ha seguito un approccio funzionale. Nel modello semplice di lettura, ad esempio, la capacità di leggere un testo è analizzata come il prodotto dell'interazione tra decodifica e comprensione. Attraverso l'osservazione di un campione di bambini impegnati nella lettura, è possibile valutare la loro fluenza in decodifica, gli errori di decodifica e comprensione, e l'efficacia di percorsi educativi personalizzati. La piattaforma ReadLet è stata sviluppata con l'obiettivo di integrare l'approccio classificatorio del TAL con quello funzionale della LA. Il bambino legge un breve testo visualizzato sullo schermo di un tablet, ad alta voce o in modalità silente. In entrambi i casi, al bambino viene chiesto di "tenere il segno" con il dito sullo schermo nel corso della lettura. La traccia tattile è registrata e allineata con il testo visualizzato sullo schermo mediante un algoritmo di convoluzione. Al contempo, il testo è annotato automaticamente per tratti linguistici. Alla fine della sessione di lettura silente, il bambino risponde ad alcune semplici domande sul contenuto del testo. I dati raccolti consentono di valutare le difficoltà (rallentamenti o errori) che il bambino incontra nella lettura, e di mettere in relazione "in tempo reale" queste difficoltà con aspetti linguistici specifici del testo. Un'analisi preliminare dei dati raccolti da ReadLet su oltre 400 allievi di alcune scuole elementari toscane e della Svizzera italiana, ha evidenziato il differente "passo" di lettura tra lettori con sviluppo tipico e atipico, e il peso che variabili come lunghezza, frequenza e lessicalità hanno su profili di lettura individuali e aggregati. La possibilità di "controllare" automaticamente la distribuzione di queste variabili nel testo e di correlarle con le difficoltà del singolo bambino consente, infine, di somministrare testi con livelli di difficoltàgradualmente crescenti, rendendo possibili percorsi personalizzati di potenziamento}, 
 KEYWORDS = {reading assessment, reading strategies, NLP, ICT mobile technologies}, 
 PAGES = {5-5}, 
 URL = {https://iris.cnr.it/handle/20.500.14243/426392}, 
 VOLUME = {2021}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {XXI Congresso Internazionale di AItLA}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {FARE LINGUISTICA APPLICATA CON LE DIGITAL HUMANITIES}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{PIRRELLI_2020_INPROCEEDINGS_PCCDFGMNT_427657, 
 AUTHOR = {Pirrelli, V. and Cappa, C. and Crepaldi, D. and Del Pinto, V. and Ferro, M. and Giulivi, S. and Marzi, C. and Nadalini, A. and Taxitari, L.}, 
 TITLE = {Tracking the pace of reading with finger movements}, 
 YEAR = {2020}, 
 ABSTRACT = {Recent experimental evidence in visual perception analysis shows that eye and finger movements strongly correlate during scene exploration, at both individual and group levels. A familiar context which exploits this synergistic behaviour is when children learn to read, with the practice of finger-pointing to text as a support for their attention focus, directional movement and voice-print match. Using a tablet to display short texts, we collected evidence on the finger-pointing behaviour of 3rd-6th Italian graders engaged in both silent and oral reading. "Finger-tracking" data, sampled by the tablet and aligned with the text, made it possible to time a child's reading paceat word and sentence level. Results are shown to replicate established benchmarks in the reading literature, such as the difference in reading pace between age-matched typical and atypical readers as a function of word frequency and length, and neighbourhood entropy and Old20. Atypical readers show increasing difficulty with longer words, with a steeper time increment for word length \> 6, integrating previous evidence. In addition, neighbourhood density plays a sparse facilitative role in atypical reading, with no significant interaction with neighbourhood entropy, pointing to a non trivial developmental interplay between sublexical reading and the richness of the Italian orthographic-phonological lexicon. Despite their different dynamics, optical and tactile strategies for text exploration prove to be highly congruent: this suggests that finger-tracking can be used as an ecological proxy for eye-tracking in reading assessment}, 
 KEYWORDS = {Reading, Finger tracking, Mental Lexicon, Word frequency, Word Length, Neighbourhood entropy}, 
 PAGES = {1}, 
 URL = {https://osf.io/hr62g/}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {Words in the World International Conference}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {Words in the World book of abstracts}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{CAPPA_2018_INPROCEEDINGS_CFGMNCP_351301, 
 AUTHOR = {Cappa, C. and Ferro, M. and Giulivi, S. and Marzi, C. and Nahli, O. and Cardillo, F. and Pirrelli, V.}, 
 TITLE = {ReadLet: piattaforma ICT per valutare l'efficienza di lettura}, 
 YEAR = {2018}, 
 ABSTRACT = {ReadLet è una piattaforma ICT pensata per valutare accuratamente l'efficienza di lettura nei bambini della scuola primaria. Combina tecnologia ICT portatile e cloud-computing con una serie di moduli software, specifici per modalità di somministrazione. Questi, implementati come servizi web, includono: i) valutazione dell'elaborazione del testo e della leggibilità; ii) valutazione della velocità di lettura (ad alta voce e silente) e delle sue fluttuazioni); iii) valutazione della correttezza della decodifica ad alta voce; iv) valutazione della comprensione del testo (in lettura silente e da ascolto). Un prototipo della tecnologia ReadLet è stato sperimentato su circa 200 alunni (8-11 anni), che variano per stato socio-economico, lingua (italiana, francese, araba) e area geografica (Italia, Svizzera, Marocco). L'utilizzo del tablet per la lettura è stato percepito dai bambini come un'esperienza coinvolgente e piacevole. Gli insegnanti hanno trovato lo strumento facile da utilizzare e in grado di fornire maggiori informazioni rispetto agli strumenti tradizionali}, 
 KEYWORDS = {leggere per capire, disturbi del linguaggio, screening}, 
 URL = {https://www.airipa.it/congresso/pluginfile.php/2781/mod_resource/content/1/ProgrammaCongressoAIRIPA_Arezzo_dettagliato-3.pdf}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {XXVII Congresso Nazionale AIRIPA}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {I disturbi dell'Apprendimento-Abstract book XXVII Congresso Nazionale AIRIPA}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{FERRO_2018_INPROCEEDINGS_FCGMCP_351299, 
 AUTHOR = {Ferro, M. and Cappa, C. and Giulivi, S. and Marzi, C. and Cardillo, F. and Pirrelli, V.}, 
 TITLE = {ReadLet: an ICT platform for the assessment of reading efficiency in early graders}, 
 YEAR = {2018}, 
 ABSTRACT = {Reading is not just word decoding, but the joint product of decoding and deep linguisticcomprehension [ 1, 2 ]. Effective linguistic comprehension relies on language skills such assemantic and syntactic awareness. Both decoding and linguistic comprehension are necessary forreading comprehension, and neither is by itself sufficient [ 2 ]. However, current protocols forreading assessment measure decoding (reading accuracy and speed) and reading comprehensionseparately [ 3, 4, 5 ]. This does not allow evaluation of reading efficiency [ 6 ], defined as the abilityto fully understand connected texts by minimising reading time, a cognitive ability that lies at theroots of students' academic achievement [ 8, 7 ]. ReadLet is an ICT platform specifically designedto provide accurate, evidence-based assessment of reading efficiency in early grade children, byoffering an ecological, non-invasive protocol for extensive data elicitation, storage and analysis. With ReadLet, early graders at school can read a one or two page text displayed on atablet touchscreen, either silently or aloud. Children are asked to slide their finger across thewords as they read, to guide directional tracking. After reading, the child is prompted with a fewmultiple-answer questions on text content presented one at a time, while the text remainsdisplayed on the screen for the child to be able to retrieve relevant information. In the process, the tablet keeps track of time-aligned multimodal data: voice recording, finger sliding time, timeof reading, time of question answering, and number of correct answers. Data are recorded, storedlocally, sent to the ReadLet server through an internet connection, and processed remotely by abattery of cloud-based services, analysing data automatically to produce a detailed quantitativesignature of each reading session. A server-based database aggregates anonymised data to makethem available for specialists. Also individual's longitudinal profiles are stored, for them bequeried and inspected upon authorised access. The platform combines portable ICT technology and cloud computing with a number ofmodality-specific software modules, implemented as web services including: i) a text processingand readability assessment service, consisting in a battery of tools for automated linguisticannotation of written texts and a machine-learning component assigning a readability score toannotated texts [ 9 ]; ii) a finger touch processing service aligning the child's finger sliding withthe written text and measuring speed fluctuations; iii) a speech processing and decodingassessment service, aligning the acoustic record of child's reading with the written text andassessing correctness of recoding [ 10 ]. At the time of writing, the platform includes the first twomodules only. Preliminary testing of a prototype version of ReadLet technology with apopulation of about 200 pupils aged 8 to 11, both male and female, varying for socio-economicstatus, language (Italian, French and Arabic) and geographical area (Italy and Morocco), showedthat children are extremely responsive to using a tablet for reading, and very easy to engage inwhat they perceive as an enjoyable experience. We expect online databases of automaticallyclassified cross-sectional and longitudinal data, accurate statistical modelling and developmentaltrends of reading literacy to help education professionals and clinical specialists assess the levelof reading skills reached by the child, and decide which intervention programmes and measuresare most appropriate. While information technology cannot and should not supplant the role andprofessional judgement of teachers and therapists, the project intends to provide portable tools, models and data for timely screening and daily management of reading difficulties and disorders}, 
 KEYWORDS = {reading efficiency, decoding, comprehension, language specific disorders}, 
 PAGES = {61-61}, 
 URL = {https://mentallexicon2018.ca/}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {11th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon}, 
 BOOKTITLE = {Book of Abstract of the 11th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon}, 
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{LEONI_2018_INPROCEEDINGS_LMCFG_351300, 
 AUTHOR = {Leoni, F. and Muzio, C. and Cappa, C. and Ferro, M. and Giulivi, S.}, 
 TITLE = {Il progetto AEREST: primi risultati in Italia e in Canton Ticino}, 
 YEAR = {2018}, 
 ABSTRACT = {Il progetto AEREST, per una valutazione ecologica dell'efficienza di lettura, è attualmente in corso presso alcune classi di scuola primaria di istituti italiani e ticinesi. Si presentano qui i risultati ottenuti a seguito della prima sessione di raccolta dati, che si è svolta nell'A. A. 2017-18 su circa 160 bambini italofoni di età compresa tra 8 e 11 anni. Lo scopo di questa prima fase sperimentale è stato duplice: 1. ottenere indicazioni sull'efficacia, ai fini della valutazione dell'efficienza di lettura, dei testi utilizzati nelle prove di cui si compone il test AEREST; 2. ottenere indicazioni sulla fattibilità dell'implementazione dello screening su tablet, in termini di facilità di somministrazione e di gradimento da parte dei soggetti; 3. esplorare e confrontare le performance di lettura nel campione italiano e ticinese, al fine di individuare strategie didattiche volte a potenziare le eventuali abilità carenti}, 
 KEYWORDS = {efficienza di lettura, screening}, 
 URL = {https://www.airipa.it/congresso/pluginfile.php/2781/mod_resource/content/1/Programma%20Congresso%20AIRIPA_Arezzo_dettagliato-3.pdf}, 
 CONFERENCE_NAME = {XXVII Congresso Nazionale AIRIPA}, 
}