Eye movements in shared book reading with children from kindergarten to Grade 4 Annie Roy-Charland Æ Jean Saint-Aubin Æ Mary Ann Evans Published online: 22 June 2007 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007 Abstract Previous studies have revealed that preschool-age children who are not yet readers pay little attention to written text in a shared book reading situation (see Evans & Saint-Aubin, 2005). The current study was aimed at investigating the constancy of these results across reading development, by monitoring eye move- ments in shared book reading, for children from kindergarten to Grade 4. Children were read books of three difficulty levels. The results revealed a higher proportion of time, a higher proportion of landing positions, and a higher proportion of reading- like saccades on the text as grade level increased and as reading skills improved. More precisely, there was a link between the difficulty of the material and attention to text. Children spent more time on a text that was within their reading abilities than when the book difficulty exceeded their reading skills. Keywords Shared book reading Á Eye movements Á Elementary school children This research was supported by grants from the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network (CLLRNet) to Jean Saint-Aubin and to Mary Ann Evans. This article was part of Annie Roy-Charland doctoral exam. A. Roy-Charland (&) Á J. Saint-Aubin E ´ cole de psychologie, Universite ´ de Moncton, Taillon Building, Moncton, NB, Canada E1A 3E9 e-mail: ear3339@umoncton.ca J. Saint-Aubin e-mail: jean.saint-aubin@umoncton.ca M. A. Evans Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Mackinnon Building, Guelph, ON, Canada N1G 2W1 e-mail: evans@psy.uoguelph.ca 123 Read Writ (2007) 20:909–931 DOI 10.1007/s11145-007-9059-9