TY - JOUR AB - Purpose This paper aims to investigate the individual difference on digital reading, by examining the eye-tracking records of male and female readers with different reading ability (including their pupil size, blink rate, fixation rate, fixation duration, saccade rate, saccade duration, saccade amplitude and regression rate).Design/methodology/approach A total of 74 participants were selected according to 6,520 undergraduate students’ university entrance exam scores and the follow-up reading assessments. Half of them are men and half are women, with the top 3% good readers and the bottom 3% poor readers, from different disciplines.Findings Results indicated that the major gender differences on reading abilities were indicated by saccade duration, regression rate and blink rate. The major effects on reading ability have a larger effect size than the major effect on gender. Among all the indicators that have been examined, blink rate and regression rates are the most sensitive to the gender attribute, while the fixation rate and saccade amplitude showed the least sensitiveness.Originality/value This finding could be helpful for user modeling with eye-tracking data in intelligent tutoring systems, where necessary adjustments might be needed according to users’ individual differences. In this way, instructors could be able to provide purposeful guidance according to what the learners had seen and personalized the experience of digital reading. VL - 17 IS - 3 SN - 1741-5659 DO - 10.1108/ITSE-12-2019-0082 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/ITSE-12-2019-0082 AU - Zhan Zehui AU - Wu Jun AU - Mei Hu AU - Wu Qianyi AU - Fong Patrick S.W. PY - 2020 Y1 - 2020/01/01 TI - Individual difference on reading ability tested by eye-tracking: from perspective of gender T2 - Interactive Technology and Smart Education PB - Emerald Publishing Limited SP - 267 EP - 283 Y2 - 2024/03/28 ER -