EyeLink Eye Trackers in Developmental Publications

@article{Cao2026a,

title = {Aging and semantic transparency effects in Chinese reading: Evidence from eye movements},

author = {Xuran Cao and Yaxin Du and Yuhan Jiang and Run Zhang and Jingxin Wang},

doi = {10.1186/s40359-025-03687-9},

year  = {2026},

date = {2026-11-01},

journal = {BMC Psychology},

volume = {14},

number = {1},

pages = {1–14},

abstract = {Background Semantic transparency is typically defined in terms of compositionality, the extent to which the meaning of a word can be predicted from the meaning of each of its constituents, which is crucial for the processing of compound words. Studies employing behavioral, eye-tracking, and neuroimaging techniques have identified common effects of semantic transparency. Transparent words, defined as those in which the word itself and its morphemes exhibit a high degree of semantic relatedness, facilitate word recognition. Semantic transparency effects have been well observed for alphabetic languages. However, the effects of semantic transparency on Chinese readers are largely unknown, as do whether healthy aging may affect this effect. The present study investigated these questions by analyzing the semantic transparency effects in both young and older adults under conditions of normal reading and preview. Methods The eye movements of young (18–25 years) and older (60 + years) Chinese readers were recorded under conditions of normal reading and preview. Results (1) Transparent words facilitated word recognition and the valid preview clues did not benefit readers recognizing transparent words. (2) Age groups showed no differences in the process of compound words. However, older adults had greater difficulty recognizing opaque words under preview conditions than younger adults. Conclusions Compound words are stored in the mental lexicon as mixed representations, in which transparent words are represented by morphemes and opaque words are represented by whole words. Semantic transparency effects exhibit cross-age consistency which do not rely on valid preview information but instead stem from foveal in-depth processing. However, age differences in semantic integration become apparent in parafoveal preview processing which demands greater cognitive resources, with older adults experiencing greater difficulty recognizing opaque words than younger adults.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Ravid-Roth2026,

title = {The effect of gaze contingencies on infants' looking preference},

author = {Tal Ravid-Roth and Romi Livne and Ariel Berlinger and Wilfried Kunde and Baruch Eitam and Sagi Jaffe-Dax},

doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106417},

year  = {2026},

date = {2026-05-01},

journal = {Cognition},

volume = {270},

pages = {1–18},

publisher = {Elsevier B.V.},

abstract = {Infants exhibit robust predictive capacities from birth; Most research has focused on how they process externally generated events, leaving unexplored how predictions rooted in their own actions influence attention. We asked whether the source of predictability- self-generated vs. externally structured- affects infants' looking preferences beyond overall predictability. Across two gaze-contingent eye-tracking experiments, we investigated whether infants prefer to look at stimuli whose movements are triggered by their own gaze, or at stimuli that move independently. In Experiment 1 (n = 21},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Zhang2026d,

title = {Automatic pupillary responses to pain perception in adults and children: The influence of race and autistic traits},

author = {Ting Zhang and Shujia Zhang and Yi Jiang},

doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106384},

year  = {2026},

date = {2026-03-01},

journal = {Cognition},

volume = {268},

pages = {1–9},

publisher = {Elsevier B.V.},

abstract = {The ability to understand and share others' emotional states (e.g., feeling of pain) plays a fundamental role in survival and prosocial behavior. The current study utilized pupillometry to assess automatic psychophysiological responses to others' painful facial expressions in both adults and children (N = 72). Results revealed that pupil size significantly increased when perceiving painful versus neutral expressions, independent of low-level visual features. Notably, both adults and children exhibited a racial in-group bias, with pupil dilation effects observed only for same-race painful faces. Furthermore, individuals' Autism Spectrum Quotient scores were negatively correlated with pupil dilation effects toward painful expressions of same-race faces. These findings suggest that pupillary responses might reflect automatic empathic arousal to others' pain and are modulated by racial group membership and autistic traits, providing a potential physiological indicator, at least at the group level, for probing affective resonance in children or individuals with socio-cognitive disorders (e.g., autism spectrum disorder).},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Fang2026,

title = {Emotional consistency guides social engagement in 18- to 24-month-old toddlers},

author = {Wei Fang and Naiqi G. Xiao},

editor = {Jie He and Shauna Cooper},

doi = {10.1093/chidev/aacaf031},

year  = {2026},

date = {2026-01-01},

journal = {Child Development},

pages = {1–14},

abstract = {This study investigated toddlers' sensitivity to emotional consistency and its influence on social engagement. Sixty-eight toddlers of diverse ethnic backgrounds (39 females; 338–908 days old; 79.4% White; and collected in 2024) watched videos depicting adults expressing emotions toward novel objects. The expression valence was either consistent (e.g., always positive toward Object A) or inconsistent (e.g., both positive and negative toward Object A). Eighteen- to 24-month-olds exhibited distinct looking when learning the consistent versus inconsistent informants (Cohen's d = 0.42) and showed greater sustained gaze following toward the emotionally consistent informants (Hedges' g = 0.45). Twelve- to 18-month-olds did not differentiate between conditions. These data suggest that detecting and utilizing emotional consistency as a cue for social engagement develops during the second year of life.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Freitag2026,

title = {An investigation of inhibitory control as a mechanism differentiating tonic and phasic irritability},

author = {Gabrielle F. Freitag and Shannon Shaughnessy and Jennifer M. Meigs and Parmis Khosravi and Julia O. Linke and Spencer C. Evans and Ellen Leibenluft and Melissa A. Brotman and Daniel S. Pine and Katharina Kircanski and Elise M. Cardinale},

doi = {10.1007/s10578-025-01957-6},

year  = {2026},

date = {2026-01-01},

journal = {Child Psychiatry & Human Development},

pages = {1–11},

abstract = {Phasic and tonic irritability are highly correlated clinical constructs yet differentially associated with developmental trajectories and treatment response. However, limited research has identified their shared and unique underlying behavioral mechanisms. In a sample of youths enriched for irritability (N = 141, age range 7–18, age M[SD] = 12.60[2.54], 48.23% female), we investigated whether inhibitory control is differentially associated with phasic versus tonic irritability. Repli- cating prior work, tonic and phasic irritability were estimated via independent confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) using items and/or subscales from multi-informant questionnaires. A latent factor of inhibitory control was extracted from four behavioral tasks. Initial multiple linear regression analysis found that phasic, not tonic, irritability was significantly associ- ated with impaired inhibitory control. However, results were no longer significant after accounting for shared associations with age. In addition, when adding commonly co-occurring symptoms such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and oppositionality, age and ADHD were significant predictors of inhibitory control, but phasic irri- tability was not. Results suggest that inhibitory control alone may not be a salient mechanism for disambiguating phasic and tonic irritability. Future work leveraging longitudinal methods and consideration of other potential contextual factors is needed.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Guan2026,

title = {Infants recognized other-race faces when learning them with incidental emotional sounds},

author = {Carie Guan and Naomi Geller and Maya Mammon and Naiqi G. Xiao},

doi = {10.1002/dev.70110},

year  = {2026},

date = {2026-01-01},

journal = {Developmental Psychobiology},

volume = {68},

number = {1},

pages = {1–13},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Inc},

abstract = {Infant face recognition shows plasticity, with recent evidence indicating enhancement by the presence of emotional facial expressions. The mechanisms and domain-generality of this effect remain largely unknown. This study tested whether auditory emotional cues (vocalizations) facilitated infants' recognition of other-race faces, a perceptual challenge during the first year of life. Infants (N = 89) were presented with emotionally neutral faces paired with happy, sad, or neutral vocal sounds in a within-subjects design. Experiment 1 assessed recognition using identical face images between the familiarization and test phases, while Experiment 2 examined face recognition across viewpoint changes. Across both experiments, infants exhibited successful face recognition only when they were learned with emotional sounds (happy and sad). This facilitative effect remained stable across the tested age range and did not differ between happy and sad vocalizations. Infants' eye movement data revealed comparable face-looking patterns across conditions, suggesting that the facilitation was not driven by changes in visual attention. Thus, incidental, cross-modal emotional signals significantly enhance infant face recognition. This underscores the early integrative nature of emotion processing and its catalytic role in cognitive development.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Seacrist2026,

title = {A novel paradigm for identifying eye-tracking metrics associated with cognitive control during driving through MEG neuroimaging},

author = {Thomas Seacrist and Elizabeth A. Walshe and Shukai Cheng and Emily Brown and Charlotte Birnbaum and Victoria Kaufman and Flaura K. Winston and William C. Gaetz},

doi = {10.1016/j.trf.2025.103434},

year  = {2026},

date = {2026-01-01},

journal = {Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour},

volume = {116},

pages = {1–13},

publisher = {Elsevier Ltd},

abstract = {Understanding the neurocognitive underpinnings of driving behavior in adolescents is critical to improving road safety. To address this, we established a novel paradigm linking magnetoencephalography (MEG)-recorded frequency-specific brain activity to simulated driving performance, identifying periods of increased cognitive control. However, this initial paradigm did not incorporate eye-tracking – a potentially scalable proxy for cognitive control that could be leveraged by in-vehicle driver monitoring systems. This proof-of-concept study expands our paradigm by integrating eye-tracking to identify scanning behavior metrics associated with periods of increased cognitive control validated by MEG. Typically developing adolescents (n = 11; mean age = 15.1 ± 1.5 yrs) completed three driving tasks of varying cognitive demand, and MEG frequency specific analysis confirmed periods of high (Hi) and low (Lo) cognitive control via the established biomarker of frontal midline theta (FMT). Fixation count, fixation duration, horizontal/vertical mean gaze position, saccade amplitude, and horizontal/vertical spread of search were compared between Hi vs. Lo periods of cognitive control. Task-specific differences in fixation count (p < 0.05), mean gaze position (p < 0.01), saccade amplitude (p < 0.05), and spread of search (p < 0.01) were observed between Hi compared to Lo cognitive control periods. These differences corresponded to expected task-specific changes in scanning behavior that would accompany cognitive control over behavior, suggesting a signal that eye-tracking may serve as a proxy for underlying neurocognitive processes. This integrated approach demonstrates methodological rigor and offers a promising framework for further research and informing development of in-vehicle driver monitoring systems for detecting cognitive deficits in real time, with implications for enhancing teen driver safety.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Xie2026,

title = {An empirical study on native Mandarin-speaking children's metonymy comprehension development},

author = {Songqiao Xie and Chunyan He},

year  = {2026},

date = {2026-01-01},

journal = {Journal ofChild Language},

volume = {53},

pages = {80–107},

abstract = {This study investigatesMandarin-speaking children's(age 3–7) comprehension development ofnovel and conventional metonymy, combining online and offline methods. Both online and offline data show significantly better performances from the oldest group (6-to-7-year-old) and a delayed acquisition of conventional metonymy compared with novel metonymy. However, part of offline data shows no significant difference between adjacent age groups, while the eye-tracking data show a chronological development fromage 3–7. Furthermore, in offline tasks, the three-year-old group features a high choice randomness and the four-to-five- year-olds show the longest reaction time. Therefore, we argue that, not only age but also metonymy type can influence metonymy acquisition, and that a lack of socio-cultural experience can be a source of acquisition difficulty for children under six. Methodologically speaking, we believe that online methods should not be considered superior to offline ones as they investigate different aspects of implicit and explicit language comprehension.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Yuile2026,

title = {Lexical vocabulary acquisition through multimodal annotation: An eye-tracking study with Chinese learners' dictionaries},

author = {Amanda Rose Yuile and Justin B. Kueser and Claney Outzen and Sharon Christ and Risa Stiegler and Mary Carson Adams and Barbara Brown and Arielle Borovsky},

doi = {10.1111/desc.70087},

year  = {2026},

date = {2026-01-01},

journal = {Developmental Science},

volume = {29},

number = {1},

pages = {1–18},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Inc},

abstract = {Toddlers better retain novel object-label mappings from taxonomic categories they have more knowledge of. Separately, words for concepts with more perceptual features are learned earlier than words for concepts with fewer perceptual features. Because these factors have only been examined separately, it is unclear whether the effects of taxonomic density stem from differences in structured taxonomic knowledge or simply reflect lower-level differences in perceptual similarity among concepts. We asked how taxonomic structure and perceptual information jointly contribute to word learning at 24 months old in an ostensive word learning task. We found that semantic category knowledge facilitated word learning. We also found that the availability of perceptual features served as additional supports for word learning by children with smaller expressive vocabularies. This indicates that structured taxonomic knowledge is a better predictor of word learning compared to lower-level perceptual features at 24 months old. However, perceptual cues may provide additional support for vocabulary growth at the start of development. Summary: We explore how semantic category knowledge and perceptual features jointly influence novel word learning at 24 months old in an ostensive word learning context. Novel word learning was facilitated within semantic categories the toddlers knew more about, when controlling for the availability of perceptual information. Toddlers with smaller productive vocabularies used perceptual features as additional supports for word learning, but those with larger vocabularies did not. These findings show that structured taxonomic knowledge is a better predictor of word learning at 24 months old compared to lower-level perceptual information.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Brannick2025,

title = {Blinking indexes dynamic attending during and after music listening},

author = {Schea Fissel Brannick and Arianna N. LaCroix},

doi = {10.1038/s41598-025-12200-6},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-12-01},

journal = {Scientific Reports},

volume = {15},

number = {1},

publisher = {Nature Research},

abstract = {Music's rhythmic and acoustic structure can shape how attention unfolds over time, but little is known about how music listening influences the temporal dynamics of attention. This study examined whether blinking, a linked marker of attention, entrains to acoustic features of music, and whether this entrainment predicts changes in attention post-listening. Fifty-seven middle-aged and older adults listened to either high dynamic (fast, perceptually complex), low dynamic (slow, perceptually stable), or no music for 10 min before and after completing the Attention Network Test (ANT). Blink probabilities were analyzed in relation to perceptual dynamics during music listening (spectral novelty) and at task-relevant timepoints during the ANT. Spectral novelty in the music predicted non-linear fluctuations in blinking, with high dynamic music eliciting early blink–music coupling and low dynamic music producing delayed, later stage entrainment. After listening, alerting effects differed by music condition: low dynamic music was associated with reduced blinking on double cue trials, suggesting greater cue-based attentional readiness, whereas high dynamic listeners showed increased blinking probabilities, possibly reflecting internally guided task preparation. The low dynamic group also showed enhanced executive control, marked by increased and earlier blinking on high-conflict trials, with greater entrainment also predicting earlier blink onsets. These results suggest that music entrainment supports flexible attentional coordination and may enhance attention in aging through distinct cognitive pathways.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{GrosseWiesmann2025,

title = {The self-reference memory bias is preceded by an other-reference bias in infancy},

author = {Charlotte Grosse Wiesmann and Katrin Rothmaler and Esra Hasan and Kathrine Habdank and Chen Yang and Emanuela Yeung and Victoria Southgate},

doi = {10.1038/s41467-025-61642-z},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-12-01},

journal = {Nature Communications},

volume = {16},

number = {1},

pages = {1–8},

publisher = {Nature Research},

abstract = {One of the most established biases in human memory is that we remember information better when it refers to ourselves. We investigated the development of this self-reference effect and its relationship with the emergence of a self-concept. We presented 18-month-old infants with objects that were assigned either to them, or to another agent. Infants were then tested on their memory for the objects by presenting them with an image of each object, alongside a modified version of it. Mirror self-recognition served as an index of self-concept emergence. Infants who recognize themselves in the mirror remember objects assigned to themselves better than those assigned to the other. In contrast, non-self-recognizers only remember the objects assigned to the other rather than themselves. This difference is not explained by differences in infants' age or inhibitory abilities. This suggests that the self-reference effect emerges with the development of self-concept in the second year. Prior to the emergence of a self-concept, however, infants instead seem to exhibit an other-reference effect. This reversal of the classic self-reference effect suggests that early in life, when infants are heavily reliant on others for information, they may be biased towards encoding the world as it relates to others.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{IsraeliRan2025,

title = {Emotion regulation dynamics in empathy in young children},

author = {Liat Israeli-Ran and Tamar Kadosh Laor and Florina Uzefovsky},

doi = {10.1038/s41598-025-26201-y},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-12-01},

journal = {Scientific Reports},

volume = {15},

number = {1},

pages = {1–13},

publisher = {Nature Research},

abstract = {The capacity to empathize plays a pivotal role in most forms of social interaction, contributing significantly to adaptive social behavior. Empathy entails experiencing others' emotions, making the ability to regulate one's emotional reactions to both positive and negative emotions of others crucial for effective empathy. Both empathy and emotion regulation are capacities that develop within the context of parenting, yet the dynamics of this process are not well understood. Moreover, while there has been considerable research on empathy towards others' distress, there is less understanding of how people regulate their emotions in response to the positive emotions of others. This lack of knowledge is particularly pronounced in childhood. To address these gaps, our study focused on young children (, years and 8 months, months, female), observing their attention patterns through eye-tracking as they watched video clips designed to elicit empathic responses, both positive and negative. Additionally, we collected mothers' reports on the children's behavioral symptoms. Our findings revealed a decline in the children's attention to the face over time. However, this decline was slower in situations eliciting positive empathy and faster in those eliciting negative empathy. Interestingly, this pattern varied with the children's behavioral problems. Specifically, children with higher internalizing problems maintained their attention in positive empathy situations, whereas those with medium to high levels of externalizing symptoms initially showed a decline, followed by an increase in attention to other's negative emotional expressions. These results indicate that individual differences in behavioral issues are linked to distinct approaches to regulating emotions in empathic contexts.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Kelly2025,

title = {Eye-hand coordination during visually-guided reaching in children with monocular deprivation amblyopia},

author = {Krista R. Kelly and Mina Nouradanesh and Reed M. Jost and Christina S. Cheng-Patel and Eileen E. Birch and Serena X. Wang and James Y. Tung and Ewa Niechwiej-Szwedo},

doi = {10.1016/j.visres.2025.108708},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-12-01},

journal = {Vision Research},

volume = {237},

pages = {1–10},

publisher = {Elsevier Ltd},

abstract = {Monocular deprivation (MD) amblyopia caused by a dense unilateral congenital or infantile cataract leads to both sensory and ocular motor deficits, which can in turn affect motor performance. Previous research shows reduced fine motor skills in children with MD amblyopia on standardized tasks. Here, we evaluate eye-hand coordination during visually-guided reaching in MD amblyopia. A group of 17 children aged 7–15 years with MD amblyopia resulting from a unilateral cataract and a group of 41 age-similar control children were enrolled. During binocular viewing, children's reaching movements (LEAP Motion Controller) and eye movements (EyeLink 1000 binocular eye tracker) were recorded as they reached to touch a dot displayed at one of four locations (±5 deg or ±10 deg) on a computer monitor. Saccade and reach kinematic measures were assessed between groups, and factors associated with impairments in the MD amblyopia group were evaluated. The MD amblyopia group as a whole had impaired saccade (lower saccade gain, reduced saccade precision, more reach-related saccades) and reach (longer total reach duration, slower peak velocity, reduced touch accuracy) kinematics compared to controls. However, performance was worse in those with a poorer visual acuity outcome (≥0.7 logMAR) compared to good visual acuity outcome (≤0.6 logMAR). MD amblyopia impacts the development of eye-hand coordination during reaching, particularly in those with a poorer visual acuity outcome. Longer deceleration in the final approach and more reach-related saccades may suggest an inability to adapt or form an efficient compensatory strategy and may also be indicative of impaired on-line control.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Mortazavi2025,

title = {REM sleep quality is associated with balanced tonic activity of the locus coeruleus during wakefulness},

author = {Nasrin Mortazavi and Puneet Talwar and Ekaterina Koshmanova and Roya Sharifpour and Elise Beckers and Alexandre Berger and Islay Campbell and Ilenia Paparella and Fermin Balda and Ismael Dardour Hamzaoui and Christian Berthomier and Christine Bastin and Christophe Phillips and Pierre Maquet and Fabienne Collette and Mikhail Zubkov and Laurent Lamalle and Gilles Vandewalle},

doi = {10.1186/s12929-025-01127-9},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-12-01},

journal = {Journal of Biomedical Science},

volume = {32},

number = {1},

pages = {1–13},

publisher = {BioMed Central Ltd},

abstract = {Background: Animal studies established that the locus coeruleus (LC) plays important roles in sleep and wakefulness regulation. Whether it contributes to sleep variability in humans is not yet established. Here, we investigated if the in vivo activity of the LC is related to the variability in the quality of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. Methods: We assessed the LC activity of 34 healthy younger (~ 22y) and 18 older (~ 61y) individuals engaged in bottom-up and top-down cognitive tasks using 7-Tesla functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). We further recorded their sleep electroencephalogram (EEG) to evaluate associations between LC fMRI measures and REM sleep EEG metrics. Results: Theta oscillation energy during REM sleep was positively associated with LC response in the top-down task. In contrast, REM sleep theta energy was negatively associated with LC activity in older individuals during the bottom-up task. Importantly, sigma oscillations power immediately preceding a REM sleep episode was positively associated with LC activity in the top-down task. Conclusions: LC activity during wakefulness was related to REM sleep intensity and to a transient EEG change preceding REM sleep, a feature causally related to LC activity in animal studies. The associations depend on the cognitive task, suggesting that a balanced level of LC tonic activity during wakefulness is required for optimal expression of REM sleep. The findings may have implications for the high prevalence of sleep complaints reported in aging and for disorders such as insomnia, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's disease, for which the LC may play pivotal roles through sleep.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{NiechwiejSzwedo2025a,

title = {Eye-hand coordination during a precision grasping and placement task in children with a history of amblyopia},

author = {Ewa Niechwiej-Szwedo and Susana Wu and Deborah Giaschi and Linda Colpa and Agnes M. F. Wong and Lisa Christian},

doi = {10.1016/j.visres.2025.108700},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-12-01},

journal = {Vision Research},

volume = {237},

pages = {1–11},

publisher = {Elsevier Ltd},

abstract = {Eye-hand coordination is a key aspect of visuomotor control essential for performing most daily activities. Disruption in visuomotor control, characterized by slower arm movements and grasping errors, has been documented in children with amblyopia. This study aimed to characterize the effects of amblyopia on the temporal pattern of eye and hand coordination during the performance of a task that involves reaching, precision grasping, and placement. The study recruited 28 children with a history of amblyopia and 56 typically developing peers (age range 6–14 years). Children performed a bead-threading task while their eyes and hand movements were recorded concurrently. As hypothesized, children with amblyopia demonstrated poorer task performance, with greater deficits for the object manipulation compared to the reaching (transport) components. In comparison to their peers with normal vision, children with amblyopia had shorter reaction time for initiating eye and hand movement, longer object fixation duration to guide grasp execution and object placement, and lower eye-hand latency difference for the second movement indicating that the hand movement preceded eye initiation. These results suggest that children with amblyopia have poorer motor planning ability, which impacts movement execution. Longer fixations during object manipulations indicate that more time is required to transform the noisy visual input into a motor response. Overall, the study adds to the growing body of evidence highlighting deficits in visuomotor control in amblyopia.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Norouzi2025,

title = {Slow binocular reading during rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) in children with amblyopia and the role of fixation instability},

author = {Dorsa Mir Norouzi and Norah M. Nyangau and Yi Zhong Wang and Lori M. Dao and Cynthia L. Beauchamp and David R. Stager and Jeffrey S. Hunter and Krista R. Kelly},

doi = {10.1016/j.visres.2025.108684},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-12-01},

journal = {Vision Research},

volume = {237},

pages = {1–7},

publisher = {Elsevier Ltd},

abstract = {Children with amblyopia read slower than their peers during binocular viewing. Ocular motor dysfunction typical of amblyopia may cause slow reading. It is unclear whether this is due to fixation instability or increased forward saccades. We examined whether removing the requirement of inter-word saccades helps children with amblyopia read at a similar rate as controls using a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task. We also assessed whether reading rate was related to fixation instability. Children with amblyopia (n = 32) and control (n = 30) children ages 8–12 years silently read sentences presented in RSVP (single word presentation at screen center) during binocular viewing. Exposure time per sentence changed with a 2 − down 1 − up staircase to obtain reading speed thresholds (log words/minute [WPM]). Eye movements were tracked to determine fellow eye (FE) and amblyopic eye (AE) fixation stability during RSVP reading. Children with amblyopia read slower than controls (2.75 ± 0.47 log WPM vs 3.06 ± 0.40 log WPM), and had increased AE fixation instability (0.21 ± 0.39 log deg2 vs − 0.20 ± 0.18 log deg2) and increased FE fixation instability (−0.03 ± 0.34 log deg2 vs − 0.20 ± 0.15 log deg2) during RSVP reading. Reading rate in amblyopic children with good FE stability (n = 11) did not differ from controls and was faster than those with poor FE stability (n = 21). Children with poor FE stability read slower than controls. Removing the need for inter-word saccades (i.e., RSVP reading) did not help children with amblyopia read at control speeds. Our data support FE fixation instability as a source of slow reading in amblyopia.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Prendergast2025,

title = {What young children's processing and understanding of compound words can tell us about their pragmatic development},

author = {Claire Prendergast},

doi = {10.58734/plc-2025-0019},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-12-01},

journal = {Psychology of Language and Communication},

volume = {29},

number = {1},

pages = {1–34},

abstract = {What can we learn by observing how children process and interpret compound terms? By integrating both linguistic and pragmatic factors, typically studied in isolation, the current study revealed children's growing adherence to linguistic norms, but also their increasing openness to unconventional reference. Across three experiments employing a picture selection task for referent selection, young children were presented with lexicalized and novel exocentric and endocentric compound nouns. Examining age-related differences in referent selection, Experiment 1 (baseline), found a preference for conventional and semantically transparent referents, increasing with age. Experiment 2 showed that an individual speaker influenced referent selection across both age groups, with 5-year-olds showing more accommodation of the speaker's intended meaning. Experiment 3, examining gaze behaviour, indicated that both 3- and 5-year-olds decompose lexicalized compound terms similarly to novel compounds. This research highlights the interplay between language and social development, showcasing key stages in children's pragmatic development.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Wiegand2025,

title = {Contributions of distractor dwelling , skipping , and revisiting to age differences in visual search},

author = {Iris Wiegand and Mariska Pouderoijen and Joukje M. Oosterman and Kay Deckers and Gernot Horstmann and Mariska Van Pouderoijen and Joukje M. Oosterman and Kay Deckers and Gernot Horstmann},

doi = {10.1038/s41598-024-83532-y},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-12-01},

journal = {Scientific Reports},

volume = {15},

number = {1},

pages = {1–28},

publisher = {Nature Research},

abstract = {Visual search becomes slower with aging, particularly when targets are difficult to discriminate from distractors. Multiple distractor rejection processes may contribute independently to slower search times: dwelling on, skipping of, and revisiting of distractors, measurable by eye-tracking. The present study investigated how age affects each of the distractor rejection processes, and how these contribute to the final search times in difficult (inefficient) visual search. In a sample of Dutch healthy adults (19–85 years), we measured reaction times and eye-movements during a target present/absent visual search task, with varying target-distractor similarity and visual set size. We found that older age was associated with longer dwelling and more revisiting of distractors, while skipping was unaffected by age. This suggests that increased processing time and reduced visuo-spatial memory for visited distractor locations contribute to age-related decline in visual search. Furthermore, independently of age, dwelling and revisiting contributed stronger to search times than skipping of distractors. In conclusion, under conditions of poor guidance, dwelling and revisiting have a major contribution to search times and age-related slowing in difficult visual search, while skipping is largely negligible.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Xu2025,

title = {The role of inhibitory function in associative memory among older adults and its plasticity},

author = {Jia-Jie Xu and Jun-Yi Chen and Hong-Zhou Xu and Zhiwei Zheng and Jing Yu},

doi = {10.1186/s41235-025-00688-5},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-12-01},

journal = {Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications},

volume = {10},

number = {1},

pages = {1–20},

publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH},

abstract = {Associative memory deteriorates with age. One possible reason for this associative memory deficit in older adults is a decline in inhibitory function. However, it remains unclear what role of inhibitory function plays in age-related associative memory deficits, and whether and how acute training of inhibitory function could ameliorate the detrimental effects of inhibitory deficits on associative memory in older adults. In Experiment 1, 80 participants (40 younger and 40 older adults) studied scene-word pairs while attempting to inhibit interfering words during encoding, with two conditions: gist and non-gist interferences. In Experiment 2, 66 older adults were randomly assigned to either acute inhibitory training or a control group, and eye-tracking technology was used to capture the benefits of acute inhibitory training. Results showed that older adults were more disturbed by gist than non-gist interferences because of hyper-binding, and that inhibitory function mediated the relationship between age and associative memory accuracy. Notably, although acute inhibitory training did not significantly improve associative memory accuracy in the training group compared to the control group, structural equation model showed that older adults in the acute training group showed shorter fixation durations and lower frequencies in the interference region of interest, leading to better associative memory. These results indicate that inhibitory function plays a mediating role in age-related associative memory decline, as well as its plasticity in this association. It provides a potential pathway to improve associative memory in older adults.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Helo2025,

title = {Real-time preposition comprehension in monolingual Spanish-speaking preschool children with developmental language disorder: A visual-world eye-tracking study},

author = {Andrea Helo and María Teresa Martin-Aragoneses and Ernesto Guerra and Carmen Julia Coloma},

doi = {10.1016/j.jcomdis.2025.106578},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-11-01},

journal = {Journal of Communication Disorders},

volume = {118},

pages = {1–14},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {This study investigated comprehension of prepositions (“con” vs “sin” and “bajo” vs “sobre”; in English: ‘with' vs ‘without' and ‘under'/‘below' vs ‘on') and prepositional locutions (“delante de” vs “detrás de” and “dentro de” vs “fuera de”; in English: ‘in front of' vs ‘behind' and ‘in'/‘inside' vs ‘out of') (hereafter, PPL) in Spanish-speaking preschoolers with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) compared to their typically developing peers. We used an experimental approach assessing visual preference in real-time through eye tracking. The results showed that both groups demonstrated comprehension of the evaluated PPL, as evidenced by their visual preference for the image matching the sentence heard. However, children with DLD took longer to identify the correct image and tended to display a weaker preference pattern, although differences were not significant. Moreover, the prepositional locutions ‘in front of' and ‘behind'—which are typically acquired later among the morphological items assessed—were particularly challenging for children with DLD, who did not show a consistent visual preference for these prepositions. These findings suggest that, with respect to prepositions, children with DLD follow a trajectory similar to that of typically developing children, though characterized by a mild developmental delay. At a practical level, subtle difficulties in processing prepositions might have meaningful effects in everyday contexts, where rapid comprehension of language input is critical for children's participation and learning at school.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Hunter2025,

title = {Relating infant fixations to adult cortical activation patterns using the natural scenes dataset},

author = {Brianna K. Hunter and John E. Kiat and Steven J. Luck and Lisa M. Oakes},

doi = {10.1111/desc.70076},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-11-01},

journal = {Developmental Science},

volume = {28},

number = {6},

pages = {1–14},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Inc},

abstract = {Visual attention develops rapidly across the first postnatal year, from reflexive eye movements driven by low-level stimulus properties to increasingly voluntary eye movements influenced by higher-order factors. To test the hypothesis that development reflects guidance by increasingly abstract features, we used representational similarity analysis to evaluate the representational link between gaze patterns (N = 47 5–7-month-old infants},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Khosla2025,

title = {Changes in naturalistic viewing in healthy aging and amnestic mild cognitive impairment},

author = {Anisha Khosla and Jordana S. Wynn and Arber Kacollja and Elaheh Shahmiri and Nicole D. Anderson and Kelly Shen and Jennifer D. Ryan},

doi = {10.1002/hipo.70037},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-11-01},

journal = {Hippocampus},

volume = {35},

number = {6},

pages = {1–8},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Inc},

abstract = {Visual exploration—where the eyes move and when—is guided by prior experiences. Memory-guided viewing behavior is altered in healthy aging and is further disrupted in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), a condition in which there is accelerated structural and functional decline of the hippocampus and associated medial temporal lobe structures (HC/MTL). Computational modeling has demonstrated the potential for rapid information flow from the HC/MTL to regions responsible for the cognitive control of eye movements, such that visual exploration behavior could be impacted in the moment and on an ongoing fashion. It was predicted here, then, that older adults and individuals with aMCI would show changes in naturalistic viewing compared to younger adults, even in the absence of any memory task. Multivariate analyses revealed that viewing for younger adults was characterized by larger saccade amplitudes and a larger area of exploration; the opposite pattern was reliably expressed by individuals with aMCI. Viewing patterns of healthy older adults were associated with shorter gaze durations. The entropy of viewing in older adults was associated with overall cognitive status, as determined by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, highlighting the top-down influence of cognitive function on active vision. Lower scores on the memory subtest were reliably associated with a pattern of viewing characterized by fewer fixations (with longer durations), saccades, regions explored, smaller area of exploration, and lower entropy, mimicking some of the viewing features of the aMCI group and suggesting that increasing HC/MTL decline results in less exploratory viewing patterns. These findings reveal the ongoing influence of the hippocampus and its extended system on moment-to-moment naturalistic viewing.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Li2025e,

title = {The immediate post-viewing effects of animated fantastical events on the executive function of Chinese kindergarteners with high and low fantasy orientations},

author = {Hui Li and Yeh Hsueh and Xiaozhuo Zheng and Haoxue Yu},

doi = {10.1111/bjdp.12558},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-11-01},

journal = {British Journal of Developmental Psychology},

volume = {43},

number = {4},

pages = {860–872},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Ltd},

abstract = {Children with high fantasy orientation (HFO) can quickly switch between reality and fantasy, facilitating their processing of fantastical information. This study examined the effects of viewing a high fantastical video (HFV) and a low fantastical video (LFV) on the executive function (EF) of 102 Chinese kindergarteners at the ages of 5 and 6 by their fantasy orientation level (HFO vs. LFO). Each child's viewing was recorded by an eye tracker. Results showed that after viewing the HFV, HFO group demonstrated a significantly shorter inhibitory control reaction time than LFO group, whereas, after watching the LFV programme, HFO group's inhibitory control was significantly less accurate than the LFO group. The average pupil size of the HFO group was significantly larger than that of the LFO group, regardless of the fantastical video type. This study is the first to assess the effects of viewing two types of fantastical videos on Chinese children's EF by their FO level. It provides direct behavioural and physiological evidence associated with the post-viewing EF changes.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Markevich2025,

title = {The influence of text genre on eye movement patterns during reading},

author = {Maksim Markevich and Anastasiia Streltsova},

doi = {10.3390/jemr18060060},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-11-01},

journal = {Journal of Eye Movement Research},

volume = {18},

number = {6},

pages = {1–22},

publisher = {MDPI AG},

abstract = {Successful reading comprehension depends on many factors, including text genre. Eye-tracking studies indicate that genre shapes eye movement patterns at a local level. Although the reading of expository and narrative texts by adolescents has been described in the literature, the reading of poetry by adolescents remains understudied. In this study, we used scanpath analysis to examine how genre and comprehension level influence global eye movement strategies in adolescents (N = 44). Thus, the novelty of this study lies in the use of scanpath analysis to measure global eye movement strategies employed by adolescents while reading narrative, expository, and poetic texts. Two distinct reading patterns emerged: a forward reading pattern (linear progression) and a regressive reading pattern (frequent lookbacks). Readers tended to use regressive patterns more often with expository and poetic texts, while forward patterns were more common with a narrative text. Comprehension level also played a significant role, with readers with a higher level of comprehension relying more on regressive patterns for expository and poetic texts. The results of this experiment suggest that scanpaths effectively capture genre-driven differences in reading strategies, underscoring how genre expectations may shape visual processing during reading.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Reuter2025,

title = {Relative contributions of predictive vs. associative processes to infant looking behavior during language comprehension},

author = {Tracy E. Reuter and Lauren L. Emberson},

doi = {10.1017/S0305000924000102},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-11-01},

journal = {Journal of Child Language},

volume = {52},

number = {6},

pages = {1225–1248},

publisher = {Cambridge University Press},

abstract = {Numerous developmental findings suggest that infants and toddlers engage predictive processing during language comprehension. However, a significant limitation of this research is that associative (bottom-up) and predictive (top-down) explanations are not readily differentiated. Following adult studies that varied predictiveness relative to semantic-relatedness to differentiate associative vs. predictive processes, the present study used eye-tracking to begin to disentangle the contributions of bottom-up and top-down mechanisms to infants' real-time language processing. Replicating prior results, infants (14-19 months old) use successive semantically-related words across sentences (e.g., eat, yum, mouth) to predict upcoming nouns (e.g., cookie). However, we also provide evidence that using successive semantically-related words to predict is distinct from the bottom-up activation of the word itself. In a second experiment, we investigate the potential effects of repetition on the findings. This work is the first to reveal that infant language comprehension is affected by both associative and predictive processes.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Sapkota2025,

title = {A comparative analysis of eye movement accuracy for locating items held in visual short-term memory among young healthy adults, older adults with normal cognition, and older adults indicative of mild cognitive impairment},

author = {Raju Sapkota and Monika McAtarsney-Kovacs and Ian Linde and Shahina Pardhan},

doi = {10.1002/brb3.71021},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-11-01},

journal = {Brain and Behavior},

volume = {15},

number = {11},

pages = {1–11},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Ltd},

abstract = {Background: We compared the accuracy of eye movements in locating an item stored in visual short-term memory between young healthy adults, normally aging older adults, and older adults with mild cognitive impairment as indicated by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment or Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination-III test. Methods: Thirty-three young healthy adults, 38 normally aging older adults, and 17 older adults indicative of MCI completed two experiments requiring object-location binding. In Experiment 1, participants viewed 2–4 memory items displayed sequentially at random screen locations. Following a 900 ms interval, eye movements were recorded while participants moved their eyes to the location of the memory item corresponding to a displayed cue. In Experiment 2 (control), participants indicated whether or not the test item was shown at its original location using a yes/no response. Results: MCI-indicative participants exhibited greater saccadic error (spatial deviation of saccadic endpoint from the remembered target location) than normally aging older (p = 0.002) and young (p < 0.001) participants at low memory load only. At higher memory load, the saccadic error distance was greater for all groups (p < 0.001). Moreover, in Experiment 2, MCI-indicative participants exhibited significantly poorer memory performance than normally aging older adults, but only at lower memory load (p = 0.02). Conclusion: Saccadic accuracy declined with memory load for all groups. The MCI-indicative group showed lower saccadic accuracy versus normally aging older and young adults at low memory load. The findings offer important insights into our understanding of saccadic eye movement as a potential behavioral marker for MCI.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Sieber2025,

title = {The relation between goal-predictive gaze behavior and imitation—A live eye-tracking study in 12-month-olds},

author = {Franziska Sieber and Jan Czarnomski and Moritz M. Daum and Norbert Zmyj},

doi = {10.1111/infa.70050},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-11-01},

journal = {Infancy},

volume = {30},

number = {6},

pages = {1–11},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Inc},

abstract = {Children learn from others by imitating observed behavior. According to some theorists, to imitate an agent's action, infants need to identify the agent's action goal. To test this assumption, goal-predictive gaze shifts of 104 German 12-month-olds (57 female) were measured using live eye-tracking. These goal-predictive gaze shifts were related to their imitation of an action performed by a live model. This relationship was controlled for in terms of cognitive developmental status. We used one task of the imitation battery FIT 12 and analyzed the infants' imitation and goal-predictive gaze shifts. The infants showed goal-predictive gaze shifts to actions presented at a realistic speed. Furthermore, imitation was related to their goal-predictive gaze shifts. This association was partially explained by cognitive-developmental status, which should be considered an important factor in the development of imitation.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Chroneos2025,

title = {Bidirectional and asymmetric smooth pursuit deficits in childhood hemispherectomy patients},

author = {Maria Z. Chroneos and Marlene Behrmann and J. Patrick Mayo},

doi = {10.1016/j.cortex.2025.08.005},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-10-01},

journal = {Cortex},

volume = {191},

pages = {266–282},

publisher = {Masson SpA},

abstract = {The neural circuitry engaged in supporting eye movements has been well characterized, but fundamental questions remain about the necessity and sufficiency of the individual hemispheric contributions. To gain a better understanding of the neural correlates of oculomotor control, we measured horizontal smooth pursuit tracking behavior in 14 patients following childhood hemispherectomy. Relative to developmentally typical age-matched controls, patients exhibited a bilateral and asymmetric pursuit deficit with reduced ipsilesional but elevated contralesional eye speeds, and asymmetric accompanying ‘catch up' saccades. The atypical pursuit behavior could not be explained by a sensory deficit associated with their hemianopia, as patients adjusted their eye position to maintain visibility of the target. The pursuit deficit was also not accounted for by a general motor impairment as patients made faster catch-up saccades than controls, particularly in the ipsilesional direction. These results, all of which hold irrespective of whether the right or left hemisphere is resected, demonstrate that patients can compensate for reduced pursuit speeds by modulating their saccade characteristics. Overall, this study represents the most comprehensive characterization of smooth pursuit disturbances in hemispherectomy patients. Our results elucidate: 1) the competence of a single hemisphere for generating pursuit and compensatory behaviors; 2) the lack of a hemispheric bias supporting pursuit given large-scale cortical disruptions; and 3) that intact horizontal pursuit likely requires the interaction of brain circuitry across both hemispheres.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{FrancisPester2025,

title = {Age-related vulnerability to sleep deprivation is task dependent and influenced by large inter-individual differences in younger adults},

author = {Elly Francis-Pester and Jessica E. Manousakis and Anna W. T. Cai and Jinny Collet and Clare Anderson},

doi = {10.1093/sleep/zsaf144},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-10-01},

journal = {Sleep},

volume = {48},

number = {10},

pages = {1–13},

publisher = {Oxford University Press},

abstract = {Study Objectives: Healthy older adults appear more resilient to sleep loss relative to younger adults, particularly with respect to the likelihood of falling asleep. We examined task-dependent differences in age-related vulnerability to sleep deprivation focusing on outcomes reflecting sleep-initiation (microsleep, slow eye movements [SEMs], electroencephalography [EEG] delta power, and long lapses > 3 s) versus other non-sleep-initiation aspects of impairment (adjusted mean RT/lapses, reflexive attention, and inhibitory control). Methods: Seventeen younger (M = 24.5 ± 3.2 years [range 21–33 years], 10 males) and 17 older (M = 57.3 ± 5.2 years [range 50–65 years], 9 males) healthy adults underwent 26 h of sleep deprivation. Test batteries (psychomotor vigilance test [PVT], Karolinska drowsiness test, and ocular motor paradigms) with simultaneous EEG were administered at regular intervals throughout. Results: During sleep deprivation, younger adults had significantly more sleep-initiation events relative to older adults (p < .031) including EEG microsleep (average 4.4 vs. 1.1), SEMs (10.7 vs. 4.9), and relative delta power (38.1 vs. 24.2%). For non-sleep-initiation outcomes, interaction effects were not observed. Both younger and older groups had slower reflexive attention (4.2 and 3.1 ms, respectively) and poorer inhibitory control (8.6% and 9% more errors) during sleep deprivation relative to when well-rested (p < .001), with older adults being more impaired than younger adults overall (p < .001). Large inter-individual differences in sleep-initiation events were observed for younger adults. Preliminary results suggest women exhibited age-related differences in all sleep-initiation events (Hedges' g = 0.73 to 1.64), while men did not (g = 0.12 to 0.34). Conclusions: Younger adults are more likely to fall asleep during sleep deprivation, particularly women, while older adults may be more likely to exhibit attentional control difficulties.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Ganea2025,

title = {Covert attention modulates the SSVEP in a paradigm suitable for infants and young children},

author = {Natasa Ganea and Richard N. Aslin and David J. Lewkowicz},

doi = {10.3758/s13414-025-03097-4},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-10-01},

journal = {Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics},

volume = {87},

number = {7},

pages = {2085–2104},

publisher = {Springer},

abstract = {Attention and visual gaze are usually tightly linked. Sometimes, however, we attend covertly to peripheral events without redirecting our gaze from the event that first attracted our overt attention. Despite evidence in adults that the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) varies with modulation of covert attention, paradigms used with adults are not suitable for use with infants and young children who cannot be instructed to perform tasks that dissociate overt from covert attention. Here, we provide evidence from a paradigm suitable for infants and young children that when gaze remains fixed on a central flickering visual stimulus while covert attention is directed briefly to the peripheral visual field, the SSVEP response undergoes significant attenuation. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and intertrial coherence (ITC) measures of the SSVEP response to the central stimulus were lower when participants covertly deployed their attention to the peripheral stimulus than when central gaze and attention were aligned. Crucially, SNR was a more robust measure of attentional modulation than ITC, even though both measures were significantly correlated. Moreover, a 6 Hz flicker of the central stimulus resulted in a more reliable measure of attentional modulation than 12 Hz, and the inclusion of higher harmonics did not improve the reliability of either the SNR or the ITC measures. Our paradigm is unique in that it relies on short (2 s) response epochs, validates eye position during rapid shifts of covert attention, and makes it possible to obtain SSVEP measures of covert attention from infants, young children, and special populations.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Laurin2025,

title = {Influence of aging on visual attention and peripheral perception},

author = {Anne Sophie Laurin and Noémie Redureau and Julie Ouerfelli-Ethier and Christine Gao and Georgiana Tolan and Daria Balan and Amine Rafai and Laure Pisella and Aarlenne Zein Khan},

doi = {10.1167/jov.25.12.1},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-10-01},

journal = {Journal of Vision},

volume = {25},

number = {12},

pages = {1–18},

publisher = {Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology Inc.},

abstract = {During visual search, our attention extends around each fixation. It has been suggested that, in aging, there is a reduced attentional field, leading to visual function declines. To investigate the attentional field, 30 younger and 20 older adults performed a pop-out visual search task. We estimated each participant's attentional field size based on their search times in the presence of different sizes of gaze-contingent visible windows (25°, 20°, and 15° around fixation). Further, we tested whether performance in the visual search task was related to peripheral visual function. Participants performed a contrast discrimination task and two motion perception tasks (local and global motion perception). In these tasks, stimuli were presented at two different peripheral eccentricities (5° and 10°). Overall, older adults took longer than younger adults to report the presence of the target in the control full-view pop-out search task. Compared to younger participants, they also had a significantly smaller attentional field. In addition, irrespective of eccentricity, older adults had higher peripheral contrast discrimination thresholds and a higher threshold in global motion perception, but not local. We also found negative correlations between attentional field size and thresholds for contrast discrimination and for global motion perception for older adults. In conclusion, we observed reduced attentional fields in aging, which were associated with lowered contrast and lowered global motion perception. These results highlight the importance of spatial covert attention in peripheral visual function and support the notion of a decline in the functions of the dorsal visual network in aging.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Peristeri2025,

title = {Autistic children's reading comprehension revisited through eye-tracking: Evidence from bridging inferencing},

author = {Eleni Peristeri and Michaela Nerantzini and Timothy C. Papadopoulos and Spyridoula Varlokosta},

doi = {10.1016/j.reia.2025.202721},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-10-01},

journal = {Research in Autism},

volume = {128},

pages = {1–14},

publisher = {Elsevier Ltd},

abstract = {Pragmatic language impairments are universally observed in Autism Spectrum Disorders. Inferencing, i.e., combining information within text and using background knowledge to go beyond what is explicitly stated in the text to make a conjecture, has been a challenging pragmatic domain for autistic children. Most studies that have investigated inferencing in autism have used behavioral measurements. The objective of the current study was to assess inferencing in autistic and age-matched typically-developing children by employing eye-tracking to capture children's ‘in-the-moment' eye gaze behaviors while reading short passages. We also investigated links between children's inferencing and executive function skills. The study included 19 autistic children and 19 age-matched typically-developing children. Groups were administered an eye-tracking task that assessed children's inferencing skills while reading short vignettes that differed in a critical word that supported inferencing or not. Children were asked to read the vignettes and then answer questions that were either primed or not by the inference. The two groups were also assessed on executive functions, including working memory and attention. We found that autistic children exhibited lower comprehension accuracy in passages not primed by inferencing as compared to those that were primed, and also spent more looking time on primed passages than the typically-developing children. Moreover, while inferencing in typically-developing children was significantly related to their executive function skills, no such relations were observed for the autistic group. The overall findings show that reading comprehension for the autistic children was reduced when questions did not anchor to previous discourse through bridging inferencing. Finally, inferencing in the autistic group did not rely on executive functions to the same extent as in typically-developing children.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Rolland2025,

title = {Using eye tracking to evaluate cognitive and visual outcomes of early life phenol exposure},

author = {Matthieu Rolland and Sadia Khan and Sarah Lyon-Caen and Cathrine Thomsen and Amrit K. Sakhi and Séverine Valmary-Degano and Azemira Sabaredzovic and Sam Bayat and Rémy Slama and David Méary and Claire Philippat},

doi = {10.1016/j.envres.2025.122067},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-10-01},

journal = {Environmental Research},

volume = {282},

pages = {1–10},

publisher = {Academic Press Inc.},

abstract = {Introduction: Studies on behavioral effects of synthetic phenols have often relied on parent-reported questionnaires and primarily focused on prenatal exposure. Aims: We examined associations between prenatal and infancy phenol exposures and objective measures of child visual behavior and cognitive function at 2 years of age. Methods: At age 2, 151 children from the SEPAGES mother-child cohort completed eye-tracking tasks assessing four indicators: fixation duration (attentional control), novelty preference (visual recognition memory), time spent looking at eyes (social attention), and reaction time (processing speed).Phenol concentrations (two bisphenols, three parabens, benzophenone-3, triclosan) were measured in multiple urine samples collected from mothers (second and third trimesters; median: 42 samples per woman) and infants (2 and 12 months; median: 7 samples). Results: No associations were found with ∑parabens. However, individual parabens showed significant associations: ethylparaben at third trimester (T3) and 12 months (M12) was linked to shorter reaction time; at 2 months (M2), it was associated with reduced time spent looking at eyes. Propylparaben at T2 and T3 correlated with increased time spent looking at a novel face, especially in boys. Bisphenol S at T2 was associated with reduced reaction time; at M12, infants with detectable bisphenol S was linked to more time spent looking at eyes. Conclusion: Several associations observed indicate that increased phenol exposure sometimes correlated with improved eye-tracking scores. These findings align with prior literature on phenol exposure and ASD symptoms, which highlight variability by exposure window and phenol type.Given limited research and typically small sample sizes, further studies using objective markers and clinical assessments are necessary.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Wong2025,

title = {Anticipatory prediction in older readers},

author = {Roslyn Wong and Aaron Veldre},

doi = {10.3758/s13421-025-01712-1},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-10-01},

journal = {Memory and Cognition},

volume = {53},

number = {7},

pages = {2312–2331},

publisher = {Springer},

abstract = {It is well-established that skilled, young-adult readers rely on predictive processing during online language comprehension; however, fewer studies have investigated whether this extends to healthy, older adults (60 + years). The aim of the present research was to assess whether older readers make use of lexical prediction by investigating whether they demonstrate processing costs for incorrect predictions in a controlled experimental design. The eye movements of a sample of older adults (60–86 years) were recorded as they read strongly and weakly constraining sentences containing a predictable word or an unpredictable alternative that was either semantically related or unrelated. To determine whether predictive processing depends on the stimuli presentation format, a second experiment presented the same materials in a self-paced reading task in which each word of a sentence appears one at a time at the readers' own pace. Older adults showed processing benefits for expected input on eye-movement measures of reading. They also showed processing costs for unexpected input across both methodologies, but only when semantically unrelated to the best completion. Taken together, the results suggest that the use of predictive processes remains relatively preserved with age. The implications of these findings for understanding whether prediction is a fundamental component of online language comprehension are discussed.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Billing2025,

title = {Maternal anxiety shapes prediction error responses in the infant brain},

author = {Addison D. N. Billing and Eleanor S. Smith and Robert J. Cooper and Rebecca P. Lawson},

doi = {10.1117/1.nph.12.3.035013},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-09-01},

journal = {Neurophotonics},

volume = {12},

number = {03},

pages = {1–16},

publisher = {SPIE-Intl Soc Optical Eng},

abstract = {SIGNIFICANCE: Postnatal maternal anxiety affects a substantial number of new mothers and is linked to long-term risk for anxiety in their offspring. Yet, the neural mechanisms through which postnatal maternal anxiety influences early cognitive development remain unclear. We investigated whether postnatal maternal anxiety shapes how infant brains respond to unexpected events-prediction errors-which are central to learning in uncertain environments. AIM: We examined prediction error processing in 6- to 8-month-old infants using high-density diffuse optical tomography and eye-tracking. We hypothesized that neural responses in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) would vary with maternal anxiety levels. APPROACH: Infants viewed audiovisual events where expected outcomes were occasionally omitted, eliciting prediction errors. Hemodynamic responses in the frontal cortex were analyzed using a general linear model, with trial-by-trial gaze data as a parametric modulator. Maternal anxiety was measured using the state-trait anxiety inventory. RESULTS: Prediction error responses were localized to the mPFC and were only detectable when controlling for infant attention using eye-tracking. Cortical activation in response to unexpected stimuli was significantly enhanced in infants of mothers with higher trait anxiety. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that maternal anxiety modulates prediction error processing in the infant brain, potentially shaping early sensitivity to environmental unpredictability and conferring risk for later anxiety.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Coors2025,

title = {Neuropathology determines whether brain systems segregation benefits cognitive performance},

author = {Annabell Coors and Weiyi Zeng and Ulrich Ettinger and Monique M. B. Breteler},

doi = {10.1162/IMAG.a.138},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-09-01},

journal = {Imaging Neuroscience},

volume = {3},

pages = {1–15},

publisher = {Massachusetts Institute of Technology},

abstract = {The human brain is a large-scale network, containing multiple segregated, functionally specialized systems. With increasing age, these systems become less segregated, but the reasons and consequences of this age-related reorganization are largely unknown. Thus, after characterizing age- and sex-specific differences in the segregation of global, sensorimotor, and association systems using resting-state functional MRI data, we analyzed how segregation relates to cognitive performance in both classical and eye movement tasks across age strata and whether this is influenced by the degree of neuropathology. Our analyses included 6,455 participants (30–95 years) of the community-based Rhineland Study. System segregation indices were based on functional connectivity within and between 12 brain systems. We assessed cognitive performance with tests for memory, processing speed, executive function, and crystallized intelligence and oculomotor tasks. Multivariable regression models confirmed that brain systems become less segregated with age (e.g., global segregation: standardized regression coefficient (ß) = -0.298; 95% confidence interval [-0.299, -0.297], p < 0.001) and that in older age this effect is stronger in women compared to men. Higher segregation benefited memory (especially in young individuals) and processing speed in individuals with mild neuropathology (not significant after multiple testing correction). Lower segregation benefited crystallized intelligence in 46- to 55-year-olds. Associations between segregation indices and cognition were generally weak (ß ~ 0.01–0.06). This suggests that optimal brain organization may depend on the degree of brain pathology. Age-related brain reorganization could serve as a compensatory mechanism and partly explain improvements in crystallized intelligence and the decline in fluid cognitive domains from adolescence to (late) adulthood.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Carvalho2025,

title = {20-month-olds can use negative evidence while learning word meanings},

author = {Alex Carvalho and Isabelle Dautriche},

doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106171},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-09-01},

journal = {Cognition},

volume = {262},

pages = {1–10},

publisher = {Elsevier B.V.},

abstract = {Decades of research in psychology have built models and theoretical assumptions about language development evaluating how children extract information from positive evidence to learn the meanings of novel words. In the present set of studies, we evaluated whether children can also consider negative evidence, information about what a word cannot refer to. Across two experiments (n = 73), we show that English-learning 20-month-olds can use negative evidence in the form of negative sentences (e.g., “This is not a danu”) to constrain their interpretation of a novel word meaning (“danu”). These findings raise the possibility that learning word meanings through positive evidence alone, while possible, may not be the most accurate characterization of the word learning process and invite further developments of current word learning theories and models that incorporate negative evidence.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Igoshina2025,

title = {Distress evokes a visual attention bias to treatment-related scenes in children and adolescents treated for a posterior fossa brain tumour},

author = {Elizaveta Igoshina and Iska Moxon-Emre and Eric Bouffet and Donald J. Mabbott},

doi = {10.1002/pbc.31879},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-09-01},

journal = {Pediatric Blood and Cancer},

volume = {72},

number = {9},

pages = {1–14},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Inc},

abstract = {Objective: Distress following treatment is common in children and adolescents treated for a brain tumour, reflecting underlying difficulties with emotion regulation. However, the medical factors that evoke distress remain poorly understood. Cranial radiation therapy (CRT), administered for malignant tumours, is associated with a high treatment burden and poor emotion regulation. This study investigates the effect of CRT on distress compared to non-CRT treatment and typically developing children (TDC), using self-report and eye-tracking measures. Method: Data were collected from 18 TDC and 36 children and adolescents treated for a posterior fossa brain tumour, including 17 who received CRT and 19 who did not. Participants completed a questionnaire assessing distress and then free-viewed treatment-related and emotional scenes while their eyes were tracked. Visual avoidance of a scene type served as a behavioural indicator of implicit emotion regulation. Results: Participants treated with CRT reported distress more frequently (84.21%) compared to those treated without CRT (58.82%) and TDC (52.94%). Distressed participants exhibited greater visual avoidance of treatment-related scenes than their non-distressed counterparts. Participants treated with CRT also demonstrated more visual avoidance than those treated without CRT or TDC. Conclusion: The high treatment burden associated with CRT likely contributes to increased distress and visual avoidance of treatment-related scenes, which may reflect attempts to regulate unpleasant emotional responses. Accumulating medical procedures may heighten threat sensitivity and reinforce avoidance as a strategy for emotion regulation. Thus, visual avoidance may serve as a behavioural marker of distress and help identify patients who are at an elevated risk.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Liu2025j,

title = {Working memory vs. inhibitory control training: Differential and sustained improvements on school-age children's analogical performance and strategy},

author = {Haoning Liu and Yue Qi and Yaxin Zhang and Andy Yu and Yinghe Chen and Xin Zhang and Yan Lou and Xiao Yu},

doi = {10.1007/s12144-025-08145-8},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-09-01},

journal = {Current Psychology},

volume = {44},

number = {18},

pages = {14843–14858},

publisher = {Springer},

abstract = {The effects of executive function (EF) training on children's analogical reasoning—particularly analogical strategy use—remain unclear. This study used a pretest–posttest–follow-up design to explore and compare the effects of working memory (WM) and inhibitory control (IC) training on analogical performance and strategy use in school-age children. Fifty-nine children aged 8–10 were randomly allocated into WM training, IC training, and control groups. Children in the WM and IC training groups received adaptive training targeting multiple sub-components of WM and IC. In the pretest, posttest, and 6-month follow-up, children were tested on WM, IC, and analogical reasoning. Analogical performance was measured by the accuracy of the visual analogy task. Eye tracking was used to measure the analogical strategies when solving the visual analogy task. Results showed that WM and IC training improved analogical performance and strategy use in the posttest and even lasted for six months. WM training group demonstrated greater improvements in analogical strategy use but did not outperform the IC group in analogical performance. These findings highlight the value of WM and IC training in promoting the development of analogical reasoning in children.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Axelsson2025a,

title = {Strike a pose: Relationships between infants' motor development and visuospatial representations of bodies},

author = {Emma L. Axelsson and Tayla Britton and Gurmeher K. Gulhati and Chloe Kelly and Helen Copeland and Luca McNamara and Hester Covell and Alyssa A. Quinn},

doi = {10.3390/bs15081021},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-08-01},

journal = {Behavioral Sciences},

volume = {15},

number = {8},

pages = {1–31},

publisher = {Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)},

abstract = {Infants discriminate faces early in the first year, but research on infants' discrimination of bodies is plagued by mixed findings. Using a familiarisation novelty preference method, we investigated 7- and 9-month-old infants' discrimination of body postures presented in upright and inverted orientations, and with and without heads, along with relationships with gross and fine motor development. In our initial studies, 7-month-old infants discriminated upright headless postures with forward-facing and about-facing images. Eye tracking revealed that infants looked at the bodies of the upright headless postures the longest and at the heads of upright whole figures for 60–70% of the time regardless of the presence of faces, suggesting that heads detract attention from bodies. In a more stringent test, with similarly complex limb positions between test items, infants could not discriminate postures. With longer trials, the 7-month-olds demonstrated a familiarity preference for the upright whole figures, and the 9-month-olds demonstrated a novelty preference, albeit with a less robust effect. Unlike previous studies, we found that better gross motor skills were related to the 7-month-olds' better discrimination of upright headless postures compared to inverted postures. The 9-month-old infants' lower gross and fine motor skills were associated with a stronger preference for inverted compared to upright whole figures. This is further evidence of a configural representation of bodies in infancy, but it is constrained by an upper bias (heads in upright figures, feet in inverted), the test item similarity, and the trial duration. The measure and type of motor development reveals differential relationships with infants' representations of bodies.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Coronel2025,

title = {Fusing theory-guided machine learning and bio-sensing: Considering time in how children learn science from dynamic multimedia},

author = {Jason C. Coronel and Matthew Sweitzer and James Alex Bonus and Rebecca Dore and Blue Lerner},

doi = {10.1093/joc/jqaf036},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-08-01},

journal = {Journal of Communication},

pages = {1–18},

publisher = {Oxford University Press (OUP)},

abstract = {A new era of message processing research will emerge from the convergence of powerful machine learning algorithms with dynamic data from everyday devices equipped with biological sensors. Our study takes critical steps into this era by integrating theory-guided artificial neural networks with eye movements to understand how people learn science concepts from dynamic multimedia. Essential to our theory-guided machine learning approach is a cognitive conceptualization of time as the dynamic interdependence between past and new information that guides how multimedia is attended to and understood. We tracked the eye movements of 197 children as they watched an educational video. We trained two neural network architectures differing in theory guidance to predict learning outcomes using eye movements. The theory-guided architecture, which considered the temporal interdependence of information, yielded more accurate out-of-sample predictions. Our work advances the use of theory-guided machine learning and the development of systems that monitor real-time learning.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Liu2025k,

title = {Development of orthographic, phonological and semantic parafoveal processing in Chinese reading},

author = {Min Liu and Sainan Li and Zhu Meng and Yongsheng Wang and Chuanli Zang and Guoli Yan and Simon P. Liversedge},

doi = {10.1177/17470218251372482},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-08-01},

journal = {Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology},

pages = {1–23},

publisher = {SAGE Publications},

abstract = {Parafoveal pre-processing of upcoming words is a key aspect of fluent reading. A comparative analysis of how children's orthographic, phonological and semantic parafoveal processing changes with age has not been investigated to date. In the present study, three eye movement experiments used the boundary paradigm to characterize the nature of change in orthographic, phonological and semantic parafoveal processing across children in Grades 2 to 5 ( n = 366, Tianjin Primary School) and adults ( n = 90, Tianjin Normal University) during natural Chinese reading. In each experiment we manipulated preview type (identical, related or unrelated preview). The results showed that effective orthographic parafoveal processing occurred in all our participant groups; however, effective phonological and semantic parafoveal processing was somewhat delayed, occurring in the third or fourth grade through to adults. We suggest that the differential developmental time course of orthographic relative to phonological and semantic parafoveal processing likely arises because the phonological and semantic characteristics of a written character are accessed via the character's orthographic code. Orthographic parafoveal processing, therefore, likely takes developmental precedence over phonological and semantic parafoveal processing. Together, the results provide a quite comprehensive picture of how a fundamental aspect of reading, parafoveal processing, develops with age.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Aggarwal2025,

title = {Changes in Higuchi fractal dimension across age in healthy human EEG are anticorrelated with changes in oscillatory power and 1/f slope},

author = {Srishty Aggarwal and Supratim Ray},

doi = {10.1111/ejn.70193},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-07-01},

journal = {European Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {62},

number = {2},

pages = {1–17},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Inc},

abstract = {Nonlinear dynamical methods such as Higuchi fractal dimension (HFD) are often used to study the complexities of brain activity. In human electroencephalogram (EEG), although power in the gamma band (30–70 Hz) and the slope of the power spectral density (PSD) have been shown to reduce with healthy ageing, there are conflicting findings regarding how HFD and other measures of complexity vary with ageing. Further, the dependence of HFD on features obtained from PSD (such as gamma power and slope) has not been thoroughly probed. To address these issues, we computed time- and frequency-resolved HFD for EEG data collected from an elderly population (N = 217), aged between 50 and 88 years, for baseline (BL) eyes open state and during a fixation task in which visual grating stimuli that induce strong gamma oscillations were presented. During BL, HFD increased with age for frequencies up to 150 Hz but surprisingly showed an opposite trend at higher frequencies. Interestingly, this change in HFD was opposite to the age-related change in PSD 1/f slope. Further, stimulus-related changes in HFD were anticorrelated with the changes in oscillatory power. However, stimulus- and age-related changes in HFD persisted even after normalization with surrogates, showing the effect of nonlinear dynamics on HFD. Further, age classification using HFD was slightly better than classification using spectral features (power and slope). Therefore, HFD could be jointly sensitive to various spectral features as well as some nonlinearities not captured using spectral analysis, which could enhance our understanding of brain dynamics underlying healthy ageing.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Chang2025d,

title = {Craving and attentional bias in gaming: Comparing esports, casual, and high-risk gamers using eye-tracking},

author = {Shan-Mei Chang and Dai-Yi Wang and Zheng-Hong Guan},

doi = {10.1016/j.chb.2025.108662},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-07-01},

journal = {Computers in Human Behavior},

volume = {168},

pages = {1–11},

publisher = {Elsevier Ltd},

abstract = {Attentional biases, as measured through eye movements, have been observed in both gaming disorders and substance addictions. However, few studies compare these biases among esports gamers (ESG), high-risk gamers (HRG), and other frequent gamers, despite ESG and HRG both groups dedicating significant time to gaming. This study included 47 male participants aged 15 to 19. Participants were categorized as ESG, casual gamers (CG), or HRG based on their MOBA experience, esports training, and Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) scores. Each participant completed a dot-probe task with 56 stimulus conditions based on gaming cues, while eye-tracking technology recorded eye movements. The results indicated that HRG spent more total viewing time on stimulus images than ESG and CG. Additionally, HRG had longer first fixation durations and fewer saccade counts than the other two groups. Furthermore, HRG reported higher impulsivity and lower attentional focusing, suggesting a distinct psychological profile. Although ESG did not exhibit the same attentional biases as HRG, their self-reported gaming time was similar. This may be due to gaming being a career commitment for ESG, while for HRG, it serves as an escape from life pressures. Notably, eye-movement measures can identify high-risk tendencies early and uncover differences missed by self-report scales, including saccade count and attentional shifting. Caution is needed when diagnosing gaming disorder solely based on gaming time and self-reports. Future research could use attentional bias tasks as complementary diagnostic tools and further explore higher depression levels in HRG and ESG compared to CG.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Fu2025,

title = {Infant social attention associated with elevated likelihood for autism spectrum disorder: A multi-method comparison},

author = {Xiaoxue Fu and Emma Platt and Frederick Shic and Jessica Bradshaw},

doi = {10.1007/s10803-024-06360-z},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-07-01},

journal = {Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders},

volume = {55},

number = {7},

pages = {2337–2349},

publisher = {Springer},

abstract = {Purpose: The study aimed to compare eye tracking (ET) and manual coding (MC) measures of attention to social and nonsocial information in infants with elevated familial likelihood (EL) of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and low likelihood of ASD (LL). ET provides a temporally and spatially sensitive tool for measuring gaze allocation. Existing evidence suggests that ET is a promising tool for detecting distinct social attention patterns that may serve as a biomarker for ASD. However, ET is prone to data loss, especially in young EL infants. Methods: To increase evidence for ET as a viable tool for capturing atypical social attention in EL infants, the current prospective, longitudinal study obtained ET and MC measures of social and nonsocial attention in 25 EL and 47 LL infants at several time points between 3 and 24 months of age. Results: ET data was obtained with a satisfactory success rate of 95.83%, albeit with a higher degree of data loss compared to MC. Infant age and ASD likelihood status did not impact the extent of ET or MC data loss. There was a significant positive association between the ET and MC measures of attention, and separate analyses of attention using ET and AC measures yielded comparable findings. These analyses indicated group differences (EL vs. LL) in age-related change in attention to social vs. nonsocial information. Conclusion: Together, the findings support infant ET as a promising approach for identifying very early markers associated with ASD likelihood.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Gardier2025,

title = {Is uncertainty in the eyes or in parents' talk? Linking an eye-tracking measure of toddlers' core metacognition to parental metacognitive talk},

author = {Marion Gardier and Marie Geurten},

doi = {10.1111/cdev.14237},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-07-01},

journal = {Child Development},

volume = {96},

number = {4},

pages = {1385–1394},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Inc},

abstract = {Recent studies have established that even preverbal infants can monitor and regulate their mental states, raising the question of the variables involved in this early metacognitive development. Here, the metacognition of fifty-five 18-month-old (27 females; mostly White; data collection: 2023) was assessed using an eye-tracking paradigm designed to capture children's ability to seek information (i.e., a cue) under uncertainty. Moreover, the relations between toddlers' metacognition and parental (52 mothers) metacognitive talk during a 10-min play session were also examined. Beyond replicating previous data showing metacognitive accuracy in toddlerhood, our results indicated that the frequency of parental utterances referring to metacognitive monitoring—but not metacognitive regulation—was related to toddlers' metacognition (OR = 1.3). Implications for sociocultural models of metacognitive development are discussed.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Kim2025,

title = {The effects of mindfulness meditation on mechanisms of attentional control in young and older adults: A preregistered eye tracking study},

author = {Andy Jeesu Kim and Keran Chen and Ying Tian and Mara Mather},

doi = {10.1523/ENEURO.0356-23.2025},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-07-01},

journal = {eNeuro},

volume = {12},

number = {7},

pages = {1–18},

publisher = {Society for Neuroscience},

abstract = {Neuroimaging data reveal that a functional locus ceruleus-noradrenaline (LC-NA) system is critical in maintaining cognitive performance during aging. However, older adults show reduced LC integrity and altered functional connectivity, demonstrating both structural declines and dysfunction. The LC-NA system mediates mechanisms of attention processing and eye tracking studies have shown that older adults are slower and more distractible compared with young adults in visual search tasks. Prior studies have shown that mindfulness meditation modulates LC noradrenergic activity, increases gray matter volume in the brainstem, and improves attentional control. Thus, in a preregistered longitudinal study, we investigated whether 30 d of guided mindfulness meditation using a mobile application improved attentional control measured with eye movements. We hypothesized that older adults would show greater benefits from the mindfulness intervention compared with young adults. In two oculomotor search tasks, we identified that guided mindfulness practice improved saccadic reaction times, but that other longitudinal benefits in goal-directed attentional control or distractibility by task-irrelevant salient stimuli may be from repeated practice. Furthermore, we did not find evidence for age differences in response to the mindfulness intervention between young, middle-aged, and older adults, nor among scores on mindfulness questionnaires. Our findings show that short-term mindfulness practice can modulate cognition, specifically with the speed of overt orienting of attention that may not be observable in self-report measures. This study is the first to show the utility of mindfulness on cognition using a highly reliable measure in eye movements and suggests future longer-term intervention studies may be warranted.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Klimek2025,

title = {Paternal adverse childhood experiences and offspring's attentional disengagement from faces at 8 months—Results from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study},

author = {Magdalena Klimek and Hasse Karlsson and Linnea Karlsson and Riikka Korja and Saara Nolvi and Tuomo Häikiö and Jetro J. Tuulari and Eeva-Leena Kataja},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0326437},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-07-01},

journal = {PLoS One},

volume = {20},

number = {7},

pages = {1–16},

publisher = {Public Library of Science},

abstract = {Paternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been recently linked to offspring's brain development. Yet, none of the previous studies in humans have explored the association between paternal ACEs and a child's attentional bias for facial expressions of emotion. Our study fills this gap. Data were collected from 239 fathers (mean age 32.15; SD 5.04) and their children at 8 months of age who were part of the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. Paternal ACEs were evaluated using the Trauma and Distress Scale (TADS) in five domains: emotional and physical neglect, emotional and physical abuse, and sexual abuse. In children, eye-tracking was used to study attentional engagement to emotional faces vs. non-faces and distractors, and to calculate face and fear bias indices. Hierarchical linear regression and the Mann-Whitney U test were used for analyses. A negative association between paternal sexual abuse and face bias was found in children (p = 0.043), when paternal postpartum anxiety and sex of the child were controlled, however the effect size was rather low. Additionally, daughters (n = 6) of sexually abused fathers expressed lower face bias (p = 0.02) and higher fear bias (p = 0.04) than daughters of sexually non-abused fathers. Our preliminary exploration suggests a potential intergenerational effect of paternal exposure to sexual abuse on the processing of facial expression among daughters at the age of 8 months, yet the results require further confirmatory analyses, especially in a larger study group of ACEs-exposed individuals.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Zink2025,

title = {Increased listening effort and cochlear neural degeneration underlie speech-in-noise deficits in normal-hearing middle-aged adults},

author = {Maggie E. Zink and Leslie Zhen and Jacie R. McHaney and Jennifer Klara and Kimberly Yurasits and Victoria E. Cancel and Olivia Flemm and Claire Mitchell and Jyotishka Datta and Bharath Chandresekaran and Aravindakshan Parthasarathy},

doi = {10.7554/elife.102823},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-07-01},

journal = {eLife},

volume = {13},

pages = {1–27},

publisher = {eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd},

abstract = {Middle age represents a critical period of accelerated brain changes and provides a window for early detection and intervention in age-related neurological decline. Hearing loss is a key early marker of such decline and is linked to numerous comorbidities in older adults. Yet, ~10% of middle-aged individuals who report hearing difficulties show normal audiograms. Cochlear neural degeneration (CND) could contribute to these hidden hearing deficits, though its role remains unclear due to a lack of objective diagnostics and uncertainty regarding its perceptual outcomes. Here, we employed a cross-species design to examine neural and behavioral signatures of CND. We measured envelope following responses (EFRs) – neural ensemble responses to sound originating from the peripheral auditory pathway – in young and middle-aged adults with normal audiograms and compared these responses to young and middle-aged Mongolian gerbils, where CND was histologically confirmed. We observed near-identical changes in EFRs across species that were associated with CND. Behavioral assessments revealed age-related speech-in-noise deficits under challenging conditions, while pupil-indexed listening effort increased with age even when behavioral performance was matched. Together, these results demonstrate that CND contributes to speech perception difficulties and elevated listening effort in midlife, which may ultimately lead to listening fatigue and social withdrawal.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Andrews2025,

title = {Arousal and sustained attention fluctuate differently with respiration in younger and older adults},

author = {Ralph Andrews and Michael C. Melnychuk and Catherine N. Moran and David P. McGovern and Alexa Holfelder and Sarah Moran and Paul M. Dockree},

doi = {10.1162/IMAG.a.26},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-06-01},

journal = {Imaging Neuroscience},

volume = {3},

pages = {1–21},

publisher = {Massachusetts Institute of Technology},

abstract = {Respiration is being increasingly recognised as both synchronising its dynamics with external events and modulating internal psychophysiological states. However, the extent to which these effects stem from a respiratory modulation of attention remains underexplored. Here, we leverage differing attentional strategies of younger (YA) and older adults (OA)—OA exhibited greater focus during a simple contrast change detection task—to examine their relationship with respiratory phase-locking behaviour. OA exhibited stronger phase-locking of their respiratory cycle to task-relevant events compared with YA. Notably, participants appeared to actively adjust their breathing so that late exhalation phases coincided with target presentation, despite variable inter-target intervals. To characterise this target-locked respiratory phase window, we analysed pupil diameter and EEG frequency-power as indices of arousal and attention. Pupil diameter, frontal delta and theta, posterior alpha, and steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP) amplitude all varied significantly over the respiratory cycle, suggesting that arousal was enhanced for respiratory phases aligned with target expectancy and attenuated outside these phases. OA showed stronger respiratory modulation of delta, theta, and alpha, whereas YA showed stronger modulation of pupil diameter and SSVEP. We interpret these findings as evidence that respiration shapes attentional fluctuations, expanding and contracting the vigilant state across the respiratory cycle through interactions with arousal and attentional systems. Further, the age-dependent quality of attention which is applied to a task has implications for the degree of respiratory phase-locking and how physiological signatures of arousal and attention are modulated.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Barich2025,

title = {Children's processing of irony during reading in English: An eye-tracking study},

author = {Tess Barich and Louise Kyriaki and Alexandre Forndran and Paul Williamson and Joanne Arciuli},

doi = {10.1016/j.jecp.2025.106202},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-06-01},

journal = {Journal of Experimental Child Psychology},

volume = {254},

pages = {1–19},

publisher = {Academic Press Inc.},

abstract = {We know a great deal about the mechanisms underpinning literacy, yet gaps exist in understanding some complex literacy skills. The processing of irony during reading is one such skill. We used eye-tracking and behavioral measures to examine the processing of irony during reading in English in 30 children aged 10 to 12 years (33% female and 67% male; Mage = 11.34 years) by comparison with 32 adults (75% female and 25% male; Mage = 24.34 years). To accommodate individual differences, we included standardized measures of reading ability in our linear mixed models. Although children were slower in their reading times and had more difficulty in comprehending accurately the meanings of ironic texts versus literal texts by comparison with adults, children showed an adult-like processing cost for ironic information versus literal information across most measures. There were main effects but no substantial interactions involving reading ability. Future studies could include a broader range of ages to better understand the developmental trajectory of irony processing during reading.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Hodgson2025,

title = {Oculomotor deficits in children with sensory processing difficulties},

author = {Timothy L. Hodgson and Phoebe Cartwright and Joseph Dodd and Annabelle Hippisley},

doi = {10.1177/03080226251321342},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-06-01},

journal = {British Journal of Occupational Therapy},

volume = {88},

number = {6},

pages = {352–361},

publisher = {SAGE Publications Inc.},

abstract = {Background: Atypically developing children often present with a variety of sensory processing difficulties which have been proposed to reflect abnormal development of pathways integrating sensation and action. A brain system in which the process of sensorimotor integration is particularly well understood is the oculomotor system, but no studies to date have used computerised eye tracking to assess eye movements in children with sensory processing difficulties. Method: Ten children with sensory processing difficulties completed a battery of oculomotor tasks comprising pro-saccades, anti-saccades, smooth pursuit tracking and sustained fixation. Eye movements were recorded using a high-resolution eye tracker. Results: Compared to age-matched controls, children with sensory processing difficulties were found to make more directional errors in the anti-saccade task and less-accurate smooth pursuit and sustained fixation. Conclusion: Consistent differences were found in oculomotor ability in children with sensory processing difficulties which are likely to impact children's ability to process and respond to visual information within home and school contexts. Further research is needed to understand the relationship between oculomotor deficits in children with sensory processing difficulties and the presence/absence of neurodevelopmental diagnoses. Eye tracking may be of value in the future for assessment and objective evaluation of interventions for sensory processing difficulties such as sensory integration therapy.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Masson2025,

title = {Spatial coding of arithmetic operations in early learning: An eye tracking study in first-grade elementary school children},

author = {Nicolas Masson and Christine Schiltz and Laurie Geers and Michael Andres},

doi = {10.1007/s00426-025-02119-y},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-06-01},

journal = {Psychological Research},

volume = {89},

number = {3},

pages = {1–11},

publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH},

abstract = {A growing body of evidence indicates that mental calculation in adults is accompanied by horizontal attention shifts along a mental continuum representing the range of plausible answers. The fast deployment of spatial attention suggests a predictive role in guiding the search for the answer. The link between arithmetic and spatial functions is theoretically justified by the need to alleviate the cognitive load of mental calculation, but the question of how this link establishes during development gives rise to opposing views emphasizing either biological or cultural factors. The role of education, in particular, remains debated in the absence of data covering the period when children learn arithmetic. In this study, we measured gaze movements, as a proxy for attentional shifts, while first-grade elementary school children solved single-digit additions and subtractions. The investigation was scheduled only a few weeks after the formal teaching of symbolic subtraction to assess the role of spatial attention in early learning. Gaze patterns revealed horizontal– but not vertical– attentional shifts, with addition shifting the gaze more rightward than subtraction. The shift was observed as soon as the first operand and the operator were presented, corroborating the view that attention is used to predictively identify the portion of the numerical continuum where the answer is likely to be located, as adult studies suggested. The finding of a similar gaze pattern in adults and six-year-old children who have just learned how to subtract single digits challenges the idea that arithmetic problem solving requires intensive practice to be linked to spatial attention.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Biswas2025,

title = {Stimulus-induced gamma sources reduce in power but not in spatial extent with healthy aging in human EEG},

author = {Ankan Biswas and Wupadrasta Santosh Kumar and Kanishka Sharma and Supratim Ray},

doi = {10.1111/ejn.70138},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-05-01},

journal = {European Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {61},

number = {10},

pages = {1–12},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Inc},

abstract = {Aging alters brain structure and function, and studying such changes may help understand the neural basis underlying aging and devise interventions to detect deviations from healthy progression. Electroencephalogram (EEG) offers an effective way to study healthy aging owing to its high temporal resolution and affordability. Recent studies have shown that narrow-band stimulus-induced gamma oscillations (20–70 Hz) in EEG, induced with Cartesian gratings in a fixation task paradigm, weaken with healthy aging and onset of Alzheimer's disease (AD) while remaining highly reproducible for a given subject and thus hold promise as potential biomarkers. However, functional connectivity (FC) sometimes changes in a different way compared with sensor power with aging. This difference could be potentially addressed by studying how underlying gamma sources change with aging, since either a reduction in source power or a shrinkage of the sources (or both) could reduce the power in the sensors but may have different effects on other measures such as FC. We therefore reconstructed EEG gamma sources through a linear inverse method called exact low-resolution tomography analysis (eLORETA) on a large (N = 217) cohort of healthy elderly subjects (> 50 years). We further characterized gamma distribution in cortical space as an exponential fall-off from a seed voxel with maximal gamma source power to delineate a reduction in magnitude versus shrinkage. We found a significant reduction in magnitude but not shrinkage with healthy aging. Overall, our results shed light on changes in EEG gamma source distribution with healthy aging, which could provide clues about underlying neural mechanisms.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Chang2025a,

title = {Cerebral/cortical visual impairment classification and categorization using eye tracking measures of oculomotor function},

author = {Melinda Y. Chang and Mark S. Borchert},

doi = {10.1016/j.xops.2025.100728},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-05-01},

journal = {Ophthalmology Science},

volume = {5},

number = {3},

pages = {1–11},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {Purpose: Cerebral/cortical visual impairment (CVI) is a leading cause of pediatric visual impairment and is frequently associated with abnormal ocular motility. Eye tracking has previously been used to characterize oculomotor function in CVI. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the utility of eye tracking in diagnosis, categorization, and prognostication of CVI. Design: Prospective longitudinal study. Participants: Thirty-nine children with CVI and 41 age-matched controls. Methods: Children with CVI underwent 4 eye tracking sessions over 1 year, and age-matched controls completed 1 eye tracking session. Fixations and saccades were labeled by the eye tracking software and used to compute 9 oculomotor features. In children with CVI, unsupervised data-driven clustering analysis using these 9 features was performed to identify 3 CVI eye tracking oculomotor groups. Clinical and demographic characteristics of eye tracking oculomotor groups were compared. Main Outcome Measures: (1) Area under the curve (AUC) for eye tracking oculomotor features in classifying patients with CVI and controls; (2) differences between 3 CVI eye tracking oculomotor groups on clinical and demographic characteristics; and (3) change in visual acuity (VA) over 1 year in 3 CVI eye tracking oculomotor groups. Results: Six oculomotor features (fixation and saccade latency, frequency, and off-screen proportion) had an AUC ≥0.90 in classifying children with CVI and controls (P < 0.0001). Cerebral/cortical visual impairment eye tracking oculomotor groups had significantly different VA (P < 0.0001) and change in VA over 1 year (P = 0.049). Patients in group B, who had the greatest improvement in VA, were younger and had higher rates of term hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. Conclusions: Eye tracking measures of oculomotor function accurately distinguish between children with CVI and age-matched controls. Clustering analysis revealed 3 CVI eye tracking oculomotor groups with prognostic significance. Eye tracking shows promise as an objective, quantitative measure of oculomotor function in CVI that may in future be useful in both clinical practice (for longitudinal assessment, prognostication, and guiding individualized interventions) and research (as an outcome measure or method to stratify patients in clinical trials). Financial Disclosure(s): Proprietary or commercial disclosure may be found in the Footnotes and Disclosures at the end of this article.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Biabani2025,

title = {Neurophysiology of perceptual decision-making and its alterations in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder},

author = {Mana Biabani and Kevin Walsh and Shou Han Zhou and Joseph Wagner and Alexandra Johnstone and Julia Paterson and Beth P. Johnson and Natasha Matthews and Gerard M. Loughnane and Redmond G. O'Connell and Mark A. Bellgrove},

doi = {10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0469-24.2025},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-04-01},

journal = {The Journal of Neuroscience},

volume = {45},

number = {14},

pages = {1–12},

publisher = {Society for Neuroscience},

abstract = {Despite the prevalence of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), efforts to develop a detailed understanding of the neuropsychology of this neurodevelopmental condition are complicated by the diversity of interindividual presentations and the inability of current clinical tests to distinguish between its sensory, attentional, arousal, or motoric contributions. Identifying objective methods that can explain the diverse performance profiles across individuals diagnosed with ADHD has been a long-held goal. Achieving this could significantly advance our understanding of etiological processes and potentially inform the development of personalized treatment approaches. Here, we examine key neuropsychological components of ADHD within an electrophysiological (EEG) perceptual decision-making paradigm that is capable of isolating distinct neural signals of several key information processing stages necessary for sensory-guided actions from attentional selection to motor responses. Using a perceptual decision-making task (random dot motion), we evaluated the performance of 79 children (aged 8–17 years) and found slower and less accurate responses, along with a reduced rate of evidence accumulation (drift rate parameter of drift diffusion model), in children with ADHD (n = 37; 13 female) compared with typically developing peers (n = 42; 18 female). This was driven by the atypical dynamics of discrete electrophysiological signatures of attentional selection, the accumulation of sensory evidence, and strategic adjustments reflecting urgency of response. These findings offer an integrated account of decision-making in ADHD and establish discrete neural signals that might be used to understand the wide range of neuropsychological performance variations in individuals with ADHD.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Long2025,

title = {The impact of clarity on hearing-impaired children's face processing: A eye-tracking study},

author = {Xilian Long and Yingfang Meng and Shunsen Chen and Haixia Chen and Qionghua Huang and Yi Chen and Bo Huang},

doi = {10.1016/j.ridd.2025.104957},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-04-01},

journal = {Research in Developmental Disabilities},

volume = {159},

pages = {1–9},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {Faces contain a wealth of information, and facial processing plays a significant role in individuals' social development. Facial processing typically includes two methods: holistic processing and local processing. Normal hearing individuals primarily engage in holistic processing when dealing with faces of varying clarity, while hearing-impaired individuals show a local processing advantage for clear faces compared to normal hearing individuals. However, for hearing-impaired individuals, it is still inconclusive which processing method is dominant, and it is unclear whether there is a local processing advantage under low clarity, blurred conditions. Therefore, this study selected 30 hearing-impaired children aged 8–14 years as participants and used normal hearing children as the control group. By employing eye-tracking technology and manipulating the clarity of face images, the study explored the impact of different levels of clarity on the holistic and local processing of faces by hearing-impaired children. The results showed that as facial clarity decreased, the overall judgment accuracy (ACC) of both groups declined, and their reaction times (RT), first fixation duration (FFD), and fixation duration (FD) on the whole face increased. Both groups spent significantly more FD and fixation counts (FC) on the eyes and mouths of clear faces than on blurred faces. Hearing-impaired children's overall judgment ACC and FD for both holistic and local processing were inferior to those of normal hearing children. These results indicated that clarity affected the processing methods of both groups' faces, with a greater reliance on holistic processing and less on local processing as clarity decreased. Under low clarity, blurred conditions, hearing-impaired children primarily engaged in holistic processing just as normal hearing children, but their holistic and local processing of faces of varying clarity were not as good as that of normal hearing children. This indicated that hearing-impaired children not only lacked an advantage in local processing, but also exhibited certain deficiencies.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Lopukhina2025,

title = {Where do children look when watching videos with same-language subtitles?},

author = {Anastasiya Lopukhina and Walter J. B. Heuven and Rebecca Crowley and Kathleen Rastle},

doi = {10.1177/09567976251325789},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-04-01},

journal = {Psychological Science},

volume = {36},

number = {4},

pages = {223–236},

publisher = {SAGE Publications Inc.},

abstract = {Influential campaigns in the United Kingdom and the United States have argued that same-language television subtitles may help children learn to read. In this study, we investigated the extent to which primary-school children pay attention to and read subtitles and whether this is related to their reading proficiency. We tracked the eye movements of 180 British children in Years 1 to 6 who watched videos with and without subtitles. Results showed that attention to subtitles was associated with reading proficiency: Superior readers were more likely to look at subtitles than less proficient readers and spent more time on them. When children looked at words in the subtitles, they showed evidence of reading them. We conclude that some degree of reading fluency may be necessary before children pay attention to subtitles. However, by the third or fourth year of reading instruction, most children read sufficiently quickly to follow same-language subtitles and potentially learn from them.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Moran2025a,

title = {Oscillations of the wandering mind: Neural evidence for distinct exploration/exploitation strategies in younger and older adults},

author = {Catherine N. Moran and David P. McGovern and Mike Melnychuk and Alan F. Smeaton and Paul M. Dockree},

doi = {10.1002/hbm.70174},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-04-01},

journal = {Human Brain Mapping},

volume = {46},

number = {6},

pages = {1–23},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Inc},

abstract = {This study traced the neurophysiological signals of fluctuating attention and task-related processing to ascertain the mechanistic basis of transient strategic shifts between competing task focus and mind-wandering, as expressed by the ‘exploitation/exploration' framework, and explored how they are differentially affected with age. Thirty-four younger (16 female, mean age 22 years) and 34 healthy older (20 female, mean age 71 years) adults performed the Gradual Contrast Change Detection task; monitoring a continuously presented flickering annulus for intermittent gradual contrast reductions and responding to experience sampling probes to discriminate the nature of their thoughts at discrete moments. Electroencephalography and pupillometry were concurrently recorded during target- and probe-related intervals. Older adults tracked the downward stimulus trajectory with greater sensory integrity (reduced target SSVEP amplitude) and demonstrated earlier initiation of evidence accumulation (earlier onset CPP), attenuated variability in the attentional signal (posterior alpha) and more robust phasic pupillary responses to the target, suggesting steadier attentional engagement with age. Younger adults only exhibited intermittent sensory encoding, indexed by greater variability in the sensory (SSVEP) and attentional (alpha) signals before mind-wandering relative to focused states. Attentional variability was accompanied by disrupted behavioural performance and reduced task-related neural processing, independent of age group. Together, this elucidates distinct performance strategies employed by both groups. Older adults suspended mind-wandering and implemented an exploitative oscillation strategy to circumvent their reduced cognitive resources and allay potential behavioural costs. Conversely, younger adults exhibited greater exploration through mind-wandering, utilising their greater cognitive resources to flexibly alternate between competing goal-directed and mind-wandering strategies, with limited costs.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Pan2025b,

title = {Printing words in alternating colors facilitates eye movements among young and older Chinese adults},

author = {Jinger Pan and Aiping Wang and Mingsha Zhang and Yiu Kei Tsang and Ming Yan},

doi = {10.3758/s13423-024-02581-6},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-04-01},

journal = {Psychonomic Bulletin & Review},

volume = {32},

number = {2},

pages = {855–865},

publisher = {Springer},

abstract = {It is well known that the Chinese writing system lacks visual cues for word boundaries, such as interword spaces. However, characters must be grouped into words or phrases for understanding, and the lack of interword spaces can cause certain ambiguity. In the current study, young and older Chinese adults' eye movements were recorded during their reading of naturally unspaced sentences, where consecutive words or nonwords were printed using alternating colors. The eye movements of both the Chinese young and older adults were clearly influenced by this explicit word boundary information. Across a number of eye-movement measures, in addition to a general age-related slowdown, the results showed that both groups benefited overall from the explicit color-based word boundary and experienced interference from the nonword boundary. Moreover, the manipulations showed stronger effects among the older adults. We discuss implications for practical application.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Zhang2025l,

title = {Effects of animacy on Chinese RCs processing in younger and old adults: Evidence from eye-tracking},

author = {Tian-yu Zhang and Run-ze He and Wen-guang He},

doi = {10.17265/2159-5836/2025.04.006},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-04-01},

journal = {Journal of Literature and Art Studies},

volume = {15},

number = {4},

pages = {294–309},

publisher = {David Publishing Company},

abstract = {Syntax and semantics are two important factors that influence sentence processing. Studies have found different aging effects in syntactic and semantic processing during sentence comprehension. While there is consensus on the aging effects in syntactic processing, the presence of aging in semantic processing remains debated. The present study aimed to explore whether there were aging effects in lexical-semantic information processing in complex sentence. 79 participants were recruited to take part in this study, including 40 younger adults (mean age of 21.1 ± 1.19 years) and 39 older adults (mean age of 66.24 ± 3.02 years). Using eye-movement tracking technology and manipulating the animacy of head nouns in Chinese subject relative clauses (SRCs) and object relative clauses (ORCs), we investigated the abilities of young and old adults in relative clauses (RCs) processing. The results of comprehension accuracy revealed a significant effect of aging in RCs processing, with older participants exhibiting poor performance compared with younger counterparts across all four clause conditions. Furthermore, younger participants demonstrated a clear animacy effect in RCs processing, but this effect was not found in older participants. Reading times indicated a prominent aging effect in clause processing, with older participants showing significantly longer reading times across all four types of RCs compared to younger participants. It was observed that processing ORCs in Chinese was relatively easier than processing SRCs. Additionally, a noticeable aging effect in semantic processing was found, specifically, the difficulties of processing SRCs and ORCs vary with the animacy configuration of the head nouns for younger participants but were not observed in older participants. In summary, aging in cognition would also inhinder semantic processing in complex sentence comprehension.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{HarelArbeli2025,

title = {Taking the extra listening mile: Processing spoken semantic context is more effortful for older than young adults},

author = {Tami Harel-Arbeli and Hagit Shaposhnik and Yuval Palgi and Boaz M. Ben-David},

doi = {10.1097/AUD.0000000000001582},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-03-01},

journal = {Ear and Hearing},

volume = {46},

number = {2},

pages = {315–324},

publisher = {Wolters Kluwer Health},

abstract = {Objectives: Older adults use semantic context to generate predictions in speech processing, compensating for aging-related sensory and cognitive changes. This study aimed to gauge aging-related changes in effort exertion related to context use. Design: The study revisited data from Harel-Arbeli et al. (2023) that used a "visual-world"eye-tracking paradigm. Data on efficiency of context use (response latency and the probability to gaze at the target before hearing it) and effort exertion (pupil dilation) were extracted from a subset of 14 young adults (21 to 27 years old) and 13 older adults (65 to 79 years old). Results: Both age groups showed a similar pattern of context benefits for response latency and target word predictions, however only the older adults group showed overall increased pupil dilation when listening to context sentences. Conclusions: Older adults' efficient use of spoken semantic context appears to come at a cost of increased effort exertion.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Jeppsen2025,

title = {The development of lexical processing: Real-time phonological competition and semantic activation in school age children},

author = {Charlotte Jeppsen and Keith Baxelbaum and Bruce Tomblin and Kelsey Klein and Bob McMurray},

doi = {10.1177/17470218241244799},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-03-01},

journal = {Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology},

volume = {78},

number = {3},

pages = {437–458},

publisher = {SAGE Publications Ltd},

abstract = {Prior research suggests that the development of speech perception and word recognition stabilises in early childhood. However, recent work suggests that development of these processes continues throughout adolescence. This study aimed to investigate whether these developmental changes are based solely within the lexical system or are due to domain general changes, and to extend this investigation to lexical-semantic processing. We used two Visual World Paradigm tasks: one to examine phonological and semantic processing, one to capture non-linguistic domain-general skills. We tested 43 seven- to nine-year-olds, 42 ten- to thirteen-year-olds, and 30 sixteen- to seventeen-year-olds. Older children were quicker to fixate the target word and exhibited earlier onset and offset of fixations to both semantic and phonological competitors. Visual/cognitive skills explained significant, but not all, variance in the development of these effects. Developmental changes in semantic activation were largely attributable to changes in upstream phonological processing. These results suggest that the concurrent development of linguistic processes and broader visual/cognitive skills lead to developmental changes in real-time phonological competition, while semantic activation is more stable across these ages.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Redolfi2025,

title = {Processing adjectives in development: Evidence from eye-tracking},

author = {Michela Redolfi and Chiara Melloni},

doi = {10.1017/S0305000923000703},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-03-01},

journal = {Journal of Child Language},

volume = {52},

number = {2},

pages = {270–293},

publisher = {Cambridge University Press},

abstract = {Combining adjective meaning with the modified noun is particularly challenging for children under three years. Previous research suggests that in processing noun-adjective phrases children may over-rely on noun information, delaying or omitting adjective interpretation. However, the question of whether this difficulty is modulated by semantic differences among (subsective) adjectives is underinvestigated. A visual-world experiment explores how Italian-learning children (N=38, 2;4–5;3) process noun-adjective phrases and whether their processing strategies adapt based on the adjective class. Our investigation substantiates the proficient integration of noun and adjective semantics by children. Nevertheless, alligning with previous research, a notable asymmetry is evident in the interpretation of nouns and adjectives, the latter being integrated more slowly. Remarkably, by testing toddlers across a wide age range, we observe a developmental trajectory in processing, supporting a continuity approach to children's development. Moreover, we reveal that children exhibit sensitivity to the distinct interpretations associated with each subsective adjective.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Shen2025a,

title = {Breathy vocal quality, background noise, and hearing loss: How do these adverse conditions affect speech perception by older adults?},

author = {Jing Shen and Elizabeth Heller Murray},

doi = {10.1097/AUD.0000000000001599},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-03-01},

journal = {Ear and Hearing},

volume = {46},

number = {2},

pages = {474–482},

publisher = {Wolters Kluwer Health},

abstract = {Objectives: Although breathy vocal quality and hearing loss are both prevalent age-related changes, their combined impact on speech communication is poorly understood. This study investigated whether breathy vocal quality affected speech perception and listening effort by older listeners. Furthermore, the study examined how this effect was modulated by the adverse listening environment of background noise and the listener's level of hearing loss. Design: Nineteen older adults participated in the study. Their hearing ranged from near-normal to mild-moderate sensorineural hearing loss. Participants heard speech material of low-context sentences, with stimuli resynthesized to simulate original, mild-moderately breathy, and severely breathy conditions. Speech intelligibility was measured using a speech recognition in noise paradigm, with pupillometry data collected simultaneously to measure listening effort. Results: Simulated severely breathy vocal quality was found to reduce intelligibility and increase listening effort. Breathiness and background noise level independently modulated listening effort. The impact of hearing loss was not observed in this dataset, which can be due to the use of individualized signal to noise ratios and a small sample size. Conclusion: Results from this study demonstrate the challenges of listening to speech with a breathy vocal quality. Theoretically, the findings highlight the importance of periodicity cues in speech perception in noise by older listeners. Breathy voice could be challenging to separate from the noise when the noise also lacks periodicity. Clinically, it suggests the need to address both listener- and talker-related factors in speech communication by older adults.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Thothathiri2025,

title = {The role of executive function in the processing and acquisition of syntax},

author = {Malathi Thothathiri and Evan Kidd and Caroline Rowland},

doi = {10.1098/rsos.201497},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-03-01},

journal = {Royal Society Open Science},

volume = {12},

number = {3},

pages = {1–30},

publisher = {Royal Society Publishing},

abstract = {Language acquisition is multifaceted, relying on cognitive and social abilities in addition to language-specific skills. We hypothesized that executive function (EF) may assist language development by enabling children to revise misinterpretations during online processing, encode language input more accurately and/or learn non-canonical sentence structures like the passive better over time. One hundred and twenty Dutch preschoolers each completed three sessions of testing (pre-test, exposure and post-test). During pre-test and post-test, we measured their comprehension of passive sentences and performance in three EF tasks. In the exposure session, we tracked children's eye movements as they listened to passive (and other) sentences. Each child was also assessed for short-term memory and receptive language. Multiple regression evaluated the relationship between EF and online processing and longer-term learning. EF predicted online revision accuracy, while controlling for receptive language, prior passive knowledge and short-term memory, consistent with theories linking EF to the revision of misinterpretations. EF was also associated with longer-term learning, but the results could not disentangle EF from receptive language. These findings broadly support a role for EF in language acquisition, including a specific role in revision during sentence processing and potentially other roles that depend on reciprocal interaction between EF and receptive language.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Tuente2025,

title = {Respiratory and cardiac interoceptive sensitivity in the first two years of life},

author = {Markus R Tünte and Stefanie Hoehl and Moritz Wunderwald and Johannes Bullinger and Asena Boyadziheva and Lara Maister and Birgit Elsner and Manos Tsakiris and Ezgi Kayhan},

doi = {10.7554/elife.91579},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-03-01},

journal = {eLife},

volume = {12},

pages = {1–40},

publisher = {eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd},

abstract = {Several recent theoretical accounts have posited that interoception, the perception of internal bodily signals, plays a vital role in early human development. Yet, empirical evidence of cardiac interoceptive sensitivity in infants to date has been mixed. Furthermore, existing evidence does not go beyond the perception of cardiac signals and focuses only on the age of 5–7 mo, limiting the generalizability of the results. Here, we used a modified version of the cardiac interoceptive sensitivity paradigm introduced by Maister et al., 2017 in 3-, 9-, and 18-mo-old infants using cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches. Going beyond, we introduce a novel experimental paradigm, namely the iBREATH, to investigate respiratory interoceptive sensitivity in infants. Overall, for cardiac interoceptive sensitivity ( total n =135) we find rather stable evidence across ages with infants on average preferring stimuli presented synchronously to their heartbeat. For respiratory interoceptive sensitivity ( total n =120) our results show a similar pattern in the first year of life, but not at 18 mo. We did not observe a strong relationship between cardiac and respiratory interoceptive sensitivity at 3 and 9 mo but found some evidence for a relationship at 18 mo. We validated our results using specification curve- and mega-analytic approaches. By examining early cardiac and respiratory interoceptive processing, we provide evidence that infants are sensitive to their interoceptive signals.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Vanoncini2025,

title = {Individual differences in infants' speech segmentation performance: The role of mother-infant cardiac synchrony},

author = {Monica Vanoncini and Ezgi Kayhan and Birgit Elsner and Moritz Wunderwald and Sebastian Wallot and Stefanie Hoehl and Natalie Boll-Avetisyan},

doi = {10.1111/infa.70020},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-03-01},

journal = {Infancy},

volume = {30},

number = {2},

pages = {1–13},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Inc},

abstract = {Caregiver-infant coregulation is an early form of communication. This study investigated whether mother-infant biological coregulation is associated with 9-month-olds' word segmentation performance, a crucial milestone predicting language development. We hypothesized that coregulation would relate with infants' word segmentation performance. Additionally, we examined whether this relationship is influenced by the caregiving environment (i.e., parental reflective functioning) and the infant's emotional state (i.e., positive affect). Coregulation was investigated via cardiac synchrony in 28 nine-month-old infants (16 females) during a 5-min free-play with their German-speaking mothers. Cardiac synchrony was measured through Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA), employing Recurrence Quantification Analysis to evaluate dyadic coupling (i.e., Recurrence Rate) and dyadic predictability (i.e., Entropy). Infants' word segmentation was measured with an eye-tracking central-fixation procedure. A stepwise regression revealed that higher dyadic coupling, but not predictability, of the dyads' RSA was associated with infants looking longer toward the screen when listening to novel as compared to familiar test words, indicating advanced word segmentation performance (Cohen's d = 0.25). Moreover, cardiac synchrony correlated positively with maternal sensitivity to their infant's mental states, but not with the infant's positive affect. These results suggest that caregiver-infant biological coregulation may play a foundational role in language acquisition.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Westner2025,

title = {Typical neural adaptation for familiar images in autistic adolescents},

author = {Britta U. Westner and Ella Bosch and Christian Utzerath and Jan Buitelaar and Floris P. Lange},

doi = {10.1162/imag_a_00505},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-03-01},

journal = {Imaging Neuroscience},

volume = {3},

pages = {1–15},

publisher = {Massachusetts Institute of Technology},

abstract = {It has been proposed that autistic perception may be marked by a reduced influence of temporal context. Following this theory, prior exposure to a stimulus should lead to a weaker or absent alteration of the behavioral and neural response to the stimulus in autism, compared with a typical population. To examine these hypotheses, we recruited two samples of human volunteers: a student sample (N = 26), which we used to establish our analysis pipeline, and an adolescent sample (N = 36), which consisted of a group of autistic (N = 18) and a group of non-autistic (N = 18) participants. All participants were presented with visual stimulus streams consisting of novel and familiar image pairs, while they attentively monitored each stream. We recorded task performance and used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure neural responses, and to compare the responses with familiar and novel images. We found behavioral facilitation as well as a reduction of event-related field (ERF) amplitude for familiar, compared with novel, images in both samples. Crucially, we found statistical evidence against between-group effects of familiarity on both behavioral and neural responses in the adolescent sample, suggesting that the influence of familiarity is comparable between autistic and non-autistic adolescents. These findings challenge the notion that perception in autism is marked by a reduced influence of prior exposure.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Zeng2025a,

title = {Age-related depreciation in predictive processing during Chinese reading: Insights from fixation-related potentials},

author = {Taishen Zeng and Longxia Lou and Zhifang Liu and Zhijun Zhang},

doi = {10.1007/s12144-025-07344-7},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-03-01},

journal = {Current Psychology},

volume = {44},

number = {2004},

pages = {1–11},

publisher = {Springer},

abstract = {To overcome methodological deficiencies in previous eye-tracking and event-related potentials (ERP) studies, the fixa- tion-related potential (FRP) approach was used to investigate how aging affects predictive processing in silent Chinese free-view reading. Forty older and 42 young adults participated in the experiment. All of them reported good reading abilities and none suffered from physical, mental, or cognitive diseases. The older participants were over 60 years of age (62.670 ± 3.018), and they did not differ from the younger group in the schooling years (11.43 vs. 12.10},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Bahn2025,

title = {Processing of scene-grammar inconsistencies in children with developmental language disorder—insights from implicit and explicit measures},

author = {Daniela Bahn and Dilara Deniz Türk and Nikol Tsenkova and Gudrun Schwarzer and Melissa Le Hoa Võ and Christina Kauschke},

doi = {10.3390/brainsci15020139},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-02-01},

journal = {Brain Sciences},

volume = {15},

number = {2},

pages = {1–22},

publisher = {Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)},

abstract = {Background/Objectives: Developmental language disorders (DLD) are often associated with co-occurring neurodevelopmental difficulties, including attentional or social–emotional problems. Another nonverbal domain, i.e., visual cognition and its relationship to DLD, is virtually unexplored. However, learning visuospatial regularities—a scene-grammar—is crucial for navigating our daily environment. These regularities show certain similarities to the structure of language and there is preliminary evidence for a relationship between scene processing and language competence in preschoolers with and without DLD. This study compared implicit and explicit visuospatial knowledge of everyday indoor scenes in older children, aged 6 to 10 years, of both groups. Methods: We measured ‘dwell times' on semantic and syntactic object—scene inconsistencies via eye-tracking and performance in an object-placement task, and their associations with children's language, visual, and cognitive skills. Results: Visual attention towards object-scene inconsistencies was highly comparable between groups, but children with DLD scored lower in a visual perception test and higher language skills were associated with higher visuo-cognitive performance in both tasks. In the explicit scene-grammar measurement, this relationship only existed for children with DLD and disappeared when nonverbal cognitive performance was controlled. Conclusions: Our study suggests the existence of mild problems in visuospatial processing co-occurring with DLD, which is partly influenced by age and nonverbal cognitive ability. The acquisition of visual cognition and linguistic knowledge is an interactive, multimodal process where the perception of objects in scenes might affect how the words for these objects are learned and vice versa. A better understanding of this interplay could eventually have impact on the diagnosis and treatment of DLD.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Jian2025a,

title = {A longitudinal eye-movement study of text-diagram integrative processing during multimedia reading among upper elementary children},

author = {Yu Cin Jian and Leo Yuk Ting Cheung},

doi = {10.1007/s11145-023-10509-0},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-02-01},

journal = {Reading and Writing},

volume = {38},

number = {2},

pages = {557–578},

publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media B.V.},

abstract = {This study aimed to investigate whether elementary school students have different reading strategies based on various levels of text-diagram integrative processing and whether these reading strategies remain consistent or change over a three-year period. The study followed 176 students from grades four to six and observed their eye movements while reading scientific texts. Data were collected once each year. Text-diagram integrative behavior was analyzed using various eye-movement indicators. The number of saccades between the text and diagram was evaluated, as well as the total fixation durations of the longest eye-fixation run that stayed within the paragraph and diagram regions and the remaining eye-fixation runs on the same regions. A separate K-means cluster analysis was conducted on two different text sets (one identical and the other different across grades) to identify three reading strategy patterns at each grade level. The results showed that those associated with integrative processing (i.e., the “integrative group”) constituted a minority across grades (16–25% of students), followed closely by those focusing largely on the main text (“textual group”) (17–28%). The latter group showed a strong motivation to read but failed to utilize the diagrams for knowledge construction. The majority of the students (52–67%) were categorized into the “shallow group,” which showed a relative weakness in both integrative processing and intensive text reading. There was greater consistency in group assignments for individual students between the two text sets within a given year (63% on average) compared to across grade levels (30%), suggesting the instability of reading strategies over time. A growing trend in integrative processing toward higher grades was not observed.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Li2025q,

title = {Preschool children with high reading ability show inversion sensitivity to words in environment: An eye-tracking study},

author = {Yaowen Li and Jing Zhao and Wangmei Chen and Shaoxue Zhang and Wenjing Zhang and Wei Wang and Limin Xu and Shifeng Li and Licheng Xue},

doi = {10.3390/jemr18020004},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-02-01},

journal = {Journal of Eye Movement Research},

volume = {18},

number = {2},

pages = {1–13},

abstract = {Words in environmental print are exposed to young children before formally learning to read, and attention to these words is linked to their reading ability. Inversion sensitivity, the ability to distinguish between upright and inverted words, is a pivotal milestone in reading development. To further explore the relationship between attention to words in environmental print and early reading development, we examined whether children with varying reading abilities differed in inversion sensitivity to these words. Participants included children with low (18, 8 males, 5.06 years) and high (19, 10 males, 5.00 years) reading levels. Using an eye-tracking technique, we compared children's attention to upright and inverted words in environmental print and ordinary words during a free-viewing task. In terms of the percentage of fixation duration and fixation count, results showed that children with high reading abilities exhibited inversion sensitivity to words in environmental print, whereas children with low reading abilities did not. Unexpectedly, in terms of first fixation latency, children with low reading abilities showed inversion sensitivity to ordinary words, while children with high reading abilities did not. These findings suggest that inversion sensitivity to words in environmental print is closely linked to early reading ability.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{McAdams2025,

title = {The edge orientation entropy of natural scenes is associated with infant visual preferences and adult aesthetic judgements},

author = {Philip McAdams and Sara Svobodova and Taysa-Ja Newman and Kezia Terry and George Mather and Alice E. Skelton and Anna Franklin},

doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0316555},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-02-01},

journal = {PLoS ONE},

volume = {20},

pages = {1–15},

publisher = {Public Library of Science},

abstract = {Statistical regularities of oriented edges in natural scenes, ‘edge co-occurrence statistics', are associated with adults' aesthetic responses, with greater preference for some images when the degree of randomness in the orientation of edges (Edge Orientation Entropy, EOE) across an image is relatively high. Here, we investigate whether this spatial image statistic is also associated with infants' visual preferences. We measure infant looking time for images of building façades previously used to identify the relationship between EOE and adult aesthetic judgements. Twenty-six 4–9-month-old infants and 29 adults looked freely at pairs of the images. Infants and adults both looked longest at images where all edge orientations are about equally likely to occur (high 1st-order EOE), and at images with low correlation of edge orientations across the image (high 2nd-order EOE). Infant looking time and adult pleasantness judgements were also strongly related: infants looked longer at the building façades that adults liked. Our results suggest that even as young as 4-months, infants' spatial vision is sensitive to edge co-occurrence statistics that are typical of natural scenes and faces, where edges are more evenly distributed across orientations. We discuss the implications for understanding the sensory component of adult aesthetic judgements, as well as the role of natural scene statistics in infant perception.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Adam2025,

title = {Perspective matters in goal-predictive gaze shifts during action observation: Results from 6-, 9-, and 12-month-olds and adults},

author = {Maurits Adam and Birgit Elsner and Norbert Zmyj},

doi = {10.1016/j.jecp.2024.106075},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Experimental Child Psychology},

volume = {249},

pages = {1–13},

publisher = {The Authors},

abstract = {Research on goal-predictive gaze shifts in infancy so far has mostly focused on the effect of infants' experience with observed actions or the effect of agency cues that the observed agent displays. However, the perspective from which an action is presented to the infants (egocentric vs. allocentric) has received only little attention from researchers despite the fact that the natural observation of own actions is always linked to an egocentric perspective, whereas the observation of others' actions is often linked to an allocentric perspective. The current study investigated the timing of 6-, 9-, and 12-month-olds' goal-predictive gaze behavior, as well as that of adults, during the observation of simple human grasping actions that were presented from either an egocentric or allocentric perspective (within-participants design). The results showed that at 6 and 9 months of age, the infants predicted the action goal only when observing the action from the egocentric perspective. The 12-month-olds and adults, in contrast, predicted the action in both perspectives. The results therefore are in line with accounts proposing an advantage of egocentric versus allocentric processing of social stimuli, at least early in development. This study is among the first to show this egocentric bias already during the first year of life.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Axelsson2025,

title = {Toddlers' looking behaviours during referent selection and relationships with immediate and delayed retention},

author = {Emma L. Axelsson and Jessica S. Horst and Samantha L. Playford and Amanda I. Winiger},

doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2024.104596},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Memory and Language},

volume = {141},

pages = {1–15},

publisher = {Elsevier Inc.},

abstract = {The current study investigates whether children's attempts to solve referential ambiguity is best explained as a process-of-elimination or a novelty bias. We measured 2.5-year-old children's pointing and eye movements during referent selection trials and assessed whether this changes across repeated exposures. We also tested children's retention of novel words and how much focusing on novel targets during referent selection supports immediate and delayed retention as well as the effect of hearing the words ostensively named after referent selection. Time course analyses of children's looking during referent selection indicated that soon after noun onsets, in familiar target trials there was a greater focus on targets relative to chance, but in novel target trials, children focussed on targets less than chance, suggesting an initial focus on competitors. Children also took longer to focus on and point to novel compared to familiar targets. Thus, this converging evidence suggests referent selection is best described as a process-of-elimination. Ostensive naming also led to faster pointing at novel targets in subsequent trials and better delayed retention than the non-ostensive condition. In addition, a greater focus on novel targets during referent selection was associated with better immediate retention for the ostensive naming condition, but better delayed retention for the non-ostensive condition. Therefore, a focus on novelty may supplement weaker encoding, facilitating later retention.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Bovo2025,

title = {The modulating effect of gestational age on attentional disengagement in toddlers},

author = {Martina Bovo and Sebastián Moyano and Giulia Calignano and Eloisa Valenza and María Ángeles Ballesteros-Duperon and María Rosario Rueda},

doi = {10.1016/j.infbeh.2024.102007},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Infant Behavior and Development},

volume = {78},

pages = {1–12},

abstract = {Gestational Age (GA) at birth plays a crucial role in identifying potential vulnerabilities to long-term difficulties in cognitive and behavioral development. The present study aims to explore the influence of gestational age on the efficiency of early visual attention orienting, as a potential marker for the development of specific high-level socio-cognitive skills. We administered the Gap-Overlap task to measure the attentional orienting and disengagement performance of 16-month-olds born between the 34th and 41st weeks of gestation. Our findings indicate that GA might be a significant predictor of attentional disengagement performance, with lower GAs associated with slower orienting of visual attention in the gap condition. Additionally, we discuss a possible influence of endogenous attention control on disengagement accuracy at this age, particularly among full-term infants. Overall, the findings highlight the role of GA as a key factor in evaluating early visual attention development, acting as a marker for detecting early vulnerabilities.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Byrd2025,

title = {Understanding how dialect differences shape how AAE-speaking children process sentences in real-time},

author = {Arynn S. Byrd and Yi Ting Huang and Jan Edwards},

doi = {10.1055/a-2626-3292},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Seminars in Speech and Language},

pages = {1–20},

publisher = {Thieme Medical Publishers, Inc.},

abstract = {Dialect differences between African American English (AAE) and Mainstream American English (MAE) impact how children comprehend sentences. However, research on real-time sentence processing has the potential to reveal the underlying causes of these differences. This study used eye tracking, which measures how children interpret linguistic features as a sentence unfolds, and examined how AAE- and MAE-speaking children processed was and were, a morphology feature produced differently in MAE and AAE. Fifty-nine participants, ages 7;8 to 11;0 years, completed standardized measures of dialect density and receptive vocabulary. In the eye tracking task, participants heard sentences in MAE with either unambiguous (e.g., Jeremiah) or ambiguous (e.g., Carolyn May), subjects and eye movements were measured to singular (image of one person) or plural referents (image of two people). After the onset of the auxiliary verb, AAE-speaking children were sensitive to was and were when processing sentences but were less likely than MAE-speaking children to use was as a basis for updating initial predictions of plural referents. Among African American children, dialect density was predictive of sensitivity to was when processing sentences. Results suggest that linguistic mismatch impacts how contrastive verb morphology is used to update initial interpretations of MAE sentences.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Chang2025b,

title = {Flexible parafoveal processing of character order is preserved in older readers},

author = {Min Chang and Kuo Zhang and Lisha Hao and Kevin B. Paterson4 and Kayleigh L. Warrington and Jingxin Wang},

doi = {10.1037/pag0000883.supp},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Psychology and Aging},

volume = {40},

number = {4},

pages = {429–438},

publisher = {American Psychological Association (APA)},

abstract = {Eye movement research in Chinese shows that young adults encode character order flexibly during parafoveal processing and that word predictability can influence this early processing stage. Whether these effects change in older age is unclear, although other research suggests older readers have reduced parafoveal processing capabilities. Using the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975), we compared eye movement data from 60 young adults (18–30 years) with new data from 36 older adults (65–75 years). Participants read sentences with two-character target words of high or low predictability. Before their gaze crossed an invisible boundary, target words were presented normally (valid preview) or with characters transposed or replaced by unrelated characters (invalid previews). Previews reverted to normal once their gaze crossed the boundary. Our results reveal a larger word predictability effect for the older readers, while transposed-character effects were similar across groups, suggesting this intriguing aspect of parafoveal processing is preserved in aging readers. Public},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Cholewa2025,

title = {Predictive use of grammatical gender during noun phrase decoding: An eye-tracking study with German children with developmental language disorder},

author = {Jürgen Cholewa and Annika Kirschenkern and Frederike Steinke and Thomas Günther},

doi = {10.1044/2024_JSLHR-24-00389},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research},

pages = {1–19},

abstract = {Purpose: Predictive language comprehension has become a major topic in psycholinguistic research. The study described in this article aims to investigate if German children with developmental language disorder (DLD) use grammatical gender agreement to predict the continuation of noun phrases in the same way as it has been observed for typically developing (TD) children. The study also seeks to differentiate between specific and general deficits in predictive processing by exploring the anticipatory use of semantic information. Additionally, the research examines whether the processing of gender and semantic information varies with the speed of stimulus presentation. Method: The study included 30 children with DLD (average age = 8.7 years) and 26 TD children (average age = 8.4 years) who participated in a visual-world eye- tracking study. Noun phrases, consisting of an article, an adjective, and a noun, were presented that matched with only one of two target pictures. The phrases contained a gender cue, a semantic cue, a combination of both, or none of these cues. The cues were provided by the article and/or adjective and could be used to identify the target picture before the noun itself was presented. Results: Both groups, TD children and those with DLD, utilized predictive processing strategies in response to gender agreement and semantic information when decoding noun phrases. However, children with DLD were only able to consider gender cues when noun phrases were presented at a slower speech rate, and even then, their predictive certainty remained below the typical level for their age. Conclusion: Based on these findings, the article discusses the potential relevance of the prediction framework for explaining comprehension deficits in chil- dren with DLD, as well as the clinical implications of the results.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Creel2025,

title = {Connecting the tots: Strong looking-pointing correlations in preschoolers' word learning and implications for continuity in language development},

author = {Sarah C. Creel},

doi = {10.1111/cdev.14157},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Child Development},

volume = {96},

pages = {87–103},

abstract = {How does one assess developmental change when the measures themselves change with development? Most developmental studies of word learning use either looking (infants) or pointing (preschoolers and older). With little empirical evidence of the relationship between the two measures, developmental change is difficult to assess. This paper analyzes 914 pointing, looking children (451 female, varied ethnicities, 2.5–6.5 years, dates: 2009–2019) in 36 word- or sound-learning experiments with two-alternative test trials. Looking proportions and pointing accuracy correlated strongly (r =.7). Counter to the “looks first” hypothesis, looks were not sensitive to incipient knowledge that pointing missed: when pointing is at chance, looking proportions are also. Results suggest one possible path forward for assessing continuous developmental change. Methodological best practices are discussed.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Daroczy2025,

title = {Are text comprehension and calculation processes in word problem solving sequential or interactive? An eye-tracking study in children},

author = {Gabriella Daroczy and Christina Artemenko and Magdalena Wolska and Detmar Meurers and Hans-Christoph Nuerk},

doi = {10.1037/cep0000366.supp},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale},

volume = {79},

number = {2},

pages = {206–211},

publisher = {American Psychological Association (APA)},

abstract = {The difficulty ofa word problem is influenced by both linguistic and arithmetic processes. However, whether these processes are sequential or interactive is a matter of debate. Little is known about how eye-movement behaviour changes when faced with different linguistic and arithmetic task characteristics, both in relation to the entire problem and to specific components (i.e., numerical and textual elements). To address this gap, we conducted a study monitoring the eye movements of children aged 10–13 years during word problem solving. We manipulated linguistic and arithmetic task characteristics independently, focusing on the mathematical factor operation (addition/subtraction) and the linguistic factors consistency (consistent/ inconsistent) and nominalization (verbalized/nominalized). The results revealed that eye movements generally increased as linguistic difficulty (e.g., nominalization) or arithmetic difficulty (e.g., operation) increased. Thereby, specific parts of the text were differentially affected based on the task characteristics. Increasing arithmetic difficulty led to a shift in eye movements towards numerical elements, while increasing linguistic difficulty resulted in a shift towards textual elements. Interestingly, the increase in arithmetic difficulty also influenced processing in the linguistic domain. For example, textual parts of the word problem received more fixations when the arithmetic difficulty increased, but not vice versa. This suggests that text comprehension and calculation processes in word problem solving are not separate and not strictly sequential; instead, they interact and/or do partially rely on shared cognitive resources.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Decarli2025,

title = {Relationship between inhibitory skills and numerical momentum in infancy},

author = {Gisella Decarli and Naila Illikoud and Lionel Granjon and André Knops and Arnaud Viarouge and Maria Dolores Hevia},

doi = {10.1080/15248372.2025.2600944},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Cognition and Development},

pages = {1–22},

publisher = {Routledge},

abstract = {Infants as young as 9 months demonstrate both inhibitory control, as revealed by the Spatial Negative Priming (SNP) effect, and numerical biases, such as the Operational Momentum (OM) effect–an overestimation in addition and underestimation in subtraction. Despite their early and parallel emergence, no studies have investigated whether these two cognitive abilities are related in infancy. In the present study, we tested 9- and 12-month-old infants in Paris on both a SNP task, measuring inhibitory skills, and an OM task, assessing sensitivity to directional biases in ordinal numerical sequences. Our results revealed a significant negative correlation between SNP and OM at 12 months, and between SNP at 9 months and OM at 12 months: infants with stronger inhibitory control showed reduced sensitivity to OM. These findings suggest that early inhibitory mechanisms may play a role in the development of OM bias during infancy.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{ElfriedeHolstein2025,

title = {Developing conflict monitoring abilities predict children's revision of an intuitive theory},

author = {Elfriede R. Holstein and Maria Theobald and Leonie S. Weindorf and Garvin Brod},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Child Development},

volume = {96},

pages = {1207–1219},

abstract = {We investigated the role of children's conflict monitoring skills in revising an intuitive scientific theory. Children aged 5 to 9 (N = 177; 53% girls, data collected in Germany from 2019- 2023) completed computer- based tasks on water displacement, a con- cept prone to misconceptions. Children predicted which of two objects would displace more water before receiving feedback. With increasing age, children showed slower response times for incorrect predictions (β = −0.04) and greater pupil dilation to unexpected outcomes (β = −0.04), indicating better conflict monitoring. Better conflict monitoring, in turn, predicted faster belief revision (β = 0.07). These findings suggest that conflict monitoring is crucial for learning in discovery- based activities. Science},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{FernandezFuertes2025,

title = {Activation and local inhibition in the bilingual child's processing of codeswitching},

author = {Raquel Fernández Fuertes and Tamara Gómez Carrero and Juana M. Liceras},

doi = {10.1177/02676583241232221},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Second Language Research},

volume = {41},

number = {1},

pages = {163–190},

publisher = {SAGE Publications Ltd},

abstract = {Codeswitching has been used as a tool to investigate how the properties of the two language systems interact in the bilingual mind with relatively few studies investigating bilingual children. We target two groups of L1-Spanish–L2-English children in Spain to address language activation and language inhibition in the processing of codeswitching between a determiner (DET) and a noun (N). We investigate how the mental representation of the formal features involved is responsible for the sensitivity to grammatical gender, which in turn affects how bilinguals' language activation and inhibition processes are at play and shape processing. We target both the directionality of the switch (English-DET–Spanish-N vs. Spanish-DET–English-N) and the type of implicit gender agreement mechanism (in the case of Spanish-DET–English-N switches) by using offline acceptability judgment data and eyetracking during reading data. Results suggest lower processing costs of English DET switches and higher ones of non-congruent Spanish DET switches. We interpret the preference for classifying the non-gendered Ns along the lines of the gendered Ns in the gendered language as evidence for the integrated representation hypothesis which states that both Ns depicting the same concept are connected in the mind of the bilingual.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Fernandez2025e,

title = {Effects of hearing loss on semantic prediction: Delayed prediction for intelligible speech when listening is demanding},

author = {Leigh B. Fernandez and Muzna Shehzad and Lauren V. Hadley},

doi = {10.1097/AUD.0000000000001679},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Ear and Hearing},

volume = {46},

number = {6},

pages = {1440–1456},

publisher = {Wolters Kluwer Health},

abstract = {Objectives: Linguistic context can be used during speech listening to predict what a talker will say next. These predictions may be particularly useful in adverse listening conditions, since they can facilitate speech processing. In this study, we investigated the impact of postlingual hearing loss on prediction processes. Because hearing loss leads to a perceptual deficit (i.e., degraded auditory input), that can also have cognitive impacts (i.e., increased competition for cognitive resources due to increased listening effort), it is a naturalistic test case of how different sorts of challenge affect prediction. Design: We report a visual world eye-tracking study run with 3 participant groups: older adults (range: 53 to 80 years old) with normal hearing (n = 30), older adults with hearing loss listening under low demand (n = 32), and older adults with hearing loss listening under high demand (n = 31). Using highly semantically constraining predictable sentences, we analyzed the timecourse of simple associative predictions based on the agent of the sentence (sub-experiment 1), and the timecourse by which these predictions were narrowed with additional constraint provided by the verb (sub-experiment 2). Results: Although there was no effect of group on early agent-based predictions, we saw that the buildup and tailoring of verb-based prediction was delayed with hearing loss and exacerbated by listening demand. As there was no comparable group difference for semantically unconstraining neutral sentences, this cannot be explained as a result of delayed lexical access in the hearing loss groups. We also assessed the cost of incorrect predictions but did not see any group differences. Conclusion: These findings indicate two separable stages of prediction that are differently affected by hearing loss and listening demand (potentially due to changes in listening effort), and reveal delayed prediction as a cognitive impact of hearing loss that could compound simple audibility effects.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Fernandez2025,

title = {Younger adults may be faster at making semantic predictions, but older adults are more efficient},

author = {Leigh B. Fernandez and Muzna Shehzad and Lauren V. Hadley},

doi = {10.1037/pag0000872},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Psychology and Aging},

volume = {40},

number = {3},

pages = {318–325},

abstract = {While there is strong evidence that younger adults use contextual information to generate semantic predictions, findings from older adults are less clear. Age affects cognition in a variety of different ways that may impact prediction mechanisms; while the efficiency of memory systems and processing speed decrease, life experience leads to complementary increases in vocabulary size, real-world knowledge, and even inhibitory control. Using the visual world paradigm, we tested prediction in younger (n = 30, between 18 and 35 years of age) and older adults (n = 30, between 53 and 78 years of age). Importantly, we differentiated early stage predictions based on simple spreading activation from the more resource-intensive tailoring of predictions when additional constraining information is provided. We found that older adults were slower than younger adults in generating early stage predictions but then quicker than younger adults to tailor those predictions given additional information. This suggests that while age may lead to delays in first activating relevant lexical items when listening to speech, increased linguistic experience nonetheless increases the efficiency with which contextual information is used. These findings are consistent with reports of age having positive as well as negative impacts on cognition and suggest conflation of different stages of prediction as a basis for the inconsistency in the aging-related literature to date.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Gerharz2025,

title = {Aging leads to predictive gaze allocation during interception},

author = {Leonard Gerharz and Dimitris Voudouris},

doi = {10.1152/jn.00029.2025},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Neurophysiology},

volume = {134},

number = {2},

pages = {728–740},

abstract = {Healthy aging is associated with a general compromise in cognitive, sensory, and motor functions, often reflected in slower and more variable sensorimotor processes. Here, we demonstrate that aging is not only marked by sensorimotor decline but is also accompanied by adaptive sensory sampling stra2tegies during complex motor tasks. Specifically, we examined how healthy aging influences gaze allocation when intercepting a moving object within a narrow spatiotemporal margin, and hypothesized that older adults would rely more on predictive gaze allocation to the interception area. Younger (20–34 yr) and older adults (>55 yr) were asked to hit a moving target at specific hit zones on a monitor that could be inferred either with high (disk) or low (arc) spatial certainty. In two separate experiments, the target moved along unpredictable or predictable paths toward those hit zones. Older adults initiated their interceptive movement earlier than younger adults, but both achieved high interception performance. Remarkably, older adults executed predictive saccades toward the hit zones earlier than younger adults and fixated those hit zones for longer. This was particularly the case when the hit zone was of high spatial certainty. We did not find evidence for a relationship between gaze allocation patterns and interception performance. We suggest that aging can lead to a shift in gaze allocation patterns when performing spatiotemporal constrained tasks, possibly to optimize the acquisition of task-relevant visual information in the presence of age-related sensorimotor limitations.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Guedea2025,

title = {First-language and second-language eye movement reading behavior in monolingual and bilingual children and adults: A focus on word age of acquisition effects},

author = {Erika Guedea and Sarah Macisaac and Marc F. Joanisse and Veronica Whitford},

doi = {10.1017/S1366728925100278},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Bilingualism: Language and Cognition},

pages = {1–13},

publisher = {Cambridge University Press},

abstract = {Word age of acquisition (AoA) influences many aspects of language processing, including reading. However, reading studies of word AoA effects have almost exclusively focused on monolingual young adults, leaving their influence in other age and language groups little understood. Here, we investigated how age (childhood, young adulthood) and language background (monolingual, bilingual) influence word AoA effects during first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) reading. Using eye-tracking, we observed larger L1 word AoA effects in children versus adults (across both language backgrounds). Moreover, we observed larger L2 versus L1 word AoA effects in bilinguals (across both ages), with some evidence of heightened effects in bilingual adults (for late-stage reading only). Taken together, our findings suggest that word AoA exerts a stronger influence on reading during conditions of reduced lexical entrenchment, offering critical insights into how both developing and bilingual readers acquire and maintain word representations across their known languages.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Hert2025,

title = {Focus effect unveils children's local processing of pronouns and reflexives},

author = {Regina Hert and Anja Arnhold and Juhani Järvikivi},

doi = {10.1080/10489223.2024.2339837},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Language Acquisition},

volume = {32},

number = {3},

pages = {363–389},

publisher = {Routledge},

abstract = {Studies on young children's comprehension have shown that children can experience problems interpreting object pronouns, even when reflexive interpretation is already adult-like. Compared to resolving reflexives, linking pronouns to a referent is considered a more “intensive” process, because it also involves non-syntactic factors like discourse context. This could explain why children experience more difficulties with pronouns than with reflexives. Using eye-tracking and a truth value judgement task, we investigated the effect of focus via it-clefts on the processing of reflexives and pronouns in German-speaking children and adults. We analyzed gaze data of two time segments: before and during the mention of the pronoun/reflexive. The cleft segment revealed similar processing of it-clefts in children and adults. In the subsequent reflexive/pronoun segment, clefts caused adults to pay overall more attention to the local referent, while children fixated the clefted non-local referent more. The difference in focus effect, that is, children attend the clefted referent more, while adults pay more attention to the non-clefted referent, helped uncover processing differences between children and adults. That is, unlike adults, children consider only the local discourse context during referential processing. We argue that these processing differences cause children's interpretation difficulties. However, the offline data showed no effect of information structure, suggesting that whether the processing differences transfer to the final interpretation depends on the language-specific function of the pronoun system, which may aid in restricting referential links.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Hintermeier2025,

title = {Sublexical processing in typical and atypical reading development},

author = {Lisa Hintermeier and Mikko Aro},

doi = {10.1080/00220973.2025.2580302},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {The Journal of Experimental Education},

pages = {1–24},

publisher = {Routledge},

abstract = {This study examined sublexical processing in Finnish by investigating the role syllables and morphemes play for beginning readers at various stages of reading-fluency development. Second and fourth graders in Finland, including typically developing readers and children experiencing reading difficulties, performed a lexical decision task while eye movements were recorded. Word and pseudoword stimuli were presented concatenated, separated at the syllable or morpheme boundary. Results indicated that older and more fluent readers were more disrupted by separated conditions, with concatenated words leading to shorter reading times. Visually separating pseudowords improved reading accuracy among less fluent readers, suggesting it might be beneficial for slow readers encountering unfamiliar words. This study enhances the understanding of the role of sublexical processing in reading-fluency development.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Hopp2025,

title = {Learning via processing: Structural priming across grammatical structures and languages in early second language development},

author = {Holger Hopp and Sarah Schimke and David Öwerdieck and Freya Gastmann and Gregory J. Poarch},

doi = {10.1111/lang.12711},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Language Learning},

pages = {1–35},

publisher = {John Wiley and Sons Inc},

abstract = {We employed structural priming to test whether targeted exposure to unambiguous form–meaning mappings led to learning of noncanonical word orders, specifically in object relative clauses, among 165 low-to-intermediate-level L1 German L2 learners of English. We further investigated the scope of structural priming by assessing whether priming with related grammatical structures that had been acquired earlier, namely English questions or German relative clauses, similarly led to learning of L2 English object relative clauses. Based on the assumption that relative clauses and questions are related at the level of sentence processing, we tested whether priming went hand in hand with processing changes, as assessed in visual-world eye tracking. Results showed that learning generalized from L2 questions to L2 relative clauses via cumulative and longer-term priming. In contrast, there was no priming from L1 relative clauses. Longer-term L2 priming co-occurred with changes in initial sentence processing, suggesting that prediction errors may drive learning via priming.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Hsieh2025,

title = {Enhancing preschoolers' map literacy through eye-tracking analysis: Investigating the effects of symbol recognition and spatial reasoning instruction},

author = {Chia Yen Hsieh},

doi = {10.1080/03004430.2025.2555881},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Early Child Development and Care},

volume = {195},

number = {12},

pages = {1163–1193},

publisher = {Routledge},

abstract = {This study examines the impact of map literacy instruction on preschoolers' symbol recognition and spatial understanding using eye-tracking technology. Eighty-two children aged 5–6 were randomly assigned to an experimental group receiving a three-month map skills intervention or a control group with no instruction. Eye-tracking was used to assess visual behaviour during map-reading tasks. The results showed that the experimental group demonstrated significantly higher accuracy and faster symbol recognition, with shorter fixation durations and fewer revisits to target areas. However, no significant group differences emerged in understanding relative spatial positions, highlighting ongoing cognitive challenges in spatial reasoning at this age. The findings support the effectiveness of map literacy instruction in enhancing preschoolers' visual processing and map-reading abilities, while underscoring the developmental limitations in spatial cognition. This study provides empirical evidence for integrating map literacy into early childhood curricula and calls for further research into instructional approaches that address the complexities of spatial understanding in early learning contexts.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Hur2025,

title = {Adolescent social anxiety is associated with diminished discrimination of anticipated threat and safety in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis},

author = {Juyoen Hur and Rachael M. Tillman and Hyung Cho Kim3 and Paige Didier and Allegra S. Anderson and Samiha Islam and Melissa D. Stockbridge and Andres De Los Reyes and Kathryn A. DeYoung and Jason F. Smith and Alexander J. Shackman},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science},

volume = {134},

number = {1},

pages = {41–56},

abstract = {Social anxiety-which typically emerges in adolescence-lies on a continuum and, when extreme, can be devastating. Socially anxious individuals are prone to heightened fear, anxiety, and the avoidance of contexts associated with potential social scrutiny. Yet most neuroimaging research has focused on acute social threat. Much less attention has been devoted to understanding the neural systems recruited during the uncertain anticipation of potential encounters with social threat. Here we used a novel fMRI paradigm to probe the neural circuitry engaged during the anticipation and acute presentation of threatening faces and voices in a racially diverse sample of 66 adolescents selectively recruited to encompass a range of social anxiety and enriched for clinically significant levels of distress and impairment. Results demonstrated that adolescents with more severe social anxiety symptoms experience heightened distress when anticipating encounters with social threat, and reduced discrimination of uncertain social threat and safety in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST), a key division of the central extended amygdala (EAc). Although the EAc-including the BST and central nucleus of the amygdala-was robustly engaged by the acute presentation of threatening faces and voices, the degree of EAc engagement was unrelated to the severity of social anxiety. Together, these observations provide a neurobiologically grounded framework for conceptualizing adolescent social anxiety and set the stage for the kinds of prospective-longitudinal and mechanistic research that will be necessary to determine causation and, ultimately, to develop improved interventions for this often-debilitating illness.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Jia2025,

title = {The trajectory of eye movements in Chinese developing readers during silent and oral sentence reading},

author = {Yuqing Jia and Yingchao Wang and Liyun Shen and Long Chen and Tongqi Gao and Guoli Yan},

doi = {10.1007/s11145-025-10690-4},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Reading and Writing},

pages = {1–33},

publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media B.V.},

abstract = {Silent and oral reading are important reading modes. Chinese children begin to systematically learn these two reading modes in primary school. Previous studies have explored the developmental characteristics of eye movements during silent and oral reading among English-speaking children, but there has been no comparable research for Chinese children. In this study, eye-tracking data were collected from 240 primary school students (Grades 1–6) and 40 college students during silent and oral reading of sentences containing high-frequency and low-frequency words. We compared differences between adjacent grades and between each grade and adults to examine the developmental trajectory of eye movements in silent and oral reading, and explore the impact of reading mode on word frequency effect and individual difference in reading speed. Results indicated that as grades increased, fixation durations and regressions decreased, while saccade lengths increased during both silent and oral reading of sentences. Silent reading took a shorter fixation time than oral reading and showed greater development, with differences between the two modes becoming more pronounced after Grade 3. A stronger word frequency effect was observed in oral reading. Individual differences in reading speed influenced both silent and oral reading. The findings suggest that children's silent and oral reading have different developmental characteristics of eye movements. Furthermore, the unique linguistic features of Chinese may result in differences between Chinese and English children in reading modes.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Kim2025a,

title = {Eye movement evidence for locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system contributions to age differences in attention},

author = {Andy Jeesu Kim and Kristine Nguyen and Ying Tian and Mara Mather},

doi = {10.1037/pag0000930},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Psychology and Aging},

volume = {40},

number = {8},

pages = {929–944},

abstract = {Neuroimaging studies have shown that aging alters the brain mechanisms underlying attentional control, even when behavioral performance is equivalent between younger and older adults. Instead of attributing these changes to compensatory mechanisms, we investigated whether age-related neuromodulatory changes in the locus coeruleus-noradrenaline (LC-NA) system are underlying these effects. To test whether aging leads to LC-NA system hyperactivity, we combined two methodological approaches: an oculomotor visual search task to assess eye movements and the threat of unpredictable electric shock paradigm to induce sustained arousal. Using pupillometry, we found that arousal reduced evoked pupil responses in both age groups, demonstrating the expected pattern of lower phasic noradrenergic activity under arousal. Young adults made significantly more first fixations to the physically salient distractor under threat of shock compared to baseline conditions, unlike in older adults with no effect. This modulation of attentional priority was only observable immediately following shock delivery and dissipated over time. Additionally, we found moderate evidence supporting the null hypothesis that arousal does not modulate the speed of attention processing in either age group. These results suggest that arousal selectively modulates attentional priority maps in the early visual cortex but does not influence broader interactions across higher order attentional networks. While first fixation measures revealed age-related differences consistent with the hypothesis of LC-NA system hyperactivity in aging, pupillometry and processing speed measures showed age-equivalent effects. Together, these findings highlight the potential for age-related changes in the LC-NA system to modulate mechanisms of attentional control and demonstrate the utility of eye movement measures as a promising tool to track changes across the adult lifespan.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Lee2025,

title = {Disrupted microsaccade responses in late-life depression},

author = {Yao-Tung Lee and Ying-Hsuan Tai and Yi-Hsuan Chang and Cesar Barquero and Shu-Ping Chao and Chin-An Wang},

doi = {10.1038/s41598-025-86399-9},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Scientific Reports},

volume = {15},

number = {1},

pages = {1–11},

abstract = {Late-life depression (LLD) is a psychiatric disorder in older adults, characterized by high prevalence and significant mortality rates. Thus, it is imperative to develop objective and cost-effective methods for detecting LLD. Individuals with depression often exhibit disrupted levels of arousal, and microsaccades, as a type of fixational eye movement that can be measured non-invasively, are known to be modulated by arousal. This makes microsaccades a promising candidate as biomarkers for LLD. In this study, we used a high-resolution, video-based eye-tracker to examine microsaccade behavior in a visual fixation task between LLD patients and age-matched healthy controls (CTRL). Our goal was to determine whether microsaccade responses are disrupted in LLD compared to CTRL. LLD patients exhibited significantly higher microsaccade peak velocities and larger amplitudes compared to CTRL. Although microsaccade rates were lower in LLD than in CTRL, these differences were not statistically significant. Additionally, while both groups displayed microsaccadic inhibition and rebound in response to changes in background luminance, this modulation was significantly blunted in LLD patients, suggesting dysfunction in the neural circuits responsible for microsaccade generation. Together, these findings, for the first time, demonstrate significant alterations in microsaccade behavior in LLD patients compared to CTRL, highlighting the potential of these disrupted responses as behavioral biomarkers for identifying individuals at risk for LLD.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Li2025l,

title = {Beat gestures improve language comprehension in Chinese children with autism spectrum disorders},

author = {Shifeng Li and Yuhan Zhang and Li Wang and Jiayue Li},

doi = {10.1007/s10803-025-06892-y},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders},

pages = {1–11},

publisher = {Springer},

abstract = {The present study investigated the role of beat gestures in language comprehension among children with autism spectrum disorders. Twenty-six children with autism and 26 age-matched typically developing children participated in a language comprehension task. The task involved watching video recordings of dialogues presented in three conditions: speech-only, speech with beat gestures, and speech with meaningless gestures. The study recorded the accuracy and reaction time of children's responses, as well as their eye movement patterns, during the task. While there were no significant differences in the accuracy and reaction time across the three conditions for the typically developing children, the autistic children showed significantly improved performance in the beat gesture condition compared to the other two conditions. Additionally, eye-movement data revealed that typically developing children displayed an attentional bias towards the face in all conditions. However, autistic children demonstrated a greater bias in gaze towards the hand location in the gesture condition. The results suggest that beat gestures enhance language comprehension in autistic children by emphasizing prosodic and discourse-pragmatic cues. These findings offer valuable insights for language rehabilitation training practices for Chinese children with autism.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{LopezAssef2025,

title = {Task effects in children's word recall: Expanding the reverse production effect},

author = {Belén López Assef and Tania Zamuner},

doi = {10.1017/S0305000925000030},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Journal of Child Language},

pages = {1–13},

abstract = {Words said aloud are typically recalled more than words studied under other techniques. In certain circumstances, production does not lead to this memory advantage. We investigated the nature of this effect by varying the task during learning. Children aged five to six years were trained on novel words which required no action (Heard) compared to Verbal-Speech (production), Non-Verbal-Speech (stick out tongue), and Non-Verbal-Non-Speech (touch nose). Eye-tracking showed successful learning of novel words in all training conditions, but no differences between conditions. Both non-verbal tasks disrupted recall, demonstrating that encoding can be disrupted when children perform different types of concurrent actions.},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{Luo2025a,

title = {Supplemental material for limited learning and adaptation in disfluency processing among older adults},

author = {Diyu Luo and Kristi Hendrickson and Si On Yoon},

doi = {10.1037/pag0000887.supp},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-01-01},

journal = {Psychology and Aging},

volume = {40},

number = {4},

pages = {439–447},

publisher = {American Psychological Association (APA)},

abstract = {Listeners adapt to diverse cues in real-time language processing. While younger adults can learn and adapt in complex multitalker settings, it remains uncertain whether this ability persists in older adults, especially when they must accumulate auditory inputs to learn novel statistics. We examined whether older adults adapt to talker-specific patterns using paralinguistic cues such as disfluency. In two experiments, older adults listened to instructions from two talkers: one used disfluency predictively (e.g., always referring to novel objects following disfluency) and the other used disfluency unpredictably (e.g., referring to either familiar or novel objects following disfluency). Experiment 1 examined a single-talker setting (N = 50, between-subjects), and Experiment 2 examined a multitalker setting (N = 50, within-subjects). Participants' eye movements were compared between the predictive and nonpredictive conditions. In Experiment 1, older adults demonstrated partner-specific adaptation by looking at novel imagesmore in the predictive condition than in the nonpredictive condition. However, this partner-specific adaptation was not observed in Experiment 2. The results suggest that while older adults can adapt to simpler single-talker settings, their ability to learn and apply novel statistics specific to each talker diminishes in more complex multitalker settings. This limitation may stem from slower processing speed and decreased cognitive flexibility, which may lead older adults to rely on global statistics rather than partner-specific ones. Public},

keywords = {},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}