EyeLink Clinical and Oculomotor Eye-Tracking Publications
EyeLink clinical and oculomotor research publications up until 2023 (with some early 2024s) are listed below by year. You can search the publications using keywords such as Saccadic Adaptation, Schizophrenia, Nystagmus, etc. You can also search for individual author names, and limit searches by year (choose the year then click the search button). If we missed any EyeLink clinical or oculomotor articles, please email us!
2023 |
Carina Frondén; Johanna K Kaakinen Reading Easy Language texts written by public authorities: Evidence from eye tracking Journal Article In: Finnish Journal of Linguistics, vol. 36, no. 2023, pp. 7–36, 2023. @article{Fronden2023, Previous research has shown that word length, frequency and word repetition influence word reading times (Rayner 1998; 2009). Guidelines for Easy Language advise writers to use frequent and short words, and to repeat words instead of using synonyms. However, some of these guidelines are based on research that has been misinterpreted, simplified, or is outdated (Wengelin 2015), and studies focusing on effects of word length, frequency and word repetition among adult readers in the Easy Swedish target group are lacking. This eyetracking study investigated the reading of Easy Language texts written by public authorities, as well as the effects of word length, frequency, and word repetition on readers in a day centre for people with intellectual disabilities. The results showed significant effects for word length and frequency in all readers. In addition, the effects were significantly greater in the target group than in the control group. The effects for word repetition were not as clear, affecting only one of the reading measures. Furthermore, the study revealed poor comprehension rates in the target group, i. e., when asked, they were not able to reproduce the main contents of the texts. The significantly greater effects of word length and frequency suggest that the related Easy Language guidelines are valid for this group of readers. The poor comprehension rates indicate that the texts were too difficult for these readers. |
Ian Cunnings; Hiroki Fujita Similarity-based interference and relative clauses in second language processing Journal Article In: Second Language Research, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 539–563, 2023. @article{Cunnings2023a, Relative clauses have long been examined in research on first (L1) and second (L2) language acquisition and processing, and a large body of research has shown that object relative clauses (e.g. ‘The boy that the girl saw') are more difficult to process than subject relative clauses (e.g. ‘The boy that saw the girl'). Although there are different accounts of this finding, memory-based factors have been argued to play a role in explaining the object relative disadvantage. Evidence of memory-based factors in relative clause processing comes from studies indicating that representational similarity influences the difficulty associated with object relatives as a result of a phenomenon known as similarity-based interference. Although similarity-based interference has been well studied in L1 processing, less is known about how it influences L2 processing. We report two studies – an eye-tracking experiment and a comprehension task – investigating interference in the comprehension of relative clauses in L1 and L2 readers. Our results indicated similarity-based interference in the processing of object relative clauses in both L1 and L2 readers, with no significant differences in the size of interference effects between the two groups. These results highlight the importance of considering memory-based factors when examining L2 processing. |
Ian Cunnings; Patrick Sturt Illusions of plausibility in adjuncts and co-ordination Journal Article In: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, vol. 38, no. 9, pp. 1318–1337, 2023. @article{Cunnings2023, Illusions of grammaticality, where ungrammatical sentences are misperceived as grammatical (e.g. The key to the cabinets were rusty), have been widely studied during language comprehension. Such grammatical illusions have been influential in debate surrounding so-called representational and retrieval-based accounts of linguistic dependency resolution. Whether analogous illusions of plausibility occur at the level of semantic interpretation has only recently begun to be examined, and thus far, these illusions have been restricted to a narrow range of linguistic phenomena. In two eye-tracking during reading experiments (n = 48 in each) and two self-paced reading experiments (n = 192 in each) we examined the possibility of semantic illusions during the processing of adjuncts and co-ordination. Across experiments, our results suggest illusions of plausibility during dependency resolution, though interference effects were clearer in adjuncts than co-ordination. We argue that our findings are more compatible with retrieval-based rather than representational accounts of linguistic dependency resolution. |
Megan M. Dailey; Camille Straboni; Sharon Peperkamp Using allophonic variation in L2 word recognition: French listeners' processing of English vowel nasalization Journal Article In: Second Language Research, pp. 1–22, 2023. @article{Dailey2023, During spoken word processing, native (L1) listeners use allophonic variation to predictively rule out word competitors and speed up word recognition. There is some evidence that second language (L2) learners develop an awareness of allophonic distributions in their L2, but whether they use their knowledge to facilitate word recognition online, like native listeners do, is largely unknown. In an offline gating experiment and an online eye-tracking experiment in the visual world paradigm, we compare advanced French learners of English and a control group of L1 English listeners on their processing of English vowel nasalization during spoken word recognition. In the gating task, the French listeners' performance did not differ from that of the English ones. The eye-tracking results show that French listeners used the allophonic distribution in the same way as English listeners, although they were not as fast. Together, these results reveal that L2 learners can develop novel processing strategies using sounds in allophonic distribution to facilitate spoken word recognition. |
Anne Françoise Chambrier; Marco Pedrotti; Paolo Ruggeri; Jasinta Dewi; Myrto Atzemian; Catherine Thevenot; Catherine Martinet; Philippe Terrier Reading numbers is harder than reading words: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Acta Psychologica, vol. 237, pp. 1–11, 2023. @article{Chambrier2023, We recorded the eye movements of adults reading aloud short (four digit) and long (eight to 11 digit) Arabic numerals compared to matched-in-length words and pseudowords. We presented each item in isolation, at the center of the screen. Participants read each item aloud at their pace, and then pressed the spacebar to display the next item. Reading accuracy was 99 %. Results showed that adults make 2.5 times more fixations when reading short numerals compared to short words, and up to 7 times more fixations when reading long numerals with respect to long words. Similarly, adults make 3 times more saccades when reading short numerals compared to short words, and up to 9 times more saccades when reading long numerals with respect to long words. Fixation duration and saccade amplitude stay almost the same when reading short numerals with respect to short words. However, fixation duration increases by ∼50 ms when reading long numerals (∼300 ms) with respect to long words (∼250 ms), and saccade amplitude decreases up to 0.83 characters when reading long numerals with respect to long words. The pattern of findings for long numerals—more and shorter saccades as well as more and longer fixations—shows the extent to which reading long Arabic numerals is a cognitively costly task. Within the phonographic writing system, this pattern of eye movements stands for the use of the sublexical print-to-sound correspondence rules. The data highlight that reading large numerals is an unautomatized activity and that Arabic numerals must be converted into their oral form by a step-by-step process even by expert readers. |
Elisabetta De Simone; Kristina Moll; Lisa Feldmann; Xenia Schmalz; Elisabeth Beyersmann The role of syllables and morphemes in silent reading: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 76, no. 11, pp. 2493–2513, 2023. @article{DeSimone2023, German skilled readers have been found to engage in morphological and syllable-based processing in visual word recognition. However, the relative reliance on syllables and morphemes in reading multi-syllabic complex words is still unresolved. This study aimed to unveil which of these sublexical units are the preferred units of reading by employing eye-tracking technology. Participants silently read sentences while their eye-movements were recorded. Words were visually marked using colour alternation (Experiment 1) or hyphenation (Experiment 2)—at syllable boundary (e.g., Kir-schen), at morpheme boundary (e.g., Kirsch-en), or within the units themselves (e.g., Ki-rschen). A control condition without disruptions was used as a baseline (e.g., Kirschen). The results of Experiment 1 showed that eye-movements were not modulated by colour alternations. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that hyphens disrupting syllables had a larger inhibitory effect on reading times than hyphens disrupting morphemes, suggesting that eye-movements in German skilled readers are more influenced by syllabic than morphological structure. |
Jack Dempsey; Anna Tsiola; Kiel Christianson Eye-tracking evidence from attachment structures favors a serial model of discourse–sentence interactivity Journal Article In: Discourse Processes, vol. 60, no. 9, pp. 613–633, 2023. @article{Dempsey2023, Many psycholinguistic studies examine how people parse sentences in isolation; however, years of work in discourse processing have shown that sentence-level interpretations are influenced at some stage by discourse-level information. Evidence over the past 20 years remains mixed as to the temporal dynamics of such top-down interactions. In particular, dynamic accounts where readers use the discourse model to generate expectations for certain grammatical structures before and during parsing differ from serial accounts where an algorithmic first-pass processing mechanism precedes integration of sentence material into the discourse model. To test between these two theories, the current study investigates eye-movement behaviors when reading temporarily ambiguous attachment structures following discourses with biases either matching, mismatching, or neutral with respect to the attachment resolution. No evidence was found suggesting readers systematically use discourse information to generate structural expectations, in line with serial accounts of processing at the sentence–discourse interface. Scanpath analyses further highlight the confirmatory nature of rereading when participants encounter discourse continuations that do not fit with prior contexts. |
Shuwen Deng; David R. Reich; Paul Prasse; Patrick Haller; Tobias Scheffer; Lena A. Jäger Eyettention: An attention-based dual-sequence model for predicting human scanpaths during reading Journal Article In: Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 7, no. ETRA, pp. 1–24, 2023. @article{Deng2023, Eye movements during reading offer insights into both the reader's cognitive processes and the characteristics of the text that is being read. Hence, the analysis of scanpaths in reading have attracted increasing attention across fields, ranging from cognitive science over linguistics to computer science. In particular, eye-Tracking-while-reading data has been argued to bear the potential to make machine-learning-based language models exhibit a more human-like linguistic behavior. However, one of the main challenges in modeling human scanpaths in reading is their dual-sequence nature: The words are ordered following the grammatical rules of the language, whereas the fixations are chronologically ordered. As humans do not strictly read from left-To-right, but rather skip or refixate words and regress to previous words, the alignment of the linguistic and the temporal sequence is non-Trivial. In this paper, we develop Eyettention, the first dual-sequence model that simultaneously processes the sequence of words and the chronological sequence of fixations. The alignment of the two sequences is achieved by a cross-sequence attention mechanism. We show that Eyettention outperforms state-of-The-Art models in predicting scanpaths. We provide an extensive within-and across-data set evaluation on different languages. An ablation study and qualitative analysis support an in-depth understanding of the model's behavior. |
Félix Desmeules-Trudel; Tania S. Zamuner Spoken word recognition in a second language: The importance of phonetic details Journal Article In: Second Language Research, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 333–362, 2023. @article{DesmeulesTrudel2023, Spoken word recognition depends on variations in fine-grained phonetics as listeners decode speech. However, many models of second language (L2) speech perception focus on units such as isolated syllables, and not on words. In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated how fine-grained phonetic details (i.e. duration of nasalization on contrastive and coarticulatory nasalized vowels in Canadian French) influenced spoken word recognition in an L2, as compared to a group of native (L1) listeners. Results from L2 listeners (English-native speakers) indicated that fine-grained phonetics impacted the recognition of words, i.e. they were able to use nasalization duration variability in a way similar to L1-French listeners, providing evidence that lexical representations can be highly specified in an L2. Specifically, L2 listeners were able to distinguish minimal word pairs (differentiated by the presence of phonological vowel nasalization in French) and were able to use variability in a way approximating L1-French listeners. Furthermore, the robustness of the French “nasal vowel” category in L2 listeners depended on age of exposure. Early bilinguals displayed greater sensitivity to some ambiguity in the stimuli than late bilinguals, suggesting that early bilinguals had greater sensitivity to small variations in the signal and thus better knowledge of the phonetic cue associated with phonological vowel nasalization in French, similarly to L1 listeners. |
Lauren M. DiNicola; Wendy Sun; Randy L. Buckner In: Journal of Neurophysiology, vol. 130, no. 6, pp. 1602–1615, 2023. @article{DiNicola2023, A recurring debate concerns whether regions of primate prefrontal cortex (PFC) support domain-flexible or domain-specific processes. Here we tested the hypothesis with functional MRI (fMRI) that side-by-side PFC regions, within distinct parallel association networks, differentially support domain-flexible and domain-specialized processing. Individuals (N = 9) were intensively sampled, and all effects were estimated within their own idiosyncratic anatomy. Within each individual, we identified PFC regions linked to distinct networks, including a dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) region coupled to the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and an extended region associated with the canonical multiple-demand network. We further identified an inferior PFC region coupled to the language network. Exploration in separate task data, collected within the same individuals, revealed a robust functional triple dissociation. The DLPFC region linked to the MTL was recruited during remembering and imagining the future, distinct from juxtaposed regions that were modulated in a domain-flexible manner during working memory. The inferior PFC region linked to the language network was recruited during sentence processing. Detailed analysis of the trial-level responses further revealed that the DLPFC region linked to the MTL specifically tracked processes associated with scene construction. These results suggest that the DLPFC possesses a domain-specialized region that is small and easily confused with nearby (larger) regions associated with cognitive control. The newly described region is domain specialized for functions traditionally associated with the MTL. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to convergent anatomical analysis in the monkey.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Competing hypotheses link regions of prefrontal cortex (PFC) to domain-flexible or domain-specific processes. Here, using a precision neuroimaging approach, we identify a domain-specialized region in dorsolateral PFC, coupled to the medial temporal lobe and recruited for scene construction. This region is juxtaposed to, but distinct from, broader PFC regions recruited flexibly for cognitive control. Region distinctions align with broader network differences, suggesting that PFC regions gain dissociable processing properties via segregated anatomical projections. |
Kacie Dunham-Carr; Jacob I. Feldman; David M. Simon; Sarah R. Edmunds; Alexander Tu; Wayne Kuang; Julie G. Conrad; Pooja Santapuram; Mark T. Wallace; Tiffany G. Woynaroski The processing of audiovisual speech is linked with vocabulary in autistic and monautistic children: An ERP study Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 13, no. 7, pp. 1–15, 2023. @article{DunhamCarr2023, Explaining individual differences in vocabulary in autism is critical, as understanding and using words to communicate are key predictors of long-term outcomes for autistic individuals. Differences in audiovisual speech processing may explain variability in vocabulary in autism. The efficiency of audiovisual speech processing can be indexed via amplitude suppression, wherein the amplitude of the event-related potential (ERP) is reduced at the P2 component in response to audiovisual speech compared to auditory-only speech. This study used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure P2 amplitudes in response to auditory-only and audiovisual speech and norm-referenced, standardized assessments to measure vocabulary in 25 autistic and 25 nonautistic children to determine whether amplitude suppression (a) differs or (b) explains variability in vocabulary in autistic and nonautistic children. A series of regression analyses evaluated associations between amplitude suppression and vocabulary scores. Both groups demonstrated P2 amplitude suppression, on average, in response to audiovisual speech relative to auditory-only speech. Between-group differences in mean amplitude suppression were nonsignificant. Individual differences in amplitude suppression were positively associated with expressive vocabulary through receptive vocabulary, as evidenced by a significant indirect effect observed across groups. The results suggest that efficiency of audiovisual speech processing may explain variance in vocabulary in autism. |
Ciara Egan; Joshua S. Payne; Manon W. Jones In: Neuropsychologia, vol. 184, pp. 1–8, 2023. @article{Egan2023, Readers with developmental dyslexia are known to be impaired in representing and accessing phonology, but their ability to process meaning is generally considered to be intact. However, neurocognitive studies show evidence of a subtle semantic processing deficit in dyslexic readers, relative to their typically-developing peers. Here, we compared dyslexic and typical adult readers on their ability to judge semantic congruency (congruent vs. inconcongruent) in short, two-word phrases, which were further manipulated for phonological relatedness (alliterating vs. non-alliterating); “dazzling-diamond”; “sparkling-diamond”; “dangerous-diamond”; and “creepy-diamond”. At the level of behavioural judgement, all readers were less accurate when evaluating incongruent alliterating items compared with incongruent non-aliterating, suggesting that phonological patterning creates the illusion of semantic congruency (as per Egan et al., 2020). Dyslexic readers showed a similar propensity for this form-meaning relationship despite a phonological processing impairment as evidenced in the cognitive and literacy indicative assessments. Dyslexic readers also showed an overall reduction in the ability to accurately judge semantic congruency, suggestive of a subtle semantic impairment. Whilst no group differences emerged in the electrophysiological measures, our pupil dilation measurements revealed a global tendency for dyslexic readers to manifest a reduced attentional response to these word stimuli, compared with typical readers. Our results show a broad manifestation of neurocognitive differences in adult dyslexic and typical readers' processing of print, at the level of autonomic arousal as well as in higher level semantic judgements. |
Ciara Egan; Anna Siyanova-Chanturia; Paul Warren; Manon W. Jones As clear as glass: How figurativeness and familiarity impact simile processing in readers with and without dyslexia Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 76, no. 2, pp. 231–247, 2023. @article{Egan2023a, For skilled readers, idiomatic language confers faster access to overall meaning compared with non-idiomatic language, with a processing advantage for figurative over literal interpretation. However, currently very little research exists to elucidate whether atypical readers—such as those with developmental dyslexia—show such a processing advantage for figurative interpretations of idioms, or whether their reading impairment implicates subtle differences in semantic access. We wanted to know whether an initial figurative interpretation of similes, for both typical and dyslexic readers, is dependent on familiarity. Here, we tracked typical and dyslexic readers' eye movements as they read sentences containing similes (e.g., as cold as ice), orthogonally manipulated for novelty (e.g., familiar: as cold as ice, novel: as cold as snow) and figurativeness (e.g., literal: as cold as ice [low temperature], figurative: as cold as ice [emotionally distant]), with figurativeness being defined by the sentence context. Both participant groups exhibited a processing advantage for familiar and figurative similes over novel and literal similes. However, compared with typical readers, participants with dyslexia had greater difficulty processing similes both when they were unfamiliar and when the context biased the simile meaning towards a literal rather than a figurative interpretation. Our findings suggest a semantic processing anomaly in dyslexic readers, which we discuss in light of recent literature on sentence-level semantic processing. |
Dina Abdel Salam El-Dakhs; Suhad Sonbul; Jeanette Altarriba How do foreign language learners process L2 emotion words in silent reading? An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Languages, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 1–28, 2023. @article{ElDakhs2023, The current study aimed to examine the processing of emotion words in L2 silent reading. We conducted two experiments in which Arab learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) read short English sentences in which target words were embedded. The participants' eye movements were recorded and analyzed. The results of Experiment 1, which compared the processing of emotionally positive versus neutral words by 44 participants, did not reveal any significant effect for word type. The results only showed a few instances of significant interactions between word type and word frequency (i.e., positive words were read faster than neutral words only in the case of high-frequency words) and arousal (i.e., positive words were recognized faster than neutral words only when the target words were low in arousal). The results of Experiment 2, which compared the processing of emotionally negative versus neutral words by 43 participants, only established one effect of word type on the skipping rate which was also modulated by length (i.e., negative words were less likely to be skipped, particularly shorter ones). Moreover, arousal interacted with word type (i.e., only the negative words with low arousal were read faster than neutral words in two eye-movement measures). |
Irina Elgort; Aaron Veldre Word processing before explicit attention: Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm in L2 reading research Journal Article In: Research Methods in Applied Linguistics, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 1–18, 2023. @article{Elgort2023, Eye-movement studies investigating second language (L2) word processing during reading are growing exponentially. However, what information L2 readers are able to process parafoveally is a less researched topic. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) allows researchers to manipulate visual information in an upcoming word during reading, tapping into real-time word processing without awareness. This article provides an overview of experimental studies of parafoveal word processing in reading, followed by a methodological review of the use of the boundary paradigm in L2 and bilingual research. We synthesize key methodological details (including preview type, eye-movement measures) and findings of 15 experiments that met our search criteria, concluding that the parafoveal preview effect observed when reading in the first language is also present in L2 reading. We propose how the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm can be used to study L2 lexical knowledge and factors that affect its development. Finally, we provide advice and instructions for designing and conducting boundary paradigm experiments. |
Irina Elgort; Ross Wetering; Tara Arrow; Elisabeth Beyersmann Previewing novel words before reading affects their processing during reading: An eye-movement study with first and second language readers Journal Article In: Language Learning, pp. 1–33, 2023. @article{Elgort2023a, In this study, we examined the effect of previewing unfamiliar vocabulary on the real-time reading behavior of first language (L1) and second language (L2) readers. University students with English as their L1 or L2 read passages with embedded pseudowords. In a within-participant manipulation, definitions of the pseudowords were either previewed before reading or reviewed after reading. Previewing significantly affected reading behavior on early and late eye-movement measures, and the patterns of change on the first three contextual encounters with the pseudowords differed for L1 and L2 readers. On the multiple-choice cloze posttest, encountering novel words in reading followed by definitions resulted in somewhat more accurate responses for L1 but not L2 participants. The learning condition did not affect the results of the meaning recall posttest. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between vocabulary support approaches and the reading behavior of L1 and L2 readers when they encounter unfamiliar words in texts. |
Gareth Carrol; Katrien Segaert As easy as cake or a piece of pie? Processing idiom variation and the contribution of individual cognitive differences Journal Article In: Memory & Cognition, pp. 1–18, 2023. @article{Carrol2023, Language users routinely use canonical, familiar idioms in everyday communication without difficulty. However, creativity in idiom use is more widespread than sometimes assumed, and little is known about how we process creative uses of idioms, and how individual differences in cognitive skills contribute to this. We used eye-tracking while reading and cross-modal priming to investigate the processing of idioms (e.g., play with fire) compared with creative variants (play with acid) and literal controls (play with toys), amongst a group of 47 university-level native speakers of English. We also conducted a series of tests to measure cognitive abilities (working memory capacity, inhibitory control, and processing speed). Eye-tracking results showed that in early reading behaviour, variants were read no differently to literal phrases or idioms but showed significantly longer overall reading times, with more rereading required compared with other conditions. Idiom variables (familiarity, decomposability, literal plausibility) and individual cognitive variables had limited effects throughout, although more decomposable phrases of all kinds required less overall reading time. Cross-modal priming—which has often shown a robust idiom advantage in past studies—demonstrated no difference between conditions, but decomposability again led to faster processing. Overall, results suggest that variants were treated more like literal phrases than novel metaphors, with subsequent effort required to make sense of these in the way that was consistent with the context provided. |
Min Chang; Kuo Zhang; Yue Sun; Sha Li; Jingxin Wang The graded predictive pre-activation in Chinese sentence reading: Evidence from eye movements Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 14, pp. 1–8, 2023. @article{Chang2023a, Previous research has revealed that graded pre-activation rather than specific lexical prediction is more likely to be the mechanism for the word predictability effect in English. However, whether graded pre-activation underlies the predictability effect in Chinese reading is unknown. Accordingly, the present study tested the generality of the graded pre-activation account in Chinese reading. We manipulated the contextual constraint of sentences and the predictability of target words as independent variables. Readers' eye movement behaviors were recorded via an eye tracker. We examined whether processing an unpredictable word in a solid constraining context incurs a prediction error cost when this unpredictable word has a predictable alternative. The results showed no cues of prediction error cost on the early eye movement measures, supported by the Bayes Factor analyses. The current research indicates that graded predictive pre-activation underlies the predictability effect in Chinese reading. |
Lijuan Chen; Xiaodong Xu; Hongling Lv How literary text reading is influenced by narrative voice and focalization: Evidence from eye movements Journal Article In: Discourse Processes, vol. 60, no. 10, pp. 675–694, 2023. @article{Chen2023e, A fictional story is always narrated from a certain narrative voice and mode of focalization. These core narrative techniques have a major impact on how readers interpret the narrative plot and connect with the characters. This study used eye-tracking to investigate how classic narrative reading is affected by narrative voice and focalization. The results showed that the third-person narrative voice was read more slowly than the first-person narrative voice, especially when the narrative was presented with internal focalization. Importantly, the transition from a first-person to a third-person narrative voice generally resulted in longer reading times, whereas a switch from a third-person to a first-person narrative voice only yielded limited benefits in terms of reduced reading time. These findings provide direct evidence to support the assumption that there is a distinction between the first-person narration and the third-person narration and demonstrate the important role of narrative voice and focalization in understanding narrative texts. |
Mingjing Chen; Jiamei Lu The role of format familiarity and word frequency in Chinese reading Journal Article In: Journal of Eye Movement Research, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 1–22, 2023. @article{Chen2023g, For Chinese readers, reading from left to right is the norm, while reading from right to left is unfamiliar. This study comprises two experiments investigating how format familiarity and word frequency affect reading by Chinese people. Experiment 1 examines the roles of format familiarity (reading from left to right is the familiar Chinese format, and reading from right to left is the unfamiliar Chinese format) and word frequency in vocabulary recognition. Forty students read the same Chinese sentences from left to right and from right to left. Target words were divided into high and low frequency words. In Experiment 2, participants engaged in right-to-left reading training for 10 days to test whether their right-to-left reading performance could be improved. The study yields several main findings. First, format familiarity affects vocabulary recognition. Participants reading from left to right had shorter fixation times, higher skipping rates, and viewing positions closer to word center.. Second, word frequency affects vocabulary recognition in Chinese reading. Third, right-to-left reading training could improve reading performance. In the early indexes, the interaction effect of format familiarity and word frequency was significant. There was also a significant word-frequency effect from left to right but not from right to left. Therefore, word segmentation and vocabulary recognition may be sequential in Chinese reading. |
Shuyuan Chen; Jinzuan Chen; Yanping Liu Are there binocular advantages in Chinese reading? Evidence from eye movements Journal Article In: Scientific Studies of Reading, pp. 1–14, 2023. @article{Chen2023h, Purpose: This study aims to examine whether binocular vision plays a facilitating or impeding role in lexical processing during sentence reading in Chinese. Method: Adopting the revised boundary paradigm, we orthogonally manipulated the parafoveal and foveal viewing conditions (monocular vs. binocular) of target words (high- vs. low-frequency) within sentences. Forty participants (30 females, mean age = 19.9 years) were recruited to read these sentences and their eye movements were monitored. Results: Through directly comparing the eye movement measures in different viewing conditions, the results indicated that compared with monocular viewing, binocular viewing resulted in shorter fixation durations, thereby facilitating lexical processing. Critically, in addition to the higher information encoding speed toward the currently fixated word in the fovea, the more efficient preprocessing of the upcoming text to the right of fixation in the parafovea may also contribute to the superiority of binocular vision over monocular. Conclusion: Our findings provide the first evidence to support the binocular advantages in Chinese reading, which reveals that high-quality visual input from binocular vision plays a vital role in fluent and efficient written text reading. |
Xuemei Chen; Robert J. Hartsuiker Structure prediction occurs when it is needed: Evidence from visual-world structural priming in Dutch comprehension Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, vol. 49, no. 6, pp. 941–958, 2023. @article{Chen2023l, Arai et al. (2007) showed that structural priming in the comprehension of English dative sentences only occurred when the verb was repeated between prime and target, suggesting a lexically-dependent mechanism of structure prediction. However, a recent study in Mandarin comprehension found abstract (verb-independent) structural priming and such priming was stronger when the structure was unexpected (e.g., when a verb biased toward the double object [DO] structure is followed by an unexpected prepositional object [PO] structure; Chen et al., 2022). The latter finding of inverse preference priming is consistent with error-based implicit learning accounts, which suggest structural priming is based on learning from prediction errors (Chang et al., 2006). Here we tested the mechanism of structure prediction (lexically-dependent vs. abstract) in four visual-world comprehension experiments in Dutch. Dutch is a Germanic language like English; it is biased toward the PO structure like Mandarin. We not only found structural priming when the verb was repeated, but also when the verb was different: During target sentence processing, comprehenders looked more often at the recipient (predicting a DO structure) than at the theme (predicting a PO structure) after a DO prime and vice versa after a PO prime. Importantly, abstract structural priming only occurred when the target structure was relatively unpredictable. We interpret the inconsistent findings across languages in terms of an effortful process of structure prediction in comprehension (Pickering & Gambi, 2018): it occurs when it is needed to disambiguate the postverbal arguments, but not when it is optional. |
Xuemei Chen; Suiping Wang; Robert J. Hartsuiker Do structure predictions persevere to multilinguals' other languages? Evidence from cross-linguistic structural priming in comprehension Journal Article In: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 653–669, 2023. @article{Chen2023i, Many cross-language sentence processing studies showed structural priming, which suggests a shared representation across languages or separate but interacting representations for each language. To investigate whether multilinguals can rely on such representations to predict structure in comprehension, we conducted two visual-world eye-tracking priming experiments with Cantonese–Mandarin-English multilinguals. Participants were instructed to read aloud prime sentences in either Cantonese, Mandarin, or English; then they heard a target sentence in Mandarin while looking at the corresponding target picture. When prime and target had different verbs, there was within-language structural priming only (Mandarin-to-Mandarin, Experiment 1). But when prime and target had translation-equivalent verbs, there was not only within-language but also between-language priming (only Cantonese-to-Mandarin, Experiment 2). These results indicate that structure prediction between languages in comprehension is partly lexically-based, so that cross-linguistic structural priming only occurs with cognate verbs. |
Tzu Yao Chiu; Denis Drieghe The role of visual crowding in eye movements during reading: Effects of text spacing Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, vol. 85, no. 8, pp. 2834–2858, 2023. @article{Chiu2023, Visual crowding, generally defined as the deleterious influence of clutter on visual discrimination, is a form of inhibitory interaction between nearby objects. While the role of crowding in reading has been established in psychophysics research using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigms, how crowding affects additional processes involved in natural reading, including parafoveal processing and saccade targeting, remains unclear. The current study investigated crowding effects on reading via two eye-tracking experiments. Experiment 1 was a sentence-reading experiment incorporating an eye-contingent boundary change in which reader's parafoveal processing was quantified through comparing reading times after valid or invalid information was presented in the parafovea. Letter spacing was jointly manipulated to compare how crowding affects parafoveal processing. Experiment 2 was a passage-reading experiment with a line spacing manipulation. In addition to replicating previously observed letter spacing effects on global reading parameters (i.e., more but shorter fixations with wider spacing), Experiment 1 found an interaction between preview validity and letter spacing indicating that the efficiency of parafoveal processing was constrained by crowding and visual acuity. Experiment 2 found reliable but subtle influences of line spacing. Participants had shorter fixation durations, higher skipping probabilities, and less accurate return sweeps when line spacing was increased. In addition to extending the literature on the role of crowding to reading in ecologically valid scenarios, the current results inform future research on characterizing the influence of crowding in natural reading and comparing effects of crowding across reader populations. |
Kiel Christianson; Jack Dempsey; Sarah Elizabeth M. Deshaies; Anna Tsiola; Laura P. Valderrama Do readers misassign thematic roles? Evidence from a trailing boundary-change paradigm Journal Article In: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, vol. 38, no. 6, pp. 872–892, 2023. @article{Christianson2023, We report an eye-tracking experiment with a trailing boundary-change paradigm as people read subject- and object-relative clauses that were either plausible or implausible. We sought to determine whether readers sometime misassign thematic roles to arguments in implausible, noncanonical sentences. In some sentences, argument nouns were reversed after participants had read them. Thus, implausible noncanonical sentences like “The bird that the worm ate yesterday was small” changed to plausible “The worm that the bird ate was small.” If initial processing generates veridical representations, all changes should disrupt rereading, irrespective of plausibility or syntactic structure. Misinterpretation effects should only arise in offline comprehension. If misassignment of thematic roles occurs during initial processing, differences should be apparent in first-pass reading times, and rereading should be differentially affected by the direction of the text change. Results provide evidence that readers sometimes misassign roles during initial processing and sometimes fail to revise misassignments during rereading. |
Christoforos Christoforou; Maria Theodorou; Argyro Fella; Timothy C. Papadopoulos RAN-related neural-congruency: A machine learning approach toward the study of the neural underpinnings of naming speed Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 14, pp. 1–15, 2023. @article{Christoforou2023, Objective: Naming speed, behaviorally measured via the serial Rapid automatized naming (RAN) test, is one of the most examined underlying cognitive factors of reading development and reading difficulties (RD). However, the unconstrained-reading format of serial RAN has made it challenging for traditional EEG analysis methods to extract neural components for studying the neural underpinnings of naming speed. The present study aims to explore a novel approach to isolate neural components during the serial RAN task that are (a) informative of group differences between children with dyslexia (DYS) and chronological age controls (CAC), (b) improve the power of analysis, and (c) are suitable for deciphering the neural underpinnings of naming speed. Methods: We propose a novel machine-learning-based algorithm that extracts spatiotemporal neural components during serial RAN, termed RAN-related neural-congruency components. We demonstrate our approach on EEG and eye-tracking recordings from 60 children (30 DYS and 30 CAC), under phonologically or visually similar, and dissimilar control tasks. Results: Results reveal significant differences in the RAN-related neural-congruency components between DYS and CAC groups in all four conditions. Conclusion: Rapid automatized naming-related neural-congruency components capture the neural activity of cognitive processes associated with naming speed and are informative of group differences between children with dyslexia and typically developing children. Significance: We propose the resulting RAN-related neural-components as a methodological framework to facilitate studying the neural underpinnings of naming speed and their association with reading performance and related difficulties. |
Sarah E. Colby; Bob McMurray Efficiency of spoken word recognition slows across the adult lifespan Journal Article In: Cognition, vol. 240, pp. 1–11, 2023. @article{Colby2023, Spoken word recognition is a critical hub during language processing, linking hearing and perception to meaning and syntax. Words must be recognized quickly and efficiently as speech unfolds to be successfully integrated into conversation. This makes word recognition a computationally challenging process even for young, normal hearing adults. Older adults often experience declines in hearing and cognition, which could be linked by age-related declines in the cognitive processes specific to word recognition. However, it is unclear whether changes in word recognition across the lifespan can be accounted for by hearing or domain-general cognition. Participants (N = 107) responded to spoken words in a Visual World Paradigm task while their eyes were tracked to assess the real-time dynamics of word recognition. We examined several indices of word recognition from early adolescence through older adulthood (ages 11–78). The timing and proportion of eye fixations to target and competitor images reveals that spoken word recognition became more efficient through age 25 and began to slow in middle age, accompanied by declines in the ability to resolve competition (e.g., suppressing sandwich to recognize sandal). There was a unique effect of age even after accounting for differences in inhibitory control, processing speed, and hearing thresholds. This suggests a limited age range where listeners are peak performers. |
Carmen Julia Coloma; Ernesto Guerra; Zulema De Barbieri; Andrea Helo; Zulema De Barbieri; Andrea Helo; Carmen Julia; Ernesto Guerra; Zulema De Barbieri; Andrea Helo Article comprehension in monolingual Spanish-speaking children with developmental language disorder: A longitudinal eye tracking study Journal Article In: International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, pp. 1–13, 2023. @article{Coloma2023, Purpose: Article-noun disagreement in spoken language is a marker of children with developmental language disorder (DLD). However, the evidence is less clear regarding article comprehension. This study investigates article comprehension in monolingual Spanish-speaking children with and without DLD. Method: Eye tracking methodology used in a longitudinal experimental design enabled the examination of real time article comprehension. The children at the time 1 were 40 monolingual Spanish-speaking preschoolers (20 with DLD and 20 with typical language development [TLD]). A year later (time 2), 27 of these children (15 with DLD and 12 with TLD) were evaluated. Children listened to simple phrases while inspecting a four object visual context. The article in the phrase agreed in number and gender with only one of the objects. Result: At the time 1, children with DLD did not use articles to identify the correct image, while children with TLD anticipated the correct picture. At the time 2, both groups used the articles' morphological markers, but children with DLD showed a slower and weaker preference for the correct referent compared to their age-matched peers. Conclusion: These findings suggest a later emergence, but a similar developmental trajectory, of article comprehension in children with DLD compared to their peers with TLD. |
Leonardo Concetti; Vincenzo Moscati The unexpected lightness of the main verb: An eye-tracking study on relative clauses and trace reactivation Journal Article In: Qulso, vol. 7220, pp. 45–58, 2023. @article{Concetti2023, A few studies on relative-clause processing report an unexpected facilitatory effect on the matrix verb that follows an Object Relative (ORC) clause (e.g. Staub, Dillon and Clifton jr. 2017). In this study we present the results of a novel eye-tracking experiment that replicated this effect on Italian. The advan- tage of ORCs is discussed under the hypothesis that subject-verb agreement in the matrix benefits from a general trace-reactivation mechanisms, subsumed from activation-based retrieval models (Lewis and Vasishth 2005). |
Claudia Contadini-Wright; Kaho Magami; Nishchay Mehta; Maria Chait In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 43, no. 26, pp. 4856–4866, 2023. @article{ContadiniWright2023, Listening in noisy environments requires effort - the active engagement of attention and other cognitive abilities - as well as increased arousal. The ability to separately quantify the contribution of these components is key to understanding the dynamics of effort and how it may change across listening situations and in certain populations. We concurrently measured two types of ocular data in young participants (both sexes): pupil dilation (PD; thought to index arousal aspects of effort) and microsaccades (MS; hypothesized to reflect automatic visual exploratory sampling), while they performed a speech-in-noise task under high- (HL) and low- (LL) listening load conditions. Sentences were manipulated so that the behaviorally relevant information (WABBLE) appeared at the end (Experiment 1) or beginning (Experiment 2) of the sentence, resulting in different temporal demands on focused attention. In line with previous reports, PD effects were associated with increased dilation under load. We observed a sustained difference between HL and LL conditions, consistent with increased phasic and tonic arousal. Importantly we show that MS rate was also modulated by listening load. This was manifested as a reduced MS rate in HL relative to LL. Critically, in contrast to the sustained difference seen for PD, MS effects were localized in time, specifically during periods when demands on auditory attention were greatest. These results demonstrate that auditory selective attention interfaces with the mechanisms controlling MS generation, establishing MS as an informative measure, complementary to PD, with which to quantify the temporal dynamics of auditory attentional processing under effortful listening conditions. |
Erin Conwell; Gregor Horvath; Allyson Kuznia; Stephen J. Agauas Developmental consistency in the use of subphonemic information during real-time sentence processing Journal Article In: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, vol. 38, no. 6, pp. 860–871, 2023. @article{Conwell2023, Apparently homophonous sequences contain acoustic information that differentiates their meanings [Gahl. (2008). Time and thyme are not homophones: The effect of lemma frequency on word durations in spontaneous speech. Language, 84(3), 474–496; Quené. (1992). Durational cues for word segmentation in Dutch. Journal of Phonetics, 20(3), 331–350]. Adults use this information to segment embedded homophones [e.g. ham vs. hamster; Salverda et al. (2003). The role of prosodic boundaries in the resolution of lexical embedded in speech comprehension. Cognition, 90(1), 51–89] in fluent speech. Whether children also do this is unknown, as is whether listeners of any age use such information to disambiguate lexical homophones. In two experiments, 48 English-speaking adults and 48 English-speaking 7 to 10-year-old children viewed sets of four images and heard sentences containing phonemically identical sequences while their eye movements were continuously tracked. As in previous research, adults showed greater fixation of target meanings when the acoustic properties of an embedded homophone were consistent with the target than when they were consistent with the alternate interpretation. They did not show this difference for lexical homophones. Children's behaviour was similar to that of adults, indicating that the use of subphonemic information in homophone processing is consistent over development. |
Frances G Cooley; David Quinto-pozos Supplemental material for examining speech-based phonological recoding during reading for adolescent deaf signers Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, vol. 152, no. 7, pp. 1995–2007, 2023. @article{Cooley2023, Much of the debate regarding literacy development in deaf and hard-of-hearing readers surrounds whether there is dependence on phonological decoding of print to speech for such readers, and the literature is mixed. While some reports of deaf children and adults demonstrate the influence of speech-based processing during reading, others find little to no evidence of speech-sound activation. In order to examine the role of speech- based phonological codes when reading, we utilized eye-tracking to examine eye-gaze behaviors employed by deaf children and a control group of hearing primary-school children when encountering target words in sentences. The target words were of three types: correct, homophonic errors, and nonhomophonic errors.We examined eye-gaze fixations when first encountering target words and, if applicable, when rereading those words. The results revealed that deaf and hearing readers differed in their eye-movement behaviors when re- reading the words, but they did not demonstrate differences for first encounters with the words. Hearing read- ers treated homophonic and nonhomophonic error words differently during their second encounter with the target while deaf readers did not, suggesting that deaf signers did not engage in phonological decoding to the same degree as hearing readers did. Further, deaf signers performed fewer overall regressions to target words than hearing readers, suggesting that they depended less on regressions to resolve errors in the text. |
Jason C. Coronel; Jared M. Ott; Austin Hubner; Matthew D. Sweitzer; Samuel Lerner In: Communication Research, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 3–29, 2023. @article{Coronel2023, Person-to-person communication is ubiquitous in everyday life, yet the literature on framing has not examined how the content and number of frames change when transmitted across individuals. In Study 1, we use the serial reproduction paradigm to examine how person-to-person communication and message length influence the number of frames in the information environment. In Study 2, we use eye movement monitoring to examine whether individuals direct greater attention to pro- or counter-attitudinal frames in a competitive framing environment. We find that the process of retelling frames from person to person can transform an environment containing multiple competing frames into an environment with a single frame. This is important given work showing that framing effects in competitive environments are more likely to cancel out. Furthermore, message length and prior attitudes play important roles in determining whether individuals direct attention to, remember, and transmit frames. |
Ruth E. Corps; Meijian Liao; Martin J. Pickering Evidence for two stages of prediction in non-native speakers: A visual-world eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, vol. 26, pp. 231–243, 2023. @article{Corps2023a, Comprehenders predict what a speaker is likely to say when listening to non-native (L2) and native (L1) utterances. But what are the characteristics of L2 prediction, and how does it relate to L1 prediction? We addressed this question in a visual-world eye-tracking experiment, which tested when L2 English comprehenders integrated perspective into their predictions. Male and female participants listened to male and female speakers producing sentences (e.g., I would like to wear the nice... ) about stereotypically masculine (target: tie; distractor: drill) and feminine (target: dress; distractor: hairdryer) objects. Participants predicted associatively, fixating objects semantically associated with critical verbs (here, the tie and the dress). They also predicted stereotypically consistent objects (e.g., the tie rather than the dress, given the male speaker). Consistent predictions were made later than associative predictions, and were delayed for L2 speakers relative to L1 speakers. These findings suggest prediction involves both automatic and non-automatic stages. |
Ruth E. Corps; Fang Yang; Martin J. Pickering Evidence against egocentric prediction during language comprehension Journal Article In: Royal Society Open Science, vol. 10, no. 12, pp. 1–12, 2023. @article{Corps2023, Although previous research has demonstrated that language comprehension can be egocentric, there is little evidence for egocentricity during prediction. In particular, comprehenders do not appear to predict egocentrically when the context makes it clear what the speaker is likely to refer to. But do comprehenders predict egocentrically when the context does not make it clear? We tested this hypothesis using a visual-world eye-tracking paradigm, in which participants heard sentences containing the gender-neutral pronoun They (e.g. They would like to wear… ) while viewing four objects (e.g. tie, dress, drill, hairdryer). Two of these objects were plausible targets of the verb (tie and dress), and one was stereotypically compatible with the participant's gender (tie if the participant was male; dress if the participant was female). Participants rapidly fixated targets more than distractors, but there was no evidence that participants ever predicted egocentrically, fixating objects stereotypically compatible with their own gender. These findings suggest that participants do not fall back on their own egocentric perspective when predicting, even when they know that context does not make it clear what the speaker is likely to refer to. |
M. Eric Cui; Björn Herrmann Eye movements decrease during effortful speech listening Journal Article In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 43, no. 32, pp. 5856–5869, 2023. @article{Cui2023, Hearing impairment affects many older adults but is often diagnosed decades after speech comprehension in noisy situations has become effortful. Accurate assessment of listening effort may thus help diagnose hearing impairment earlier. However, pupillometry—the most used approach to assess listening effort—has limitations that hinder its use in practice. The current study explores a novel way to assess listening effort through eye movements. Building on cognitive and neurophysiological work, we examine the hypothesis that eye movements decrease when speech listening becomes challenging. In three experiments with human participants from both sexes, we demonstrate, consistent with this hypothesis, that fixation duration increases and spatial gaze dispersion decreases with increasing speech masking. Eye movements decreased during effortful speech listening for different visual scenes (free viewing, object tracking) and speech materials (simple sentences, naturalistic stories). In contrast, pupillometry was less sensitive to speech masking during story listening, suggesting pupillometric measures may not be as effective for the assessments of listening effort in naturalistic speech-listening paradigms. Our results reveal a critical link between eye movements and cognitive load, suggesting that neural activity in the brain regions that support the regulation of eye movements, such as frontal eye field and superior colliculus, are modulated when listening is effortful. |
Xin Cui; Xiaoming Jiang; Hongwei Ding Affective prosody guides facial emotion processing Journal Article In: Current Psychology, vol. 42, no. 27, pp. 23891–23902, 2023. @article{Cui2023b, Previous studies have reported the "emotional congruency effect (ECE)" in cross-modal emotion processing, claiming that multimodal congruent emotional signals will enhance the emotion processing, yet few studies have shown how this effect is dynamically processed over time and whether it is achieved in the same way across language and cultural backgrounds. We adopted the eye-tracking technique to investigate whether and how the audio emotional signal influences the visual processing of emotional faces according to ECE. We explored this issue by asking thirty-two native Mandarin speakers to scan a visual array of four types of emotional faces while listening to the affective prosody matching one of the four emotions. To eliminate the potential confounding from lexico-semantic information, the affective prosody is pronounced in meaningless di-syllable clusters. Results of the experiment indicate that (1) participants paid more attention to happy faces at first glance and their attention shifted to angry and sad faces over time. (2) Consistent with findings in English-speaking settings, ECE appeared in Mandarin-speaking settings, but took effect earlier in happy faces and persisted in all emotions as the unfolding of the signal. Based on the results, we conclude that the processing time differs across emotion types and therefore ECE takes effect in different temporal points according to the emotion type. Finally, we suggest that language and cultural experience may shape the processing time of different emotions. |
Yaqiong Cui Eye movements of second language learners when reading spaced and unspaced Chinese texts Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 14, pp. 1–13, 2023. @article{Cui2023a, Unlike English, Chinese does not have interword spacing in written texts, which poses difficulties for Chinese-as-a-second-language (CSL) learners' identification of word boundaries and affects their reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. The eye-movement literature has suggested that interword spacing is important in alphabetic languages; examining languages that lack interword spaces such as Chinese, thus, may help to inform theoretical accounts of eye-movement control and word identification during reading. Research investigating the interword spacing effect in reading Chinese showed that adding spacing facilitated CSL learners' reading comprehension and speed as well as vocabulary learning. However, the bulk of this research mainly looked at the learning outcomes (off-line measures), with few studies focusing on L2 learners' reading processes. Building on this background, this study seeks to provide a descriptive perspective of the eye movements of CSL learners. In this study, 24 CSL learners with intermediate Chinese proficiency were recruited as the experimental group, and 20 Chinese native speakers were recruited as the control group. The EyeLink 1,000 eye tracker was used to record their reading of four segmentation conditions of Chinese texts, namely, no space condition, word-spaced condition, non-word-spaced condition, and pinyin-spaced condition. Results show that: (1) CSL learners with intermediate Chinese proficiency generally spent less time reading Chinese texts with spaces between words, and they showed more gazes and regressions when reading texts without spaces; (2) Non-word-spaced texts and Pinyin-spaced texts interfere with CSL learners' reading process; and (3) Intermediate CSL learners show consistent eye movement patterns in the normal no-space condition and word-spaced condition. I conclude that word boundary information can effectively guide CSL learners' eye movement behaviors and eye saccade planning, thus improving reading efficiency. |
Daniela Mertzen; Dario Paape; Brian Dillon; Ralf Engbert; Shravan Vasishth Syntactic and semantic interference in sentence comprehension: Support from English and German eye-tracking data Journal Article In: Glossa Psycholinguistics, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1–48, 2023. @article{Mertzen2023, A long-standing debate in the sentence processing literature concerns the time course of syntactic and semantic information processing in online sentence comprehension. The default assumption in cue-based models of parsing is that syntactic and semantic retrieval cues simultaneously guide dependency resolution. When retrieval cues match multiple items in memory, this leads to similarity-based interference. Both semantic and syntactic interference have been shown to occur in English. However, the relative timing of syntactic vs. semantic interference remains unclear. In this cross-linguistic investigation of the time course of syntactic vs. semantic interference, the data from two eye-tracking during reading experiments (English and German) suggest that the two types of interference can in principle arise simultaneously during retrieval. However, the data also indicate that semantic cues are evaluated with a small timing lag in German compared to English. This cross-linguistic difference between English and German may be due to German having richer morphosyntactic marking than English, resulting in syntactic cues dominating over semantic cues during dependency resolution. More broadly, our cross-linguistic results pose a challenge for the cue-based retrieval model's default assumption that syntactic and semantic cues are used simultaneously during long-distance dependency formation. Our work also highlights the importance of collecting cross-linguistic data on psycholinguistic phenomena which can potentially advance theory development. |
Diane C. Mézière; Lili Yu; Genevieve McArthur; Erik D. Reichle; Titus Malsburg Scanpath regularity as an index of reading comprehension Journal Article In: Scientific Studies of Reading, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 79–100, 2023. @article{Meziere2023, Purpose: Recent research on the potential of using eye-tracking to measure reading comprehension ability suggests that the relationship between standard eye-tracking measures and reading comprehension is influenced by differences in task demands between comprehension assessments. We compared standard eye-tracking measures and scanpath regularity as predictors of reading comprehension scores. Method: We used a dataset in which 79 participants (mean age: 22 years, 82% females, 76% monolingual English speakers) were administered three widely-used reading comprehension assessments with varying task demands while their eye movements were monitored: the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension; (YARC), the Gray Oral Reading Test; (GORT-5), and the sentence comprehension subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test; (WRAT-4). Results: Results showed that scanpath regularity measures, similarly to standard eye-tracking measures, were influenced by differences in task demands between the three tests. Nevertheless, both types of eye-tracking measures made unique contributions as predictors of comprehension and the best set of predictors included both standard eye-tracking measures and at least one scanpath measure across tests. Conclusion: The results provide evidence that scanpaths capture differences in eye-movement patterns missed by standard eye-tracking measures. Overall, the results highlight the effect of task demands on eye-movement behavior and suggest that reading goals and task demands need to be considered when interpreting eye-tracking data. |
Diane C. Mézière; Lili Yu; Erik D. Reichle; Titus Malsburg; Genevieve McArthur Using eye-tracking measures to predict reading comprehension Journal Article In: Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 3, pp. 425–449, 2023. @article{Meziere2023a, This study examined the potential of eye-tracking as a tool for assessing reading comprehension. We administered three widely used reading comprehension tests with varying task demands to 79 typical adult readers while monitoring their eye movements. In the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC), participants were given passages of text to read silently, followed by comprehension questions. In the Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT-5), participants were given passages of text to read aloud, followed by comprehension questions. In the sentence comprehension subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT-4), participants were asked to provide a missing word in sentences that they read silently (i.e., a cloze task). Linear models predicting comprehension scores from eye-tracking measures yielded different results for the three tests. Eye-tracking measures explained significantly more variance than reading-speed data for the YARC (four times better), GORT (three times better), and the WRAT (1.3 time better). Importantly, there was no common strong predictor for all three tests. These results support growing recognition that reading comprehension tests do not measure the same cognitive processes, and that participants adapt their reading strategies to the tests' varying task demands. This study also suggests that eye-tracking may provide a useful alternative for measuring reading comprehension. |
Evelyn Milburn; Michael Walsh Dickey; Tessa Warren; Rebecca Hayes Increased reliance on world knowledge during language comprehension in healthy aging: evidence from verb-argument prediction Journal Article In: Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 1–33, 2023. @article{Milburn2023, Cognitive aging negatively impacts language comprehension performance. However, there is evidence that older adults skillfully use linguistic context and their crystallized world knowledge to offset age-related changes that negatively impact comprehension. Two visual-world paradigm experiments examined how aging changes verb-argument prediction, a comprehension process that relies on world knowledge but has rarely been examined in the cognitive-aging literature. Older adults did not differ from younger adults in their activation of an upcoming likely verb argument, particularly when cued by a semantically-rich agent+verb combination (Experiment 1). However, older adults showed elevated activation of previously-mentioned agents (Experiment 1) and of unlikely but verb-congruent referents (Experiment 2). This is novel evidence that older adults exploit semantic context and world knowledge during comprehension to successfully activate upcoming referents. However, older adults also show elevated activation of irrelevant information, consistent with previous findings demonstrating that older adults may experience greater proactive interference and competition from task-irrelevant information. |
Sara Milligan; Brian Nestor; Martín Antúnez; Elizabeth R. Schotter Out of sight, out of mind: Foveal processing is necessary for semantic integration of words into sentence context Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, vol. 49, no. 5, pp. 687–708, 2023. @article{Milligan2023, Word recognition begins before a reader looks directly at a word, as demonstrated by the parafoveal preview benefit and word skipping. Both low-level form and high-level semantic features can be accessed in parafoveal vision and used to promote reading efficiency. However, words are not recognized in isolation during reading; once a semantic representation is retrieved, it must be integrated with the broader sentence context. One open question about parafoveal processing is whether it is limited to shallow stages of lexico-semantic activation or extends to semantic integration. In the present two-experiment study, we recorded event-related brain potentials in response to a sentence-final word that was presented in foveal or parafoveal vision and was either expected, unexpected, or anomalous in the sentence context.We found thatword recognition, indexed by the N400, ensued regardless of perception location whereas identification of the semantic fit of a word in its sentence context, indexed by the late positive component, was only observed for foveally perceived but not parafoveally perceived words. This pattern was not sensitive to task differences that promote different levels of orthographic scrutiny, as manipulated between the two experiments. These findings demonstrate separate roles for parafoveal and foveal processing in reading. |
Serge Minor; Natalia Mitrofanova; Gustavo Guajardo; Myrte Vos; Gillian Ramchand Aspect processing across languages: A visual world eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Frontiers in Language Sciences, vol. 1, pp. 1–14, 2023. @article{Minor2023a, The study employed a combination of a picture selection task and Visual World eye-tracking to investigate the processing of grammatical aspect (perfective vs. imperfective) in three languages: Russian, Spanish and English. In order to probe into the cognitive representations triggered by the aspectual forms we contrasted visual representations of different temporal portions of telic events—a snapshot of the process stage (ongoing event) and a snapshot of the immediate aftermath of the event/the result state (completed event). In all three languages, the gaze patterns and offline responses revealed a strong preference for representations of ongoing events in the imperfective condition. This confirms that the imperfective forms in all the three languages draw attention to the in-progress portion of a telic event. In the perfective condition, however, we found robust differences. Russian uses verbal prefixes to mark perfective aspect, and our results suggest that perfective telic verbs in Russian strongly highlight the result state of an event. In Spanish, the perfective past tense form (Preterite) also highlights event completion, but to a lesser extent than in Russian—in line with its less restrictive semantics in not requiring an inherent boundary. In contrast to Russian and Spanish, English speakers did not show a preference for representations of completed events in the perfective (Simple Past) condition. This suggests that the English Simple Past form does not encode a preferential cognitive salience for either the activity portion of an event or its result state, and lends support to the analysis of the English Simple Past as a non-aspectual tense form. |
Padraic Monaghan; Seamus Donnelly; Katie Alcock; Amy Bidgood; Kate Cain; Samantha Durrant; Rebecca L. A. Frost; Lana S. Jago; Michelle S. Peter; Julian M. Pine; Heather Turnbull; Caroline F. Rowland Learning to generalise but not segment an artificial language at 17 months predicts children's language skills 3 years later Journal Article In: Cognitive Psychology, vol. 147, pp. 1–13, 2023. @article{Monaghan2023, We investigated whether learning an artificial language at 17 months was predictive of children's natural language vocabulary and grammar skills at 54 months. Children at 17 months listened to an artificial language containing non-adjacent dependencies, and were then tested on their learning to segment and to generalise the structure of the language. At 54 months, children were then tested on a range of standardised natural language tasks that assessed receptive and expressive vocabulary and grammar. A structural equation model demonstrated that learning the artificial language generalisation at 17 months predicted language abilities – a composite of vocabulary and grammar skills – at 54 months, whereas artificial language segmentation at 17 months did not predict language abilities at this age. Artificial language learning tasks – especially those that probe grammar learning – provide a valuable tool for uncovering the mechanisms driving children's early language development. |
Corrin Moss; Sharon Kwabi; Scott P. Ardoin; Katherine S. Binder In: Reading and Writing, pp. 1–27, 2023. @article{Moss2023, The ability to form a mental model of a text is an essential component of successful reading comprehension (RC), and purpose for reading can influence mental model construction. Participants were assigned to one of two conditions during an RC test to alter their purpose for reading: concurrent (texts and questions were presented simultaneously) and sequential (texts were presented first, then questions were shown without text access). Their eye movements were recorded during testing. Working memory capacity (WMC) and centrality of textual information were measured. Participants in the sequential condition had longer first-pass reading times compared to participants in the concurrent condition, while participants in the concurrent condition had longer total processing times per word. In addition, participants with higher WMC had longer total reading times per word. Finally, participants in the sequential condition with higher WMC had longer processing times in central regions. Even among skilled college readers, participants with lower WMC had difficulty adjusting their reading behaviors to meet the task demands such as distinguishing central and peripheral ideas. However, participants with higher WMC increased attention to important text areas. One potential explanation is that participants with higher WMC are better able to construct a coherent mental model of the text, and attending to central text areas is an essential component of mental model formation. Therefore, these results help clarify the relationship between the purpose for reading and mental model development. |
Yoichi Mukai; Juhani Järvikivi; Benjamin V. Tucker The role of phonology-to-orthography consistency in predicting the degree of pupil dilation induced in processing reduced and unreduced speech Journal Article In: Applied Psycholinguistics, vol. 44, no. 5, pp. 784–815, 2023. @article{Mukai2023, The relationship between the ways in which words are pronounced and spelled has been shown to affect spoken word processing, and a consistent relationship between pronunciation and spelling has been reported as a possible cause of unreduced pronunciations being easier to process than reduced counterparts although reduced pronunciations occur more frequently. In the present study, we investigate the effect of pronunciation-to-spelling consistency for reduced and unreduced pronunciations in L1 and L2 listeners of a logographic language. More precisely, we compare L1 and L2 Japanese listeners to probe whether they use orthographic information differently when processing reduced and unreduced speech. Using pupillometry, the current study provides evidence that extends the hypothesis about the role of orthography in the processing of reduced speech. Orthographic realization matters in processing for L1 and L2 advanced listeners. More specifically, how consistent the orthographic realization is with its phonological form (phonology-to-orthography consistency) modulates the extent to which reduced pronunciation induces additional processing costs. The results are further discussed in terms of their implications for how listeners process reduced speech and the role of the orthographic form in speech processing. |
Shingo Nahatame Predicting processing effort during L1 and L2 reading: The relationship between text linguistic features and eye movements Journal Article In: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, pp. 1–14, 2023. @article{Nahatame2023, Researchers have taken great interest in the assessment of text readability. This study expands on this research by developing readability models that predict the processing effort involved during first language (L1) and second language (L2) text reading. Employing natural language processing tools, the study focused on assessing complex linguistic features of texts, and these features were used to explain the variance in processing effort, as evidenced by eye movement data for L1 or L2 readers of English that were extracted from an open eye-tracking corpus. Results indicated that regression models using the indices of complex linguistic features provided better performance in predicting processing effort for both L1 and L2 reading than the models using simple linguistic features (word and sentence length). Furthermore, many of the predictive variables were lexical features for both L1 and L2 reading, emphasizing the importance of decoding for fluent reading regardless of the language used. |
Mihaela Beatrice Neagu; Abigail A. Kressner; Helia Relaño-Iborra; Per Bækgaard; Torsten Dau; Dorothea Wendt Investigating the reliability of pupillometry as a measure of individualized listening effort Journal Article In: Trends in Hearing, vol. 27, pp. 1–20, 2023. @article{Neagu2023, Recordings of the pupillary response have been used in numerous studies to assess listening effort during a speech-in-noise task. Most studies focused on averaged responses across listeners, whereas less is known about pupil dilation as an indicator of the individuals' listening effort. The present study investigated the reliability of several pupil features as potential indicators of individual listening effort and the impact of different normalization procedures on the reliability. The pupil diameters of 31 normal-hearing listeners were recorded during multiple visits while performing a speech-in-noise task. The signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of the stimuli ranged from (Formula presented.) 12 dB to (Formula presented.) 4 dB. All listeners were measured twice at separate visits, and 11 were re-tested at a third visit. To examine the reliability of the pupil responses across visits, the intraclass correlation coefficient was applied to the peak and mean pupil dilation and to the temporal features of the pupil response, extracted using growth curve analysis. The reliability of the pupillary response was assessed in relation to SNR and different normalization procedures over multiple visits. The most reliable pupil features were the traditional mean and peak pupil dilation. The highest reliability results were obtained when the data were baseline-corrected and normalized to the individual pupil response range across all visits. Moreover, the present study results showed only a minor impact of the SNR and the number of visits on the reliability of the pupil response. Overall, the results may provide an important basis for developing a standardized test for pupillometry in the clinic. |
Ulrike Nederstigt; Béryl Hilberink-Schulpen Attention to multilingual job ads: An eye-tracking study on the use of English in German job ads Journal Article In: Folia Linguistica, vol. 57, no. 2, pp. 313–343, 2023. @article{Nederstigt2023, In many non-English-speaking countries, English loanwords in job ads seem to be very common. The question is whether this linguistic choice is advantageous, especially when the job advertised does not involve working in an international environment. Previous research of English loanwords in job ads has revealed that their effect in terms of the evaluation of the company, the job and the ad is limited if effects can be shown at all. Suggestions that English loanwords draw readers' attention because this language choice deviates from what readers expect and, in addition, take more processing time (because they are foreign) lack empirical evidence. The eye-tracking and behavioural data of our experiment did not provide any empirical evidence for the attention-drawing function of English loanwords nor an influence on their effectiveness in job ads geared to graduate students in Germany. We suggest that loanwords need a certain amount of processing to be identified as foreign. This means they are different from other salient cues that were shown to draw readers' attention because they are not subject to automatic processes. In addition, our participants were sufficiently proficient in English so that differences in processing time were not reflected in their eye-movement data. |
M. J. Nelson; S. Moeller; M. Seckin; E. J. Rogalski; M. M. Mesulam; R. S. Hurley The eyes speak when the mouth cannot: Using eye movements to interpret omissions in primary progressive aphasia Journal Article In: Neuropsychologia, vol. 184, pp. 1–9, 2023. @article{Nelson2023, Though it may seem simple, object naming is a complex multistage process that can be impaired by lesions at various sites of the language network. Individuals with neurodegenerative disorders of language, known as primary progressive aphasias (PPA), have difficulty with naming objects, and instead frequently say “I don't know” or fail to give a vocal response at all, known as an omission. Whereas other types of naming errors (paraphasias) give clues as to which aspects of the language network have been compromised, the mechanisms underlying omissions remain largely unknown. In this study, we used a novel eye tracking approach to probe the cognitive mechanisms of omissions in the logopenic and semantic variants of PPA (PPA-L and PPA-S). For each participant, we identified pictures of common objects (e.g., animals, tools) that they could name aloud correctly, as well as pictures that elicited an omission. In a separate word-to-picture matching task, those pictures appeared as targets embedded among an array with 15 foils. Participants were given a verbal cue and tasked with pointing to the target, while eye movements were monitored. On trials with correctly-named targets, controls and both PPA groups ceased visual search soon after foveating the target. On omission trials, however, the PPA-S group failed to stop searching, and went on to view many foils “post-target”. As further indication of impaired word knowledge, gaze of the PPA-S group was subject to excessive “taxonomic capture”, such that they spent less time viewing the target and more time viewing related foils on omission trials. In contrast, viewing behavior of the PPA-L group was similar to controls on both correctly-named and omission trials. These results indicate that the mechanisms of omission in PPA differ by variant. In PPA-S, anterior temporal lobe degeneration causes taxonomic blurring, such that words from the same category can no longer be reliably distinguished. In PPA-L, word knowledge remains relatively intact, and omissions instead appear to be caused by downstream factors (e.g., lexical access, phonological encoding). These findings demonstrate that when words fail, eye movements can be particularly informative. |
Eva M. Nunnemann; Helene Kreysa; Pia Knoeferle The effects of referential gaze in spoken language comprehension: Human speaker vs. virtual agent listener gaze Journal Article In: Frontiers in Communication, vol. 8, pp. 1–16, 2023. @article{Nunnemann2023, Introduction: Four studies addressed effects of human speaker gaze vs. virtual agent listener gaze on eye movements during spoken sentence comprehension. Method: Participants saw videos in which a static scene depicting three characters was presented on a screen. Eye movements were recorded as participants listened to German subject-verb-object (SVO) sentences describing an interaction between two of these characters. Participants' task was to verify whether the sentence matched a schematic depiction of the event. Two critical factors were manipulated across all four experiments: (1) whether the human speaker—uttering the sentence—was visible, and (2) whether the agent listener was present. Moreover, in Experiments 2 and 4, the target second noun phrase (NP2) was made inaudible, and in Experiments 3 and 4, the gaze time course of the agent listener was altered: it looked at the NP2 referent about 400 ms before the speaker did. These manipulations served to increase the value of the speaker's and listener's gaze cues for correctly anticipating the NP2 referent. Results: Human speaker gaze led to increased fixations of the NP2 referent in all experiments, but primarily after the onset of its mention. Only in Experiment 3 did participants reliably anticipate the NP2 referent, in this case making use of both the human speaker's and the virtual agent listener's gaze. In all other cases, virtual agent listener gaze had no effect on visual anticipation of the NP2 referent, even when it was the exclusive cue. Discussion: Such information on the use of gaze cues can refine theoretical models of situated language processing and help to develop virtual agents that act as competent communication partners in conversations with human interlocutors. |
Ryan M. O'Leary; Nicole M. Amichetti; Zoe Brown; Alexander J. Kinney; Arthur Wingfield Congruent prosody reduces cognitive effort in memory for spoken sentences: A pupillometric study with young and older adults Journal Article In: Experimental Aging Research, pp. 1–24, 2023. @article{OLeary2023, Background: In spite of declines in working memory and other processes, older adults generally maintain good ability to understand and remember spoken sentences. In part this is due to preserved knowledge of linguistic rules and their implementation. Largely overlooked, however, is the support older adults may gain from the presence of sentence prosody (pitch contour, lexical stress, intra-and inter-word timing) as an aid to detecting the structure of a heard sentence. Methods: Twenty-four young and 24 older adults recalled recorded sentences in which the sentence prosody corresponded to the clausal structure of the sentence, when the prosody was in conflict with this structure, or when there was reduced prosody uninformative with regard to the clausal structure. Pupil size was concurrently recorded as a measure of processing effort. Results: Both young and older adults' recall accuracy was superior for sentences heard with supportive prosody than for sentences with uninformative prosody or for sentences in which the prosodic marking and causal structure were in conflict. The measurement of pupil dilation suggested that the task was generally more effortful for the older adults, but with both groups showing a similar pattern of effort-reducing effects of supportive prosody. Conclusions: Results demonstrate the influence of prosody on young and older adults' ability to recall accurately multi-clause sentences, and the significant role effective prosody may play in preserving processing effort. |
Ryan M. O'Leary; Jonathan Neukam; Thomas A. Hansen; Alexander J. Kinney; Nicole Capach; Mario A. Svirsky; Arthur Wingfield In: Trends in Hearing, vol. 27, pp. 1–22, 2023. @article{OLeary2023a, Speech that has been artificially accelerated through time compression produces a notable deficit in recall of the speech content. This is especially so for adults with cochlear implants (CI). At the perceptual level, this deficit may be due to the sharply degraded CI signal, combined with the reduced richness of compressed speech. At the cognitive level, the rapidity of time-compressed speech can deprive the listener of the ordinarily available processing time present when speech is delivered at a normal speech rate. Two experiments are reported. Experiment 1 was conducted with 27 normal-hearing young adults as a proof-of-concept demonstration that restoring lost processing time by inserting silent pauses at linguistically salient points within a time-compressed narrative (“time-restoration”) returns recall accuracy to a level approximating that for a normal speech rate. Noise vocoder conditions with 10 and 6 channels reduced the effectiveness of time-restoration. Pupil dilation indicated that additional effort was expended by participants while attempting to process the time-compressed narratives, with the effortful demand on resources reduced with time restoration. In Experiment 2, 15 adult CI users tested with the same (unvocoded) materials showed a similar pattern of behavioral and pupillary responses, but with the notable exception that meaningful recovery of recall accuracy with time-restoration was limited to a subgroup of CI users identified by better working memory spans, and better word and sentence recognition scores. Results are discussed in terms of sensory-cognitive interactions in data-limited and resource-limited processes among adult users of cochlear implants. |
Henri Olkoniemi; Sohvi Halonen; Penny M. Pexman; Tuomo Häikiö Children's processing of written irony: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Cognition, vol. 238, pp. 1–18, 2023. @article{Olkoniemi2023, Ironic language is challenging for many people to understand, and particularly for children. Comprehending irony is considered a major milestone in children's development, as it requires inferring the intentions of the person who is being ironic. However, the theories of irony comprehension generally do not address developmental changes, and there are limited data on children's processing of verbal irony. In the present pre-registered study, we examined, for the first time, how children process and comprehend written irony in comparison to adults. Seventy participants took part in the study (35 10-year-old children and 35 adults). In the experiment, participants read ironic and literal sentences embedded in story contexts while their eye movements were recorded. They also responded to a text memory question and an inference question after each story, and children's levels of reading skills were measured. Results showed that for both children and adults comprehending written irony was more difficult than for literal texts (the “irony effect”) and was more challenging for children than for adults. Moreover, although children showed longer overall reading times than adults, processing of ironic stories was largely similar between children and adults. One group difference was that for children, more accurate irony comprehension was qualified by faster reading times whereas for adults more accurate irony comprehension involved slower reading times. Interestingly, both age groups were able to adapt to task context and improve their irony processing across trials. These results provide new insights about the costs of irony and development of the ability to overcome them. |
Henri Olkoniemi; Diane Mézière; Johanna K. Kaakinen Comprehending irony in text: Evidence from scanpaths Journal Article In: Discourse Processes, pp. 1–15, 2023. @article{Olkoniemi2023b, Eyetracking studies have shown that readers reread ironic phrases when resolving their meaning. Moreover, it has been shown that the timecourse of processing ironic meaning is affected by reader's working memory capacity (WMC). Irony is a context-dependent phenomenon but using traditional eye-movement measures it is difficult to analyze processing beyond sentence-level. A promising method to study individual differences in irony processing at the paragraph-level is scanpath analysis. In the present experiment, we analyzed whether individual differences in WMC are reflected in scanpaths during reading ironic stories by combining data from two previous eye-tracking studies (N = 120). The results revealed three different reading patterns: fast-and-linear reading, selective reading, and nonselective rereading. The readers predominantly used the fast-and-linear reading pattern for ironic and literal stories. However, readers were less likely to use the nonselective rereading pattern with ironic than literal texts. The reading patterns for ironic stories were modulated by WMC. Results showed that scanpaths captured differences missed by standard measures, showing it to be a valuable tool to study individual differences in irony processing. |
Tao Gong; Lan Shuai Segmented relations between online reading behaviors, text properties, and reader–text interactions: An eye-movement experiment Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–20, 2023. @article{Gong2023, Purpose: To investigate relations between abilities of readers and properties of words during online sentence reading, we conducted a sentence reading eye-movements study on young adults of English monolinguals from the US, who exhibited a wide scope of individual differences in standard measures of language and literacy skills. Method: We adopted mixed-effects regression models of gaze measures of early and late print processing stages from sentence onset to investigate possible associations between gaze measures, text properties, and skill measures. We also applied segmented linear regressions to detect the dynamics of identified associations. Results: Our study reported significant associations between (a) gaze measures (first-pass reading time, total reading times, and first-pass regression probability) and (b) interactions of lexical properties (word length or position) and skill measures (vocabulary, oral reading fluency, decoding, and verbal working memory), and confirmed a segmented linear dynamics between gaze measures and lexical properties, which was influenced by skill measures. Conclusion: This study extends the previous work on predictive effects of individual language and literacy skills on online reading behavior, enriches the existing methodology exploring the dynamics of associations between lexical properties and eye-movement measures, and stimulates future work investigating factors that shape such dynamics. |
Alexa S. Gonzalez; Kathryn A. Tremblay; Katherine S. Binder Context facilitates the decoding of lexically ambiguous words for adult literacy learners Journal Article In: Reading and Writing, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 699–722, 2023. @article{Gonzalez2023, An estimated one-fifth of adults in the United States possess low literacy skills, which includes minimal proficiency in reading and difficulty processing contextual information. One way to study reading behavior of adults with low literacy is through eye movement studies; however, these investigations have been generally limited. Thus, the present study collected eye movement data (e.g., gaze duration, total time, regressions) from adult literacy learners while they read sentences to investigate online reading behavior. We manipulated the lexical ambiguity of the target words, context strength, and context location in the sentences. The role of vocabulary depth, which refers to the deeper understanding of a word in one's vocabulary, was also examined. Results show that adult literacy learners spent more total time reading ambiguous words compared to control words and vocabulary depth was significantly correlated with processing of lexically ambiguous words. Participants with higher depth scores were more sensitive to the complexity of ambiguous words and more effective at utilizing context compared to those with lower depth scores, which is reflected by more total time reading ambiguous words when more informative context was available and more regressions made to the target word by participants with higher depth scores. Overall, there is evidence to demonstrate the benefits of context use in lexical processing, as well as adult learners' sensitivity to changes in lexical ambiguity. |
Julie Gregg; Albrecht W. Inhoff; Xingshan Li Lexical competition influences correct and incorrect visual word recognition Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 76, no. 5, pp. 1011 –1025, 2023. @article{Gregg2023, A growing body of research suggests that visual word recognition is error-prone, and that errors may contribute to inhibitory neighbour frequency effects in word identification and reading. The present study used the neighbourhood frequency effect to examine the relationship between lexical competition and error making during visual word recognition. A novel adaptation of the visual world paradigm (VWP) was used, in which participants selected a briefly presented printed target word from an array containing the target, its higher- or lower-frequency neighbour, an orthographic onset competitor, and an orthographically unrelated distractor word. Analyses of the visual inspection of the arrays suggested that lexical competition occurred when words were correctly identified, as competitors were preferentially viewed as a function of their orthographic similarity with the target, and higher-frequency neighbours were preferentially viewed over lower-frequency neighbours. Orthographic similarity and neighbour frequency also influenced error making. Targets were often mistaken for their neighbours, and these errors were more common for targets with higher-frequency neighbours. The time course of target and neighbour viewing for error trials also provided preliminary evidence for two kinds of errors: early-occurring, perceptual errors and later-occurring selection errors that resulted from unsuccessfully resolved lexical competition. Together, these findings suggest that neighbour frequency effects reflect the contribution of both general lexical competition and occasional errors. |
Junjuan Gu; Junyi Zhou; Yaqian Bao; Jiayu Liu; Manuel Perea; Xingshan Li The effect of transposed-character distance in Chinese reading Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 464–476, 2023. @article{Gu2023a, Previous research in alphabetic languages has shown that both position (external, internal) and distance (adjacent, nonadjacent) modulate letter position encoding during reading. To examine the generality of this pattern for a comprehensive model of word recognition and reading, we examined these effects during Chinese reading (i.e., an unspaced logographic language). Participants in two experiments read intact sentences and sentences containing transposed-character nonwords while their eye movements were monitored. Experiment 1 manipulated the distance between the transposed characters (adjacent vs. nonadjacent) within three-character words. Reading times were longer when nonadjacent characters were transposed compared with adjacent characters. Also, for adjacent character transpositions, a wordbeginning character transposition led to longer reading times than a word-ending character transposition. Experiment 2 manipulated orthogonally character transposition distance (adjacent vs. nonadjacent) and position within four-character words, including the beginning versus the last character. Reading times were longer when the transposition involves the first character than when involves the ending character. Fixation durations on the target regions in the nonadjacent character transposition condition were longer than those in the adjacent character transposition condition. Taken together, these results reveal robust effects of both the initial character position and transposed-character distance in Chinese reading. Thus, the privileged status of the initial character is intrinsically related to how we access lexical information. |
Thomas Günther; Annika Kirschenkern; Axel Mayer; Frederike Steinke; Jürgen Cholewa In: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 66, no. 10, pp. 3907–3924, 2023. @article{Guenther2023, Purpose: Many models of language comprehension assume that listeners predict the continuation of an incoming linguistic stimulus immediately after itonset, based on only partial linguistic and contextual information. Their related developmental models try to determine which cues (e.g., semantic or morpho-syntactic) trigger such prediction, and to which extent, during different period of language acquisition. One morphosyntactic cue utilized predictively in many languages, inter alia German, is grammatical gender. However, studies of the developmental trajectories of the acquisition of predictive gender processing in German remain a few. Method: This study attempts to shed light on such processing strategies usein noun phrase decoding among children acquiring German as their first language by examining their eye movements during a language–picture matching task (N = 78, 5–10 years old). Its aim was to confirm whether the eye moments indicated the presence of age-specific differences in the processing of gender cue, provided either in isolation or in combination with a semantic cue. Results: The results revealed that German children made use of predictive gender processing strategies from the age of 5 years onward; however, the pace online gender processing, as well as confidence in the predicted continuation increased up to the age of 10 years. Conclusion: Predictive processing of gender cues plays a role in German language comprehension even in children younger than 8 years. |
Michael Hahn; Frank Keller Modeling task effects in human reading with neural network-based attention Journal Article In: Cognition, vol. 230, pp. 1–25, 2023. @article{Hahn2023, Research on human reading has long documented that reading behavior shows task-specific effects, but it has been challenging to build general models predicting what reading behavior humans will show in a given task. We introduce NEAT, a computational model of the allocation of attention in human reading, based on the hypothesis that human reading optimizes a tradeoff between economy of attention and success at a task. Our model is implemented using contemporary neural network modeling techniques, and makes explicit and testable predictions about how the allocation of attention varies across different tasks. We test this in an eyetracking study comparing two versions of a reading comprehension task, finding that our model successfully accounts for reading behavior across the tasks. Our work thus provides evidence that task effects can be modeled as optimal adaptation to task demands. |
Yuqi Hao; Yingyi Luo; Kenneth Han-yang Lin-Hong; Ming Yan Shared translation in second language activates unrelated words in first language Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, pp. 1–11, 2023. @article{Hao2023, The present study explored bilingual coactivation during natural monolingual sentence-reading comprehension. Native Chinese readers who had learned Japanese as a second language and those who had not learned it at all were tested. The results showed that unrelated Chinese word pairs that shared a common Japanese translation could parafoveally prime each other. Critically, this translation-related preview effect was modulated by the readers' language-learning experiences. It was found only among the late Chinese–Japanese bilinguals, but not among the monolingual Chinese readers. By setting a novel step, which was testing bilingual coactivation of semantic knowledge in a natural reading scenario without an explicit presentation of L2 words, our results suggest that bilingual word processing can be automatic, unconscious and nonselective. The study reveals an L2-to-L1 influence on readers' lexical activation during natural sentence reading in an exclusively native context. |
Tami Harel-Arbeli; Yuval Palgi; Boaz M. Ben-David Sow in tears and reap in joy: Eye tracking reveals age-related differences in the cognitive cost of spoken context processing Journal Article In: Psychology and Aging, vol. 38, no. 6, pp. 534–547, 2023. @article{HarelArbeli2023, Older adults have been found to use context to facilitate word recognition at least as efficiently as young adults. This may pose a conundrum, as context use is based on cognitive resources that are considered to decrease with aging. The goal of this study was to shed light on this question by testing age-related differences in context use and the cognitive demands associated with it. The eye movements of 30 young (21–27 years old) and 30 older adults (61–79 years old) were examined as they listened to spoken instructions to touch an image on a monitor. The predictability of the target word was manipulated between trials: nonpredictive (baseline), predictive (context), or predictive of two images (competition). In tandem, listeners were asked to retain one or four spoken digits (low or high cognitive load) for later recall. Separate analyses were conducted for the preceding sentence and the (final) target word. Sentence processing: Older adults were slower than young adults to accumulate evidence for target-word prediction (context condition), and they were more negatively affected by the increase in cognitive load (context and competition). Targetword recognition: No age-related differences were found in word recognition rate or the effect of cognitive load following predictive context (context and competition). Although older adults have greater difficulty processing context, they can use context to facilitate word recognition as efficiently as young adults. These results provide a better understanding of how cognitive processing changes with aging. They may help develop interventions aimed at improving communication in older adults. |
Juan Haro; Natalia López-Cortés; Pilar Ferré Pupillometric and behavioural evidence shows no differences between polyseme and homonym processing Journal Article In: Acta Psychologica, vol. 238, pp. 1–13, 2023. @article{Haro2023, Ambiguous words can have related meanings (polysemes, e.g., newspaper) or unrelated meanings (homonyms, e.g., bat). Here we examined the processing of both types of ambiguous words (as well as unambiguous words) in tasks of increasing level of semantic engagement. Four experiments were conducted in which the degree of semantic engagement of the task was manipulated: lexical decision task (Experiments 1 and 2), semantic categorization task (Experiment 3) and number-of-meanings task (Experiment 4). RTs and pupillary response were recorded. To our knowledge, pupillary response had never been used before to study ambiguous words processing in isolation. Results showed faster RTs for ambiguous words with respect to unambiguous words in LDT, and larger pupil dilation was observed for ambiguous words in comparison to unambiguous ones in number-of-meanings task. However, differences between polysemes and homonyms were not observed in any task. These results provide no evidence that polysemes and homonyms are processed differently. |
J. Hartman; J. Saffran; R. Litovsky Word learning in deaf adults who use cochlear implants: The role of talker variability and attention to the mouth Journal Article In: Ear & Hearing, pp. 1–14, 2023. @article{Hartman2023, OBJECTIVES: Although cochlear implants (CIs) facilitate spoken language acquisition, many CI listeners experience difficulty learning new words. Studies have shown 29that highly variable stimulus input and audiovisual cues improve speech perception in CI listeners. However, less is known whether these two factors improve perception in a word learning context. Furthermore, few studies have examined how CI listeners direct their gaze to efficiently capture visual information available on a talker's face. The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) to examine whether talker variability could improve word learning in CI listeners and (2) to examine how CI listeners direct their gaze while viewing a talker speak. DESIGN: Eighteen adults with CIs and 10 adults with normal hearing (NH) learned eight novel word-object pairs spoken by a single talker or six different talkers (multiple talkers). The word learning task comprised of nonsense words following the phonotactic rules of English. Learning was probed using a novel talker in a two-alternative forced-choice eye gaze task. Learners' eye movements to the mouth and the target object (accuracy) were tracked over time. RESULTS: Both groups performed near ceiling during the test phase, regardless of whether they learned from the same talker or different talkers. However, compared to listeners with NH, CI listeners directed their gaze significantly more to the talker's mouth while learning the words. CONCLUSIONS: Unlike NH listeners who can successfully learn words without focusing on the talker's mouth, CI listeners tended to direct their gaze to the talker's mouth, which may facilitate learning. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that CI listeners use a visual processing strategy that efficiently captures redundant audiovisual speech cues available at the mouth. Due to ceiling effects, however, it is unclear whether talker variability facilitated word learning for adult CI listeners, an issue that should be addressed in future work using more difficult listening conditions. |
Kara Hawthorne; Susan J. Loveall In: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 66, no. 9, pp. 3606–3621, 2023. @article{Hawthorne2023, Purpose: Pronouns are referentially ambiguous: For example, “she” could refer to any female. Nonetheless, errors in pronoun interpretation rarely occur for adults with typical development (TD) due to several strategies implicitly shared between the talker and listener. The purpose of this study was to test the impacts of syntactic, semantic, and prosodic prominence on pronoun interpre-tation for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and TD. Method: Adults with IDD (n =28) andTD (n = 27) listened to ministories involving a pronoun with two potential antecedents that varied in syntactic, semantic, and prag-matic prominence. Subject/first-mentioned antecedents are more syntactically prominent than object antecedents. Semantic prominence was manipulated via verb transitivity: Subjects are more semantically prominent when the verb is highly transitive (e.g., “hit” vs. “see,” a low-transitivity verb for which the subject is merely experiencing the action). Pragmatic prominence was manipulated by placing pro-sodic focus on one of the two potential antecedents. Eye gaze to images represent-ing the potential antecedents was tracked as a measure of online processing. Responses to a follow-up pronoun interpretation question were also recorded. Results: Adults with TD used syntactic, semantic, and—in early processing— pragmatic prominence when interpreting ambiguous pronouns. Adults with IDD were sensitive to syntactic prominence but to a significantly lesser extent than their peers with TD. Conclusions: Pronouns are an integral part of everyday conversation, and when the conversational partners do not share common strategies to link ambiguous pronouns with their antecedents, misunderstandings will occur. Results show that adults with IDD only weakly share pronoun interpretation strategies with adults with TD, suggesting that pronouns may be an important focus for inter-vention for this population. |
Lena Henke; Ashley G. Lewis; Lars Meyer Fast and slow rhythms of naturalistic reading revealed by combined eye-tracking and electroencephalography Journal Article In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 43, no. 24, pp. 4461–4469, 2023. @article{Henke2023, Neural oscillations are thought to support speech and language processing. They may not only inherit acoustic rhythms, but might also impose endogenous rhythms onto processing. In support of this, we here report that human (both male and female) eye movements during naturalistic reading exhibit rhythmic patterns that show frequency-selective coherence with the EEG, in the absence of any stimulation rhythm. Periodicity was observed in two distinct frequency bands: First, word-locked saccades at 4-5 Hz display coherence with whole-head theta-band activity. Second, fixation durations fluctuate rhythmically at;1 Hz, in coherence with occipital delta-band activity. This latter effect was additionally phase-locked to sentence endings, suggesting a relationship with the formation of multi-word chunks. Together, eye movements during reading contain rhythmic patterns that occur in synchrony with oscillatory brain activity. This suggests that linguistic processing imposes preferred processing time scales onto reading, largely independent of actual physical rhythms in the stimulus. |
2022 |
Lara Merken; Maarten Schelles; Frederik Ceyssens; Michael Kraft; Peter Janssen Thin flexible arrays for long-term multi-electrode recordings in macaque primary visual cortex Journal Article In: Journal of Neural Engineering, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Merken2022, Objective. Basic, translational and clinical neuroscience are increasingly focusing on large-scale invasive recordings of neuronal activity. However, in large animals such as nonhuman primates and humans – in which the larger brain size with sulci and gyri imposes additional challenges compared to rodents, there is a huge unmet need to record from hundreds of neurons simultaneously anywhere in the brain for long periods of time. Here, we tested the electrical and mechanical properties of thin, flexible multi-electrode arrays inserted into the primary visual cortex of two macaque monkeys, and assessed their Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) compatibility and their capacity to record extracellular activity over a period of 1 year. Approach. To allow insertion of the floating arrays into the visual cortex, the 20 by 100 µm2 shafts were temporarily strengthened by means of a resorbable poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) coating. Main results. After manual insertion of the arrays, the ex vivo and in vivo MRI compatibility of the arrays proved to be excellent. We recorded clear single-unit activity (SUA) from up to 50% of the electrodes, and multi-unit activity (MUA) on 60-100% of the electrodes, which allowed detailed measurements of the receptive fields and the orientation selectivity of the neurons. Even 1 year after insertion, we obtained significant MUA responses on 70-100% of the electrodes, while the receptive fields remained remarkably stable over the entire recording period. Significance. Thus, the thin and flexible multielectrode arrays we tested offer several crucial advantages compared to existing arrays, most notably in terms of brain tissue compliance, scalability, and brain coverage. Future brain-machine interface applications in humans may strongly benefit from this new generation of chronically implanted multi-electrode arrays. |
Haiyan Wang; Matthew Walenski; Kaitlyn Litcofsky; Jennifer E. Mack; M. Marsel Mesulam; Cynthia K. Thompson Verb production and comprehension in primary progressive aphasia Journal Article In: Journal of Neurolinguistics, vol. 64, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Wang2022c, Studies of word class processing have found verb retrieval impairments in individuals with primary progressive aphasia (Bak et al., 2001; Cappa et al., 1998; Cotelli et al., 2006; Hillis, Heidler-Gary, et al., 2006; Hillis, Oh, & Ken, 2004; Marcotte et al., 2014; Rhee, Antiquena, & Grossman, 2001; Silveri & Ciccarelli, 2007; Thompson, Lukic, et al., 2012) associated primarily with the agrammatic variant. However, fewer studies have focused on verb comprehension, with inconsistent results. Because verbs are critical to both production and comprehension of clauses and sentences, we investigated verb processing across domains in agrammatic, logopenic, and semantic PPA and a group of age-matched healthy controls. Participants completed a confrontation naming task for verb production and an eye-tracking word-picture matching task for online verb comprehension. All PPA groups showed impaired verb production and comprehension relative to healthy controls. Most notably, the PPA-S group performed more poorly than the other two PPA variants in both domains. Overall, the results indicate that semantic deficits in the PPA-S extend beyond object knowledge to verbs as well, adding to our knowledge concerning the nature of the language deficits in the three variants of primary progressive aphasia. |
Xuling Li; Man Zeng; Lei Gao; Shan Li; Zibei Niu; Danhui Wang; Tianzhi Li; Xuejun Bai; Xiaolei Gao The mechanism of word satiation in Tibetan reading: Evidence from eye movements Journal Article In: Journal of Eye Movement Research, vol. 15, no. 5, 2022. @article{Li2022k, Two eye-tracking experiments were used to investigate the mechanism of word satiation in Tibetan reading. The results revealed that, at a low repetition level, gaze duration and total fixation duration in the semantically unrelated condition were significantly longer than in the semantically related condition; at a medium repetition level, reaction time in the semantically related condition was significantly longer than in the semantically unrelated condition; at a high repetition level, the total fixation duration and reaction time in the semantically related condition were significantly longer than in the semantically unrelated condition. However, fixation duration and reaction time showed no significant difference between the similar and dissimilar orthography at any repetition level. These findings imply that there are semantic priming effects in Tibetan reading at a low repetition level, but semantic satiation effects at greater repetition levels, which occur in the late stage of lexical processing. |
Charlotte Moore; Elika Bergelson Examining the roles of regularity and lexical class in 18–26-month-olds' representations of how words sound Journal Article In: Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 126, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Moore2022a, By around 12 months, infants have well-specified phonetic representations for the nouns they understand, for instance looking less at a car upon hearing ‘cur' than ‘car' (Swingley and Aslin, 2002). Here we test whether such high-fidelity representations extend to irregular nouns, and regular and irregular verbs. A corpus analysis confirms the intuition that irregular verbs are far more common than irregular nouns in speech to young children. Two eyetracking experiments then test whether toddlers are sensitive to mispronunciation in regular and irregular nouns (Experiment 1) and verbs (Experiment 2). For nouns, we find a mispronunciation effect and no regularity effect in 18-month-olds. For verbs, in Experiment 2a, we find only a regularity effect and no mispronunciation effect in 18-month-olds, though toddlers' poor comprehension overall limits interpretation. Finally, in Experiment 2b we find a mispronunciation effect and no regularity effect in 26-month-olds. The interlocking roles of lexical class and regularity for wordform representations and early word learning are discussed. |
Yang Zhou; Krithika Mohan; David J. Freedman Abstract encoding of categorical decisions in medial superior temporal and lateral intraparietal cortices Journal Article In: Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 42, no. 48, pp. 9069–9081, 2022. @article{Zhou2022g, Categorization is an essential cognitive and perceptual process for decision making and recognition. The posterior parietal cortex (PPC), particularly the lateral intraparietal (LIP) area has been suggested to transform visual feature encoding into abstract categorical representations. By contrast, areas closer to sensory input, such as the middle temporal (MT) area, encode stimulus features but not more abstract categorical information during categorization tasks. Here, we compare the contributions of the medial superior temporal (MST) and LIP areas in category computation by recording neuronal activity in both areas from two male rhesus macaques trained to perform a visual motion categorization task. MST is a core motion processing area interconnected with MT, and often considered an intermediate processing stage between MT and LIP. Here we show that MST exhibits robust decision-correlated motion category encoding and working memory encoding similar to LIP, suggesting that MST plays a substantial role in cognitive computation, extending beyond its widely recognized role in visual motion processing. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Categorization requires assigning incoming sensory stimuli into behaviorally relevant groups. Previous work found that parietal area LIP shows a strong encoding of the learned category membership of visual motion stimuli, while visual area MT shows strong direction tuning but not category tuning during a motion direction categorization task. Here we show that area MST, a visual motion processing area interconnected with both LIP and MT, shows strong visual category encoding similar to that observed in LIP. This suggests that MST plays a greater role in abstract cognitive functions, extending beyond it well known role in visual motion processing. |
Brice Olivier; Anne Guérin-Dugué; Jean-Baptiste Durand Hidden semi-Markov models to segment reading phases from eye movements Journal Article In: Journal of Eye Movement Research, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 1–19, 2022. @article{Olivier2022, Our objective is to analyze scanpaths acquired through participants achieving a reading task aiming at answering a binary question: Is the text related or not to some given target topic? We propose a data-driven method based on hidden semi-Markov chains to segment scanpaths into phases deduced from the model states, which are shown to represent different cognitive strategies: normal reading, fast reading, information search, and slow confirmation. These phases were confirmed using different external covariates, among which semantic information extracted from texts. Analyses highlighted some strong preference of specific participants for specific strategies and more globally, large individual variability in eye-movement characteristics, as accounted for by random effects. As a perspective, the possibility of improving reading models by accounting for possible heterogeneity sources during reading is discussed. |
M. Antúnez; P. J. López-Pérez; J. Dampuré; H. A. Barber Frequency-based foveal load modulates semantic parafoveal-on-foveal effects Journal Article In: Journal of Neurolinguistics, vol. 63, 2022. @article{Antunez2022, During reading, we can process words allocated to the parafoveal visual region. Our ability to extract parafoveal information is determined by the availability of attentional resources, and by how these are distributed among words in the visual field. According to the foveal load hypothesis, a greater difficulty in processing the foveal word would result in less attentional resources being allocated to the parafoveal word, thereby hindering its processing. However, contradictory results have raised questions about which foveal load manipulations may affect the processing of parafoveal words at different levels. We explored whether the semantic processing of parafoveal words can be modulated by variations in a frequency-based foveal load. When participants read word triads, modulations in the N400 component indicated that, while parafoveal words were semantically processed when foveal load was low, their meaning could not be accessed if the foveal word was more difficult to process. Therefore, a frequency-based foveal load modulates semantic parafoveal processing and a semantic preview manipulation may be a suitable baseline to test the foveal load hypothesis. |
Michael G. Cutter; Ruth Filik; Kevin B. Paterson Do readers maintain word-level uncertainty during reading? A pre-registered replication study Journal Article In: Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 125, pp. 1–14, 2022. @article{Cutter2022, We present a replication of Levy, Bicknell, Slattery, and Rayner (2009). In this prior study participants read sentences in which a perceptually confusable preposition (at; confusable with as) or non-confusable preposition (toward) was followed by a verb more likely to appear in the syntactic structure formed by replacing at with as (e.g. tossed) or a verb that was not more likely to appear in this structure (e.g. thrown). Readers experienced processing difficulty upon fixating verbs like tossed following at, but not toward. Levy et al. argued that this suggests readers maintained uncertainty about previously fixated words' identities. We argue that this finding has wide-ranging implications for language processing theories, and that a replication is required. On the basis of a Bayes Factor Design Analysis we conducted a replication study with 56 items and 72 participants in order to determine whether Levy et al.'s effects are replicable. Using Bayesian statistical techniques we show that in our dataset there is evidence against the existence of the interaction Levy et al. found, and thus conclude that this study is non-replicable. |
Ruth E. Corps; Charlotte Brooke; Martin J. Pickering Prediction involves two stages: Evidence from visual-world eye-tracking Journal Article In: Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 122, pp. 1–20, 2022. @article{Corps2022, Comprehenders often predict what they are going to hear. But do they make the best predictions possible? We addressed this question in three visual-world eye-tracking experiments by asking when comprehenders consider perspective. Male and female participants listened to male and female speakers producing sentences (e.g., I would like to wear the nice…) about stereotypically masculine (target: tie; distractor: drill) and feminine (target: dress, distractor: hairdryer) objects. In all three experiments, participants rapidly predicted semantic associates of the verb. But participants also predicted consistently-that is, consistent with their beliefs about what the speaker would ultimately say. They predicted consistently from the speaker's perspective in Experiment 1, their own perspective in Experiment 2, and the character's perspective in Experiment 3. This consistent effect occurred later than the associative effect. We conclude that comprehenders consider perspective when predicting, but not from the earliest moments of prediction, consistent with a two-stage account. |
Jon W. Carr; Valentina N. Pescuma; Michele Furlan; Maria Ktori; Davide Crepaldi Algorithms for the automated correction of vertical drift in eye-tracking data Journal Article In: Behavior Research Methods, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 287–310, 2022. @article{Carr2022, A common problem in eye-tracking research is vertical drift—the progressive displacement of fixation registrations on the vertical axis that results from a gradual loss of eye-tracker calibration over time. This is particularly problematic in experiments that involve the reading of multiline passages, where it is critical that fixations on one line are not erroneously recorded on an adjacent line. Correction is often performed manually by the researcher, but this process is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to error and inconsistency. Various methods have previously been proposed for the automated, post hoc correction of vertical drift in reading data, but these methods vary greatly, not just in terms of the algorithmic principles on which they are based, but also in terms of their availability, documentation, implementation languages, and so forth. Furthermore, these methods have largely been developed in isolation with little attempt to systematically evaluate them, meaning that drift correction techniques are moving forward blindly. We document ten major algorithms, including two that are novel to this paper, and evaluate them using both simulated and natural eye-tracking data. Our results suggest that a method based on dynamic time warping offers great promise, but we also find that some algorithms are better suited than others to particular types of drift phenomena and reading behavior, allowing us to offer evidence-based advice on algorithm selection. |
Sarah Chabal; Sayuri Hayakawa; Viorica Marian Language is activated by visual input regardless of memory demands or capacity Journal Article In: Cognition, vol. 222, pp. 1–17, 2022. @article{Chabal2022, In the present study, we provide compelling evidence that viewing objects automatically activates linguistic labels and that this activation is not due to task-specific memory demands. In two experiments, eye-movements of English speakers were tracked while they identified a visual target among an array of four images, including a phonological competitor (e.g., flower-flag). Experiment 1 manipulated the capacity to subvocally rehearse the target label by imposing linguistic, spatial, or no working memory load. Experiment 2 manipulated the need to encode target objects by presenting target images either before or concurrently with the search display. While the timing and magnitude of competitor activation varied across conditions, we observed consistent evidence of language activation regardless of the capacity or need to maintain object labels in memory. We propose that language activation is automatic and not contingent upon working memory capacity or demands, and conclude that objects' labels influence visual search. |
Suphasiree Chantavarin; Emily Morgan; Fernanda Ferreira Robust processing advantage for binomial phrases with variant conjunctions Journal Article In: Cognitive Science, vol. 46, no. 9, pp. 1–43, 2022. @article{Chantavarin2022, Prior research has shown that various types of conventional multiword chunks are processed faster than matched novel strings, but it is unclear whether this processing advantage extends to variant multiword chunks that are less formulaic. To determine whether the processing advantage of multiword chunks accommodates variations in the canonical phrasal template, we examined the robustness of the processing advantage (i.e., predictability) of binomial phrases with non-canonical conjunctions (e.g., salt and also pepper; salt as well as pepper). Results from the cloze study (Experiment 1) showed that there was a high tendency of producing the canonical conjunct (pepper), even in the binomials that contained non-formulaic conjunctions. Consistent with these findings, results from two eye tracking studies (Experiments 2a and 2b) showed that canonical conjuncts were read faster than novel conjuncts that were matched on word length (e.g., paprika), even in the binomials with variant conjunctions. This robust online processing advantage was replicated in a self-paced reading study that compared all three conjunction types (Experiment 3). Taken together, these findings show that binomials with variant function words also receive facilitated processing relative to matched novel strings, even though both types of strings are neither conventional nor relatively frequent. Exploratory analyses revealed that this processing speed advantage was driven by the lexical–semantic association between the canonical conjuncts (salt–pepper), rather than lexical and phrasal frequency. Overall, these results highlight flexibility in the processing of multiword chunks that current models of multiword storage and processing must take into account. |
Xianglan Chen; Hulin Ren; Xiao Ying Yan Metonymy processing in Chinese: A linguistic context-sensitive eye-tracking preliminary study Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–10, 2022. @article{Chen2022g, Current cognitively oriented research on metaphor proposes that understanding metaphorical expressions is a process of building embodied simulations, which are constrained by past and present bodily experiences. However, it has also been shown that metaphor processing is also constrained by the linguistic context but, to our knowledge, there is no comparable work in the domain of metonymy. As an initial attempt to fill this gap, the present study uses eye-tracking experimentation to explore this aspect of Chinese metonymy processing. It complements previous work on how the length of preceding linguistic context influences metonymic processing by focusing on: (1) the contextual information of both the preceding target words; (2) the immediate spillover after the target words; and (3) whether the logical relationship between the preceding contextual information and the target word is strong or weak (a 2 × 2 between-subject experiment with target words of literal/metonymy and logic of strong/weak). Results show that readers take longer to arrive at a literal interpretation than at a metonymic one when the preceding information is in a weak logic relationship with target words, although this disparity can disappear when the logic is strong. Another finding is that both the preceding and the spillover contextual information contribute to metonymy processing when the spillover information does more to the metonymy than it does to the literal meaning. This study further complements cognitive and pragmatic approaches to metonymy, which are centered on its conceptual nature and its role in interpretation, by drawing attention to how the components of sentences contribute to the metonymic processing of target words. Based on an experiment, a contextual model of Chinese metonymy processing is proposed. |
Yi-Ting Ting Chen; Ming-Chou Chou Ho Eye movement patterns differ while watching captioned videos of second language vs. mathematics lessons Journal Article In: Learning and Individual Differences, vol. 93, pp. 1–9, 2022. @article{Chen2022, Background: Extant eye-tracking studies suggest that foreign-language learners tend to read the native language captions while watching foreign-language videos. However, it remains unclear how the captions affect the learners' eye movements when watching Math videos. Purpose: While watching teaching videos, we seek to determine how the lesson type (English or Math), cognitive load (high or low), and caption type (meaningful, no captions, or meaningless) affect the dwell times and fixation counts on the captions. Methods: One hundred and eighty undergraduate students were randomly and equally assigned to six (2 lesson type × 3 caption type) conditions. Each participant watched two short teaching videos (one low load and one high load). After watching each video, a comprehension test and three self-reported items (fatigue, effort, and difficulty) regarding this particular video were given. Results: We reported more dwell times and fixation counts on the meaningful captions, compared to the meaningless captions and no captions. In the high-load condition, viewers watching an English lesson relied more on the meaningful captions than they did when watching a Math lesson. In the low-load condition, the dwell times and fixation counts on the captions were similar between the English and Math lessons. Finally, the captions did not affect the comprehension test performances after ruling out individual differences in the prior performances of English and Math. Conclusions: English language learning may rely more on the captions than is the case in learning Math. This study provides the direction for designing multimedia teaching materials in the current trend of multimedia teaching. In |
Sun-Joo Cho; Sarah Brown-Schmidt; Paul De Boeck; Matthew Naveiras Space-time modeling of intensive binary time series eye-tracking data using a generalized additive logistic regression model Journal Article In: Psychological Methods, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 307–346, 2022. @article{Cho2022, Eye-tracking has emerged as a popular method for empirical studies of cognitive processes across multiple substantive research areas. Eye-tracking systems are capable of automatically generating fixation-location data over time at high temporal resolution. Often, the researcher obtains a binary measure of whether or not, at each point in time, the participant is fixating on a critical interest area or object in the real world or in a computerized display. Eye-tracking data are characterized by spatial-temporal correlations and random variability, driven by multiple fine-grained observations taken over small time intervals (e.g., every 10 ms). Ignoring these data complexities leads to biased inferences for the covariates of interest such as experimental condition effects. This article presents a novel application of a generalized additive logistic regressionmodel for intensive binary time series eye-tracking data from a between and within-subjects experimental design. The model is formulated as a generalized additive mixed model (GAMM) and implemented in the mgcv R package. The generalized additive logistic regression model was illustrated using an empirical data set aimed at understanding the accommodation of regional accents in spoken language processing. Accuracy of parameter estimates and the importance of modeling the spatial-temporal correlations in detecting the experimental condition effects were shown in conditions similar to our empirical data set via a simulation study. |
Derya Cokal; Patrick Sturt The real-time status of strong and weak islands Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 1–25, 2022. @article{Cokal2022, In two eye-tracking reading experiments, we used a variant of the filled gap technique to investigate how strong and weak islands are processed on a moment-to-moment basis during comprehension. Experiment 1 provided a conceptual replication of previous studies showing that real time processing is sensitive to strong islands. In the absence of an island, readers experienced processing difficulty when a pronoun appeared in a position of a predicted gap, but this difficulty was absent when the pronoun appeared inside a strong island. Experiment 2 showed an analogous effect for weak islands: A processing cost was seen for a pronoun in the position of a predicted gap in a that-complement clause, but this cost was absent in a matched whether clause, which constitutes a weak island configuration. Overall, our results are compatible with the claim that active dependency formation is suspended, or reduced, in both weak and strong island structures. |
Fengjiao Cong; Baoguo Chen The letter position coding mechanism of second language words during sentence reading: Evidence from eye movements Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 75, no. 10, pp. 1932–1947, 2022. @article{Cong2022a, We conducted three eye movement experiments to investigate the mechanism for coding letter positions in a person's second language during sentence reading; we also examined the role of morphology in this process with a more rigorous manipulation. Given that readers obtain information not only from currently fixated words (i.e., the foveal area) but also from upcoming words (i.e., the parafoveal area) to guide their reading, we examined both when the targets were fixated (Exp. 1) and when the targets were seen parafoveally (Exps. 2 and 3). First, we found the classic transposed letter (TL) effect in Exp. 1, but not in Exp. 2 or 3. This implies that flexible letter position coding exists during sentence reading. However, this was limited to words located in the foveal area, suggesting that L2 readers whose L2 proficiency is not as high as skilled native readers are not able to extract and utilise the parafoveal letter identity and position information of a word, whether the word length is long (Exp. 2) or short (Exp. 3). Second, we found morphological information to influence the magnitude of the TL effect in Exp. 1. These results provide new eye movement evidence for the flexibility of L2 letter position coding during sentence reading, as well as the interactions between the different internal representations of words in this process. Future L2 reading frameworks should integrate word recognition and eye movement control models. |
Fengjiao Cong; Baoguo Chen Parafoveal orthographic processing in bilingual reading Journal Article In: International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, vol. 25, pp. 3698–3710, 2022. @article{Cong2022, Reading is a very complex task in which readers obtain information to promote reading from not only the fixated word located in the foveal area but also non-fixated words located in the parafoveal area. We aimed to investigate the second language (L2) parafoveal orthographic (letter identity and letter position) processing mechanism adopting the eye-tracking technique and boundary paradigm. We set up four previews for each target: (1) the identity preview (e.g. reporter → reporter), (2) the transposed-letter preview (e.g. repotrer → reporter), (3) the substituted-letter condition (e.g. repokcer → reporter), and (4) the unrelated preview (e.g. chemaful → reporter). There are three main findings. First, L2 readers could extract and utilize the parafoveal orthographic information shared by the preview and the target to affect the late L2 processing stage. Second, when there was only a small difference between the preview and the target, L2 readers did not notice the subtle difference in the parafovea. Third, the identity and position of an internal single letter have little effect on L2 reading compared with the similarity of the whole word in the parafoveal area. Future L2 reading frameworks should be developed to explain these new findings. |
Lei Cui; Chuanli Zang; Xiaochen Xu; Wenxin Zhang; Yuhan Su; Simon P. Liversedge Predictability effects and parafoveal processing of compound words in natural Chinese reading Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 75, no. 1, pp. 18–29, 2022. @article{Cui2022, We report a boundary paradigm eye movement experiment to investigate whether the predictability of the second character of a two-character compound word affects how it is processed prior to direct fixation during reading. The boundary was positioned immediately prior to the second character of the target word, which itself was either predictable or unpredictable. The preview was either a pseudocharacter (nonsense preview) or an identity preview. We obtained clear preview effects in all conditions, but more importantly, skipping probability for the second character of the target word and the whole target word from pretarget was greater when it was predictable than when it was not predictable from the preceding context. Interactive effects for later measures on the whole target word (gaze duration and go-past time) were also obtained. These results demonstrate that predictability information from preceding sentential context and information regarding the likely identity of upcoming characters are used concurrently to constrain the nature of lexical processing during natural Chinese reading. |
Xiaohui Cui; Fabio Richlan; Wei Zhou Fixation-related fMRI analysis reveals the neural basis of parafoveal processing in self-paced reading of Chinese words Journal Article In: Brain Structure and Function, vol. 227, no. 8, pp. 2609–2621, 2022. @article{Cui2022a, While parafoveal word processing plays an important role in natural reading, the underlying neural mechanism remains unclear. The present study investigated the neural basis of parafoveal processing during Chinese word reading with the co-registration of eye-tracking and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using fixation-related fMRI analysis. In the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm, preview conditions (words that are identical, orthographically similar, and unrelated to target words), pre-target word frequency and target word frequency were manipulated. When fixating the pre-target word, the identical preview condition elicited lower brain activation in the left fusiform gyrus relative to unrelated and orthographically similar preview conditions and there were significant interactions of preview condition and pre-target word frequency on brain activation of the left middle frontal gyrus, left fusiform gyrus and supplementary motor area. When fixating the target word, there was a significant main effect of preview condition on brain activation of the right fusiform gyrus and a significant interaction of preview condition and pre-target word frequency on brain activation of the left middle frontal gyrus. These results suggest that fixation-related brain activation provides immediate measures and new perspectives to understand the mechanism of parafoveal processing in self-paced reading. |
Emmelien Merchie; Sofie Heirweg; Hilde Van Keer Mind maps: Processed as intuitively as thought? Investigating late elementary students' eye-tracked visual behavior patterns in-depth Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Merchie2022, In this study, 44 late elementary students' visual behavior patterns when reading mind maps were investigated, more particularly, the intuitive processing nature of their visual characteristics, reading sequence and presentation mode (i.e., mind map before or after text). Eye-tracked data were investigated by means of static early attention and dynamic educational process mining (EPM) analysis and combined with learning performance and retrospective interview data. All students seem to struggle with the map's radial structure during initial reading. Also, the picture's position in the map diverts students from consecutively reading interconnected branches. EPM analyses revealed different reading patterns in proceeding reading behavior. Students receiving a text first, seem to grasp the radial structure slightly more and show higher information integration attempts. They also attained higher free recall and coherence scores. The study concludes with instructional design principles for urgently needed explicit visual literacy instruction in elementary grades. |
Sara V. Milledge; Simon P. Liversedge; Hazel I. Blythe The importance of the first letter in children's parafoveal preprocessing in English: Is it phonologically or orthographically driven? Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 427–442, 2022. @article{Milledge2022, For both adult and child readers of English, the first letter of a word plays an important role in lexical identification. Using the boundary paradigm during silent sentence reading, we examined whether the first-letter bias in parafoveal preprocessing is phonologically or orthographically driven and whether this differs between skilled adult and beginner child readers. Participants read sentences that contained either a correctly spelled word in preview (identity; e.g., “circus”), a preview letter string that maintained the phonology but manipulated the orthography of the first letter (P+O-preview; e.g., “sircus”), or a preview letter string that manipulated both the phonology and the orthography of the first letter (P-O-preview; e.g., “wircus”). There was a cost associated with manipulating the first letter of the target words in preview for both adults and children. Critically, during first-pass reading, both adult and child readers displayed similar reading times between P+O- and P-O-previews. This shows that the first-letter bias is driven by orthographic encoding and that the first letter's orthographic code in preview is crucial for efficient, early processing of phonology |
Sara V. Milledge; Chuanli Zang; Simon P. Liversedge; Hazel I. Blythe Phonological parafoveal pre-processing in children reading English sentences Journal Article In: Cognition, vol. 225, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Milledge2022a, Although previous research has shown that, in English, both adult and teenage readers parafoveally pre-process phonological information during silent reading, to date, no research has been conducted to investigate such processing in children. Here we used the boundary paradigm during silent sentence reading, to ascertain whether typically developing English children, like adults, parafoveally process words phonologically. Participants' eye movements (adults: n = 48; children: n = 48) were recorded as they read sentences which contained, in preview, correctly spelled words (e.g., cheese), pseudohomophones (e.g., cheeze), or spelling controls (e.g., cheene). The orthographic similarity of the target words available in preview was also manipulated to be similar (e.g., cheese/cheeze/cheene) or dissimilar (e.g., queen/kween/treen). The results indicate that orthographic similarity facilitated both adults' and children's pre-processing. Moreover, children parafoveally pre-processed words phonologically very early in processing. The children demonstrated a pseudohomophone advantage from preview that was broadly similar to the effect displayed by the adults, although the orthographic similarity of the pseudohomophone previews was more important for the children than the adults. Overall, these results provide strong evidence for phonological recoding during silent English sentence reading in 8–9-year-old children. |
Sara Milligan; Martín Antúnez; Horacio A. Barber; Elizabeth R. Schotter Are eye movements and EEG on the same page?: A coregistration study on parafoveal preview and lexical frequency Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, pp. 1–23, 2022. @article{Milligan2022, Readers extract visual and linguistic information not only from fixated words but also upcoming parafoveal words to introduce new input efficiently into the language processing pipeline. The lexical frequency of upcoming words and similarity with subsequent foveal information both influence the amount of time people spend once they fixate the word foveally. However, it is unclear from eye movements alone the extent to which parafoveal word processing, and the integration of that word with foveally obtained information, continues after saccade plans have been initiated. To investigate the underlying neural processes involved in word recognition after saccade planning, we coregistered electroencephalogram (EEG) and eye movements during a gaze-contingent display change paradigm. We orthogonally manipulated the frequency of the parafoveal and foveal words and measured fixation related potentials (FRPs) upon foveal fixation. Eye movements showed primarily an effect of preview frequency, suggesting that saccade planning is based on the familiarity of the parafoveal input. FRPs, on the other hand, demonstrated a disruption in downstream processing when parafoveal and foveal input differed, but only when the parafoveal word was high frequency. These findings demonstrate that lexical processing continues after the eyes have moved away from a word and that eye movements and FRPs provide distinct but complementary accounts about oculomotor behavior and neural processing that cannot be obtained from either method in isolation. Furthermore, these findings put constraints on models of reading by suggesting that lexical processes that occur before an eye movement program is initiated are qualitatively different from those that occur afterward. |
Sanako Mitsugi Polarity adverbs facilitate predictive processing in L2 Japanese Journal Article In: Second Language Research, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 869–892, 2022. @article{Mitsugi2022, This study examines whether second language (L2) learners predict upcoming language prior to the verb in Japanese. Taking the dependency involving negative polarity adverbs – zenzen ‘at all' and amari ‘(not) very' – as a test case, this study examined whether Japanese native speakers and L2 learners of Japanese, aided by these adverbs, generate predictions of the polarity of the sentence-final verb. The visual-world paradigm experiment revealed that both native-speaker and L2-learner groups looked progressively more at the target picture before the negated verb when the information from adverbs was available than when it was not. The pattern of results underscores the usefulness of adverbial polarity items as predictive cues and indicates that they expedite the processing of negation in Japanese. Learners successfully exploited this information to generate nativelike predictions on sentence meaning. |
Lyndall Murray; Signy Wegener; Hua-Chen Wang; Rauno Parrila; Anne Castles Children processing novel irregular and regular words during reading: An eye tracking study Journal Article In: Scientific Studies of Reading, vol. 26, no. 5, pp. 417–431, 2022. @article{Murray2022a, Children may link words in their oral vocabulary with novel printed word forms through a process termed mispronunciation correction, which enables them to adjust an imperfect phonological decoding. Additional evidence suggests that sentence context may play a role in helping children to make link between a word in oral vocabulary and its irregular written form. Four groups of children were orally trained on a set of novel words but received no training on a second set. Half the trained words were designated irregular spellings and half regular spellings. Children later read the words in contextually supportive or neutral sentences while their eye movements were monitored. Fixations on untrained words were longer than on trained regular words but were similar to trained irregular words. Fixations on regular words were shorter than on irregular words, and there were larger differences between irregular and regular words viewed in contextually supportive sentences. Subsequently, children were able to read irregular words more accurately when they had previously appeared in a supportive context. These results suggest that orally known irregular words undergo additional processing when first viewed in text, which is consistent with the online operation of a mispronunciation correction mechanism. |
Shingo Nahatame Causal and semantic relations in L2 text processing: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Reading in a Foreign Language, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 91–115, 2022. @article{Nahatame2022, This study is an extension of Nahatame's (2018) research that demonstrated the effects of causal and semantic relations between sentences on second language (L2) text processing. Employing eye tracking, this study aimed to examine whether these effects appear during more natural, uninterrupted reading processes and to identify the time course of the effects. In the experiment, Japanese learners of English read two-sentence texts that varied in their causal and semantic relatedness, as evaluated by crowdsourced human judgments and via a computational approach (latent semantic analysis), respectively. Two eye-movement measures were collected and analyzed: first-pass reading times for the second sentence and lookbacks from the second to the first sentence. The results indicated that causal relatedness had a robust impact on both reading times and lookbacks. However, semantic relatedness impacted only reading times, and its effects were modulated by causal relatedness. Theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological implications of this finding were discussed. |
Chie Nakamura; Manabu Arai; Yuki Hirose; Suzanne Flynn L2 learners do not ignore verb's subcategorization information in real-time syntactic processing Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12, pp. 1–13, 2022. @article{Nakamura2022, This study addressed the question of whether L2 learners are able to utilize verb's argument structure information in online structural analysis. Previous L2 research has shown that L2 learners have difficulty in using verb's intransitive information to guide online syntactic processing. This is true even though L2 learners have grammatical knowledge that is correct and similar to that of native speakers. In the present study, we contrasted three hypotheses, the initial inaccessibility account, the intransitivity overriding account, and the fuzzy subcategorization frame account, to investigate whether L2 learner's knowledge of intransitive verbs is in fact ignored in L2 online structural analysis. The initial inaccessibility account and the fuzzy subcategorization frame account predicted that L2 learners cannot access intransitivity information in building syntactic structures in any situation. The intransitivity overriding account predicted that intransitivity information is accessed in L2 parsing, but this process is overridden by the strong transitivity preference when a verb is followed by a noun phrase. Importantly, the intransitivity overriding account specifically predicted that L2 learners would be able to use intransitive information in online syntactic processing when a noun phrase does not appear immediately following a verb. We tested the three accounts in an eye-tracking reading experiment using filler-gap dependency structures. We manipulated verb's transitivity information and lexically based plausibility information and tested English native speakers as a control L1 group (N = 29) and Japanese-English L2 participants (N = 32). The results showed that L2 learners as well as native speakers processed sentences differently depending on the subcategorization information of the verb, and adopted transitive analysis only when the verb was optionally transitive, providing support for the intransitivity overriding. The results further demonstrated that L2 learners had strong expectations for the transitive structure, which is consistent with the view proposed by the hyper-active gap-filling hypothesis. In addition, the results showed that the semantic mismatch in the incorrect transitive analysis facilitated native speaker's processing but caused difficulty for L2 learners. Together, the current study provides evidence that L2 learners use intransitive information of the verbs to guide their structural analysis when there are no overriding constraints. |
Ádám Nárai; Zsuzsanna Nemecz; Zoltán Vidnyánszky; Béla Weiss Lateralization of orthographic processing in fixed-gaze and natural reading conditions Journal Article In: Cortex, vol. 157, pp. 99–116, 2022. @article{Narai2022, Lateralized processing of orthographic information is a hallmark of proficient reading. However, how this finding obtained for fixed-gaze processing of orthographic stimuli translates to ecologically valid reading conditions remained to be clarified. To address this shortcoming, here we assessed the lateralization of early orthographic processing in fixed-gaze and natural reading conditions using concurrent eye-tracking and EEG data recorded from young adults without reading difficulties. Sensor-space analyses confirmed the well-known left-lateralized negative-going deflection of fixed-gaze EEG activity throughout the period of early orthographic processing. At the same time, fixation-related EEG activity exhibited left-lateralized followed by right-lateralized processing of text stimuli during natural reading. A strong positive relationship was found between the early leftward lateralization in fixed-gaze and natural reading conditions. Using source-space analyses, early left-lateralized brain activity was obtained in lateraloccipital and posterior ventral occipito-temporal cortices reflecting letter-level processing in both conditions. In addition, in the same time interval, left-lateralized source activity was found also in premotor and parietal brain regions during natural reading. While brain activity remained left-lateralized in later stages representing word-level processing in posterior and middle ventral temporal regions in the fixed-gaze condition, fixation-related source activity became stronger in the right hemisphere in medial and more anterior ventral temporal brain regions indicating higher-level processing of orthographic information. Although our results show a strong positive relationship between the lateralization of letter-level processing in the two reading modes and suggest lateralized brain activity as a general marker for processing of orthographic information, they also clearly indicate the need for reading research in ecologically valid conditions to identify the neural basis of visuospatial attentional, oculomotor and higher-level processes specific to natural reading. |
Lama Nassif; Elizabeth Huntley; Ayman Mohamed Attention to verbal morphology in L2 Arabic reading: An eye-movement study Journal Article In: Foreign Language Annals, vol. 55, pp. 769–792, 2022. @article{Nassif2022, Attention is believed to help facilitate learning. Godfroid and Uggen found that attention to irregular verb morphology motivated the learning of novel second language (L2) German forms. The current study explored the generalizability of these findings to geminate and sound verbs in Arabic, a typologically different language with a novel writing system. Eleven fourth-semester learners of Arabic participated in the experiment. Participants completed a language learning background survey, took a fill-in-the blank pretest, read 20 sentence pairs while an Eyelink 1000 recorded their eye movements, and answered true/false comprehension questions that appeared on-screen following each sentence. A posttest, identical to the pretest, and a prior vocabulary knowledge scale task were then conducted. Learners' reflections were recorded in a subsequent recall task and a follow-up semistructured interview. Descriptive analyses of the eye-tracking metrics reveal generally equivalent reading times between verb types, although participants made more direct visual comparisons between geminate- than between sound-verb conjugations. Participants did not report awareness of geminate verbs, but noticed other aspects of input, and, on average, improved their written productive knowledge by 2% after only one exposure. Pedagogical implications are discussed in terms of input enhancement in a communicative L2 classroom. |
Keiyu Niikuni; Ming Wang; Michiru Makuuchi; Masatoshi Koizumi; Sachiko Kiyama Pupil dilation reflects emotional arousal via poetic language Journal Article In: Perceptual and Motor Skills, pp. 1–18, 2022. @article{Niikuni2022, We investigated pupillary responses to the world's shortest fixed verses, Japanese haiku as aesthetic poetry (AP) and senryu as comic poetry (CP), in comparison with non-poetry control stimuli (NP) comprised of slogans that had the same rhythm patterns. Native Japanese speakers without literary training listened to these stimuli while we recorded their pupil diameters. We found that participants' pupils were significantly dilated for CP compared to NP in an early time window. While AP also evoked larger dilations than NP, the latency for AP-related pupil dilation was relatively long. Thus, lay people experience quick and intense arousal in response to funny and humorous words, while aesthetic properties of words may also elicit intense but slower changes in listeners' arousal levels, presumably because they evoke more implicit and subtle emotional effects. This study is the first to provide evidence that poetic language elicits human pupillary dilation. A better understanding of the cognitive and neural substrates for the sensitive awareness of pleasures expressed via poetic language will provide insights for improving mental and physical health. Hence, pupillometry can act as a useful convenient measurement to delineate the sympathetic activation of emotional contexts via language. |
Kelly Nisbet; Raymond Bertram; Charlotte Erlinghagen; Aleks Pieczykolan; Victor Kuperman Quantifying the difference in reading fluency between L1 and L2 readers of English Journal Article In: Studies in Second Language Acquisition, vol. 44, pp. 407–434, 2022. @article{Nisbet2022, This study is a comparative examination of reading behavior of first-language (L1) Canadian and second-language (L2) Finnish and German readers of English. We measured eye-movement patterns during reading the same set of English sentences and administered tests of English vocabulary, spelling, and exposure to print. The core of our study is a novel method of statistical prediction used to generate hypothetical Finnish and German participants with maximum observed L1 scores in all component skills. We found that with L1-like component skills, hypothetical German readers can show the same reading speed as the L1 group. We hypothesize this advantage comes from the small linguistic distance to English. Conversely, hypothetical Finnish readers remain disadvantaged even with maximum component skills, likely due to a larger linguistic distance. We discuss theoretical and applied implications of our method for L2 acquisition research. |