EyeLink Reading and Language Eye-Tracking Publications
All EyeLink reading and language research publications up until 2023 (with some early 2024s) are listed below by year. You can search the publications using keywords such as Visual World, Comprehension, Speech Production, etc. You can also search for individual author names. If we missed any EyeLink reading or language articles, please email us!
2023 |
Jing Shen; Elizabeth Heller Murray; Erin R. Kulick The effect of breathy vocal quality on speech intelligibility and listening effort in background noise Journal Article In: Trends in Hearing, vol. 27, pp. 1–14, 2023. @article{Shen2023, Speech perception is challenging under adverse conditions. However, there is limited evidence regarding how multiple adverse conditions affect speech perception. The present study investigated two conditions that are frequently encountered in real-life communication: background noise and breathy vocal quality. The study first examined the effects of background noise and breathiness on speech perception as measured by intelligibility. Secondly, the study tested the hypothesis that both noise and breathiness affect listening effort, as indicated by linear and nonlinear changes in pupil dilation. Low-context sentences were resynthesized to create three levels of breathiness (original, mild-moderate, and severe). The sentences were presented in a fluctuating nonspeech noise with two signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of −5 dB (favorable) and −9 dB (adverse) SNR. Speech intelligibility and pupil dilation data were collected from young listeners with normal hearing thresholds. The results demonstrated that a breathy vocal quality presented in noise negatively affected speech intelligibility, with the degree of breathiness playing a critical role. Listening effort, as measured by the magnitude of pupil dilation, showed significant effects with both severe and mild-moderate breathy voices that were independent of noise level. The findings contributed to the literature by demonstrating the impact of vocal quality on the perception of speech in noise. They also highlighted the complex dynamics between overall task demand and processing resources in understanding the combined impact of multiple adverse conditions. |
Meng Shen; Zibei Niu; Lei Gao; Tianzhi Li; Danhui Wang; Shan Li; Man Zeng; Xuejun Bai; Xiaolei Gao Examining the extraction of parafoveal semantic information in Tibetan Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 1–20, 2023. @article{Shen2023a, This study conducted two experiments to investigate the extraction of semantic preview information from the parafovea in Tibetan reading. In Experiment 1, a single-factor (preview type: identical vs. semantically related vs. unrelated) within-subject experimental design was used to investigate whether there is a parafoveal semantic preview effect (SPE) in Tibetan reading. Experiment 2 used a 2 (contextual constraint: high vs. low) × 3 (preview type: identical vs. semantically related vs. unrelated) within-subject experimental design to investigate the influence of contextual constraint on the parafoveal semantic preview effect in Tibetan reading. Supporting the E-Z reader model, the experimental results showed that in Tibetan reading, readers could not obtain semantic preview information from the parafovea, and contextual constraint did not influence this process. However, comparing high- and low-constrained contexts, the latter might be more conducive to extracting semantic preview information from the parafovea. |
Olympia Simantiraki; Anita E. Wagner; Martin Cooke The impact of speech type on listening effort and intelligibility for native and non-native listeners Journal Article In: Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 17, pp. 1–16, 2023. @article{Simantiraki2023, Listeners are routinely exposed to many different types of speech, including artificially-enhanced and synthetic speech, styles which deviate to a greater or lesser extent from naturally-spoken exemplars. While the impact of differing speech types on intelligibility is well-studied, it is less clear how such types affect cognitive processing demands, and in particular whether those speech forms with the greatest intelligibility in noise have a commensurately lower listening effort. The current study measured intelligibility, self-reported listening effort, and a pupillometry-based measure of cognitive load for four distinct types of speech: (i) plain i.e. natural unmodified speech; (ii) Lombard speech, a naturally-enhanced form which occurs when speaking in the presence of noise; (iii) artificially-enhanced speech which involves spectral shaping and dynamic range compression; and (iv) speech synthesized from text. In the first experiment a cohort of 26 native listeners responded to the four speech types in three levels of speech-shaped noise. In a second experiment, 31 non-native listeners underwent the same procedure at more favorable signal-to-noise ratios, chosen since second language listening in noise has a more detrimental effect on intelligibility than listening in a first language. For both native and non-native listeners, artificially-enhanced speech was the most intelligible and led to the lowest subjective effort ratings, while the reverse was true for synthetic speech. However, pupil data suggested that Lombard speech elicited the lowest processing demands overall. These outcomes indicate that the relationship between intelligibility and cognitive processing demands is not a simple inverse, but is mediated by speech type. The findings of the current study motivate the search for speech modification algorithms that are optimized for both intelligibility and listening effort. |
Tiana V. Simovic; Craig G. Chambers How do antecedent semantics influence pronoun interpretation? Evidence from eye movements Journal Article In: Cognitive Science, vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 1–15, 2023. @article{Simovic2023, Pronoun interpretation is often described as relying on a comprehender's mental model of discourse. For example, in some psycholinguistic accounts, interpreting pronouns involves a process of retrieval, whereby a pronoun is resolved by accessing information from its linguistic antecedent. However, linguistic antecedents are neither necessary nor sufficient for interpreting a pronoun, and even when an antecedent has been introduced in earlier discourse, there is little evidence for the retrieval of linguistic form. The current study extends our understanding of pronoun interpretation by examining whether the semantics of antecedent expressions are retrieved from representations of past discourse. Participants were instructed to move displayed objects in a Visual World eye-tracking task. In some cases, the semantics of the antecedent were no longer viable after an instruction was completed (e.g., “Move the house on the left to area 12,” where the result was that a different house is now the leftmost one). In this case, retrieving antecedent semantics at the point of hearing a subsequent pronoun (“Now, move it…”) should entail a processing penalty. Instead, the results showed that antecedent semantics have no direct effect on interpretation, raising additional questions about the role that retrieval might play in pronoun interpretation. |
Joshua Snell; Jeremy Yeaton; Jonathan Mirault; Jonathan Grainger Parallel word reading revealed by fixation-related brain potentials Journal Article In: Cortex, vol. 162, pp. 1–11, 2023. @article{Snell2023, During reading, the brain is confronted with many relevant objects at once. But does lexical processing occur for multiple words simultaneously? Cognitive science has yet to answer this prominent question. Recently it has been argued that the issue warrants supplementing the field's traditional toolbox (response times, eye-tracking) with neuroscientific techniques (EEG, fMRI). Indeed, according to the OB1-reader model, upcoming words need not impact oculomotor behavior per se, but parallel processing of these words must nonetheless be reflected in neural activity. Here we combined eye-tracking with EEG, time-locking the neural window of interest to the fixation on target words in sentence reading. During these fixations, we manipulated the identity of the subsequent word so that it posed either a syntactically legal or illegal continuation of the sentence. In line with previous research, oculomotor measures were unaffected. Yet, syntax impacted brain potentials as early as 100 ms after the target fixation onset. Given the EEG literature on syntax processing, the presently observed timings suggest parallel word reading. We reckon that parallel word processing typifies reading, and that OB1-reader offers a good platform for theorizing about the reading brain. |
Katrine Falcon Soby; Evelyn Arko Milburn; Line Burholt Kristensen; Valentin Vulchanov; Mila Vulchanova In the native speaker's eye: Online processing of anomalous learner syntax Journal Article In: Applied Psycholinguistics, vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 1–28, 2023. @article{Soby2023, How do native speakers process texts with anomalous learner syntax? Second-language learners of Norwegian, and other verb-second (V2) languages, frequently place the verb in third position (e.g.,*Adverbial-Subject-Verb), although it is mandatory for the verb in these languages to appear in second position (Adverbial-Verb-Subject). In an eye-Tracking study, native Norwegian speakers read sentences with either grammatical V2 or ungrammatical verb-Third (V3) word order. Unlike previous eye-Tracking studies of ungrammaticality, which have primarily addressed morphosyntactic anomalies, we exclusively manipulate word order with no morphological or semantic changes. We found that native speakers reacted immediately to ungrammatical V3 word order, indicated by increased fixation durations and more regressions out on the subject, and subsequently on the verb. Participants also recovered quickly, already on the following word. The effects of grammaticality were unaffected by the length of the initial adverbial. The study contributes to future models of sentence processing which should be able to accommodate various types of noisy input, that is, non-standard variation. Together with new studies of processing of other L2 anomalies in Norwegian, the current findings can help language instructors and students prioritize which aspects of grammar to focus on. |
Linda Sommerfeld; Maria Staudte; Nivedita Mani; Jutta Kray Even young children make multiple predictions in the complex visual world Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, vol. 235, pp. 1–29, 2023. @article{Sommerfeld2023, Children can anticipate upcoming input in sentences with semantically constraining verbs. In the visual world, the sentence context is used to anticipatorily fixate the only object matching potential sentence continuations. Adults can process even multiple visual objects in parallel when predicting language. This study examined whether young children can also maintain multiple prediction options in parallel during language processing. In addition, we aimed at replicating the finding that children's receptive vocabulary size modulates their prediction. German children (5–6 years |
Sybren Spit; Andreea Geambașu; Daan Renswoude; Elma Blom; Paula Fikkert; Sabine Hunnius; Caroline Junge; Josje Verhagen; Ingmar Visser; Frank Wijnen; Clara C. Levelt Robustness of the cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants: A close multi-center replication of Kovács and Mehler (2009) Journal Article In: Developmental Science, vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 1–16, 2023. @article{Spit2023, We present an exact replication of Experiment 2 from Kovács and Mehler's 2009 study, which showed that 7-month-old infants who are raised bilingually exhibit a cognitive advantage. In the experiment, a sound cue, following an AAB or ABB pattern, predicted the appearance of a visual stimulus on the screen. The stimulus appeared on one side of the screen for nine trials and then switched to the other side. In the original experiment, both mono- and bilingual infants anticipated where the visual stimulus would appear during pre-switch trials. However, during post-switch trials, only bilingual children anticipated that the stimulus would appear on the other side of the screen. The authors took this as evidence of a cognitive advantage. Using the exact same materials in combination with novel analysis techniques (Bayesian analyses, mixed effects modeling and cluster based permutation analyses), we assessed the robustness of these findings in four babylabs (N = 98). Our results did not replicate the original findings: although anticipatory looks increased slightly during post-switch trials for both groups, bilingual infants were not better switchers than monolingual infants. After the original experiment, we presented additional trials to examine whether infants associated sound patterns with cued locations, for which we did not find any evidence either. The results highlight the importance of multicenter replications and more fine-grained statistical analyses to better understand child development. Highlights: We carried out an exact replication across four baby labs of the high-impact study by Kovács and Mehler (2009). We did not replicate the findings of the original study, calling into question the robustness of the claim that bilingual infants have enhanced cognitive abilities. After the original experiment, we presented additional trials to examine whether infants correctly associated sound patterns with cued locations, for which we did not find any evidence. The use of novel analysis techniques (Bayesian analyses, mixed effects modeling and cluster based permutation analyses) allowed us to draw better-informed conclusions. |
Vladislava Staroverova; Anastasiya Lopukhina; Nina Zdorova; Nina Ladinskaya; Olga Vedenina; Sofya Goldina; Anastasiia Kaprielova; Ksenia Bartseva; Olga Dragoy Phonological and orthographic parafoveal processing during silent reading in Russian children and adults Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, vol. 226, pp. 1–11, 2023. @article{Staroverova2023, Studies on German and English have shown that children and adults can rely on phonological and orthographic information from the parafovea during reading, but this reliance differs between ages and languages. In the current study, we investigated the development of phonological and orthographic parafoveal processing during silent reading in Russian-speaking 8-year-old children, 10-year-old children, and adults using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm. The participants read sentences with embedded nouns that were presented in original, pseudohomophone, control for pseudohomophone, transposed-letter, and control for transposed-letter conditions in the parafoveal area to assess phonological and orthographic preview benefit effects. The results revealed that all groups of participants relied only on orthographic but not phonological parafoveal information. These findings indicate that 8-year-old children already preprocess parafoveal information similarly to adults. |
Adrian Staub The function/content word distinction and eye movements in reading Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, pp. 1–18, 2023. @article{Staub2023, A substantial quantity of research has explored whether readers' eye movements are sensitive to the distinc- tion between function and content words. No clear answer has emerged, in part due to the difficulty of accounting for differences in length, frequency, and predictability between the words in the two classes. Based on evidence that readers differentially overlook function word errors, we hypothesized that function words may be more frequently skipped or may receive shorter fixations. We present two very large-scale eyetracking experiments using selected sentences from a corpus of natural text, with each sentence containing a target function or content word. The target words in the two classes were carefully matched on length, frequency, and predictability, with the latter variable operationalized in terms of next-word probability obtained from the large language model GPT-2. While the experiments replicated a range of expected effects, word class did not have any clear influence on target word skipping probability, and there was some evidence for a content word advantage in fixation duration measures. These results indicate that readers' tendency to overlook function word errors is not due to reduced time spent encoding these words. The results also broadly support the implicit assumption in prominent models ofeye movement control in reading that a word's syntactic category does not play an important role in decisions about when and where to move the eyes. |
Jia Jin; Chenchen Lin; Fenghua Wang; Ting Xu; Wuke Zhang A study of cognitive effort involved in the framing effect of summary descriptions of online product reviews for search vs. experience products Journal Article In: Electronic Commerce Research, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 785–806, 2023. @article{Jin2023b, Few studies have focused on summary descriptions of online product reviews regarding purchase decisions, and there is a gap between individual product reviews and summary descriptions of online product reviews. The current study applied eye-tracking to explore how the product type moderates the framing effect of summary descriptions of product reviews on e-consumers' purchase decisions. The results showed that product type moderated the framing effect of summary reviews on e-consumers' purchase intention. Specifically, for search products, compared with a negative frame, a positive frame increased e-consumers' attention to function attributes and led to higher purchase intention. However, with experience products, e-consumers' attention and purchase intention did not vary across framing messages. Referring to information asymmetry theory and signal theory, we posit that the cognitive effort involved in summary review information is high for search products and low for experience products since summary reviews are a more useful signal in reducing information asymmetry for search products than for experience products. The theoretical and practical implications are also discussed. |
Jia Jin; Ailian Wang; Cuicui Wang; Qingguo Ma How do consumers perceive and process online overall vs. individual text-based reviews? Behavioral and eye-tracking evidence Journal Article In: Information and Management, vol. 60, no. 5, pp. 1–13, 2023. @article{Jin2023a, Building on the Heuristic-Systematic model, we use a survey and two eye-tracking experiments to investigate consumers' perceived usefulness of overall and individual text-based reviews (OTRs vs. ITRs) for search vs. experience products, and the information processing features. Results indicate that OTRs show higher usefulness than ITRs, regardless of product type. ITRs are perceived to be more useful for experience products than for search products. Furthermore, two eye-tracking studies confirm these results from a physiological standpoint and reveal the attentional allocation during information processing. OTRs affect subjects' processing of ITRs information differently in purchase search and experience products. |
Miranda Johnson; John Palmer; Cathleen M. Moore; Geoffrey M. Boynton Evidence from partially valid cueing that words are processed serially Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 1–10, 2023. @article{Johnson2023c, There has been a long-standing debate about whether lexical and semantic processing of words is serial or parallel. We addressed this debate using partially valid cueing, where one of two words is cued. The cue was valid on 80% and invalid on the other 20% of the trials. The task was semantic categorization, and performance was measured by accuracy. The new feature was to use a postmask to limit attentional switching. We found a large effect of cueing while performance for the uncued word was at chance. This chance performance was consistent with serial processing and not with typical parallel processing. This result adds to the evidence from other recent studies that the lexical and semantic processing of words is serial. |
Rebecca L. Johnson; Cara Koch; Megan Wootten Keep clam and carry on: Misperceptions of transposed-letter neighbours Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, pp. 1–12, 2023. @article{Johnson2023a, Previous research has provided evidence that readers experience processing difficulty when reading words that have a transposed-letter (TL) neighbour (e.g., TRAIL has the TL neighbour TRIAL). Here, we provide direct evidence that this interference is driven by explicit misidentifications of the word for its TL neighbour. Experiment 1 utilised an eye-tracking task in which participants read sentences aloud and reading errors were coded. Sentences had a target word that either (1) had a TL neighbour or (2) was a matched control word with no TL neighbour. In Experiment 2, participants identified words within sentences that they consciously misread and reported the interloper. In both experiments, readers explicitly misidentified many more of the TL words than control words, and most often for their TL neighbour. These findings support the idea that TL interference effects are due primarily to initial misperceptions and post-lexical checking rather than co-activation at the lexical level. |
Rebecca L. Johnson; Megan Wootten; Abigail I. Spear; Ashley Smolensky The relationship between personality traits and the processing of emotion words: Evidence from eye-movements in sentence reading Journal Article In: Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, vol. 52, no. 5, pp. 1497–1523, 2023. @article{Johnson2023b, Previous research shows that processing times on emotion words (both negative and positive) are faster than on non-emotional neutral words. In the current study, we explored how personality traits (the Big Five and the trait emotional intelligence factors) may further influence the processing of emotion versus non-emotion words by conducting two experiments where participants silently read sentences while their eye movements were recorded. The results replicated the facilitative emotion effect and showed that those with higher agreeableness scores had stronger emotion effects on positive words and those with higher extraversion scores, higher openness scores, higher agreeableness scores, lower sociability scores, and higher emotionality scores had stronger emotion effects on negative words. Furthermore, some personality traits also led to different ways that readers approach text, for example, through more risky reading strategies. |
Olessia Jouravlev; Mark McPhedran; Vegas Hodgins; Debra Jared Cross-language semantic parafoveal preview benefits in bilinguals Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, vol. 49, no. 10, pp. 1683–1697, 2023. @article{Jouravlev2023, The aim of this project was to identify factors contributing to cross-language semantic preview benefits. In Experiment 1, Russian–English bilinguals read English sentences with Russian words presented as parafoveal previews. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm was used to present sentences. Critical previews were cognate translations of the target word (CTAPT—START), noncognate translations (CPOK— TERM), or interlingual homograph translations (MOPE—SEA).A semantic preview benefit (i.e., shorter fixation durations for related than unrelated previews) was observed for cognate and interlingual homograph translations, but not for noncognate translations. In Experiment 2, English–French bilinguals read English sentences with French words used as parafoveal previews. Critical previews were interlingual homograph translations of the target word (PAIN—BREAD) or interlingual homograph translations with a diacritic added (PÁIN—BREAD). A robust semantic preview benefit was found only for interlingual homographs without diacritics, although both preview types produced a semantic preview benefit in the total fixation duration. Our findings suggest that semantically related previews need to have substantial orthographic overlap with words in the target language to produce cross-language semantic preview benefits in early eye fixation measures. In terms of the Bilingual Interactive Activation+ model, the preview word may need to activate the language node for the target language before its meaning is integrated with that of the target word. |
Marju Kaps Information structural effects in processing contrastive ellipsis: Eye-tracking evidence from a flexible word order language Journal Article In: Journal of Linguistics, vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 427–457, 2023. @article{Kaps2023, Previous experimental work on the processing of clausal ellipsis with contrastive remnants shows a Locality preference - DP remnants are preferentially paired with the most recently encountered DP correlate in the antecedent clause, even in the presence of contrastive prosody or semantic bias favouring a non-local correlate. The Locality effect has been argued to arise from the language processor consulting (default) information-structural representations when pairing remnants and correlates, yet direct evidence for the information structure hypothesis for Locality has been difficult to obtain. Estonian is a flexible word order language that optionally marks Contrastive Topics (CTs) syntactically, while allowing for the linear distance between a CT subject correlate and remnant to be held constant, in order to rule out a Recency explanation for the Locality effect. In an eye-tracking during reading experiment with case-disambiguated subject and object remnants in Estonian, we see asymmetries in the Locality preference (i.e. object advantage) following canonical Verb-second antecedent clauses and subject CT-marking Verb-third clauses. This provides novel evidence for fine-grained information-structural representations guiding the processing of contrastive ellipsis. |
Natalia Kartushina; Julien Mayor Coping with dialects from birth: Role of variability on infants' early language development. Insights from Norwegian dialects Journal Article In: Developmental Science, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 1–19, 2023. @article{Kartushina2023, Previous research suggests that exposure to accent variability can affect toddlers' familiar word recognition and word comprehension. The current preregistered study addressed the gap in knowledge on early language development in infants exposed to two dialects from birth and assessed the role of dialect similarity in infants' word recognition and comprehension. A 12-month-old Norwegian-learning infants, exposed to native Norwegian parents speaking the same or two Norwegian dialects, took part in two eye-tracking tasks, assessing familiar word form recognition and word comprehension. Their parents' speech was assessed for similarity by native Norwegian speakers. First, in contrast to previous research, our results revealed no listening preference for words over nonwords in both monodialectal and bidialectal infants, suggesting potential language-specific differences in the onset of word recognition. Second, the results showed evidence for word comprehension in monodialectal infants, but not in bidialectal infants, suggesting that exposure to dialectal variability impacts early word acquisition. Third, perceptual similarity between parental dialects tendentially facilitated bidialectal infants' word recognition and comprehension. Forth, the results revealed a strong correlation between the raters and parents' assessment of similarity between dialects, indicating that parental estimations can be reliably used to assess infants' speech variability at home. Finally, our results revealed a strong relationship between word recognition and comprehension in monodialectal infants and the absence of such a relationship in bidialectal infants, suggesting that either these two skills do not necessarily align in infants exposed to more variable input, or that the alignment might occur at a later stage. |
I. M. Dushyanthi Karunathilake; Jason L. Dunlap; Janani Perera; Alessandro Presacco; Lien Decruy; Samira Anderson; Stefanie E. Kuchinsky; Jonathan Z. Simon Effects of aging on cortical representations of continuous speech Journal Article In: Journal of Neurophysiology, vol. 129, no. 6, pp. 1359–1377, 2023. @article{Karunathilake2023, Understanding speech in a noisy environment is crucial in day-to-day interactions and yet becomes more challenging with age, even for healthy aging. Age-related changes in the neural mechanisms that enable speech-in-noise listening have been investigated previously; however, the extent to which age affects the timing and fidelity of encoding of target and interfering speech streams is not well understood. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we investigated how continuous speech is represented in auditory cortex in the presence of interfering speech in younger and older adults. Cortical representations were obtained from neural responses that time-locked to the speech envelopes with speech envelope reconstruction and temporal response functions (TRFs). TRFs showed three prominent peaks corresponding to auditory cortical processing stages: early (∼50 ms), middle (∼100 ms), and late (∼200 ms). Older adults showed exaggerated speech envelope representations compared with younger adults. Temporal analysis revealed both that the age-related exaggeration starts as early as ∼50 ms and that older adults needed a substantially longer integration time window to achieve their better reconstruction of the speech envelope. As expected, with increased speech masking envelope reconstruction for the attended talker decreased and all three TRF peaks were delayed, with aging contributing additionally to the reduction. Interestingly, for older adults the late peak was delayed, suggesting that this late peak may receive contributions from multiple sources. Together these results suggest that there are several mechanisms at play compensating for age-related temporal processing deficits at several stages but which are not able to fully reestablish unimpaired speech perception. |
Laura Keller; Malte C. Viebahn; Alexis Hervais-Adelman; Kilian G. Seeber Unpacking the multilingualism continuum: An investigation of language variety co-activation in simultaneous interpreters Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 18, pp. 1–27, 2023. @article{Keller2023, This study examines the phonological co-activation of a task-irrelevant language variety in mono- and bivarietal speakers of German with and without simultaneous interpreting (SI) experience during German comprehension and production. Assuming that language varieties in bivarietal speakers are co-activated analogously to the co-activation observed in bilinguals, the hypothesis was tested in the Visual World paradigm. Bivarietalism and SI experience were expected to affect co-activation, as bivarietalism requires communication-context based language-variety selection, while SI hinges on concurrent comprehension and production in two languages; task type was not expected to affect co-activation as previous evidence suggests the phenomenon occurs during comprehension and production. Sixty-four native speakers of German participated in an eye-tracking study and completed a comprehension and a production task. Half of the participants were trained interpreters and half of each sub-group were also speakers of Swiss German (i.e., bivarietal speakers). For comprehension, a growth-curve analysis of fixation proportions on phonological competitors revealed cross-variety co-activation, corroborating the hypothesis that co-activation in bivar-ietals' minds bears similar traits to language co-activation in multilingual minds. Conversely, co-activation differences were not attributable to SI experience, but rather to differences in language-variety use. Contrary to expectations, no evidence for phonological competition was found for either same- nor cross-variety competitors in either production task (interpreting- and word-naming variety). While phonological co-activation during production cannot be excluded based on our data, exploring the effects of additional demands involved in a production task hinging on a language-transfer component (oral translation from English to Standard German) merit further exploration in the light of a more nuanced understanding of the complexity of the SI task. |
Clare Kirtley; Christopher Murray; Phillip B. Vaughan; Benjamin W. Tatler Navigating the narrative: An eye-tracking study of readers' strategies when reading comic page layouts Journal Article In: Applied Cognitive Psychology, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 52–70, 2023. @article{Kirtley2023, In multimedia stimuli (e.g., comics), the reader must follow a narrative in which text and image both contribute information, and artists may use more irregular layouts which must still be followed correctly. While previous work has found that the external structure (outlines) of panels is a major contributor to navigation decisions in comics, other studies have shown that panel content can affect reading order. The present studies use eye-tracking to investigate these contributions further. In Experiment 1, the reading behaviors on six layout variations were compared. The influence of the external structure was replicated, but an effect of text location was also found for one layout type. Experiment 2 focused on variations of this particular layout, manipulating the location of text within critical panels. Panel content was a consistent effect for all variations. While most navigation decisions are made using the external structure, content becomes key when resolving ambiguous layouts. |
Kelsey E. Klein; Elizabeth A. Walker; Bob McMurray In: Ear & Hearing, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 338–357, 2023. @article{Klein2023a, Objective: The objective of this study was to characterize the dynamics of real-time lexical access, including lexical competition among phonologically similar words, and spreading semantic activation in school-age children with hearing aids (HAs) and children with cochlear implants (CIs). We hypothesized that developing spoken language via degraded auditory input would lead children with HAs or CIs to adapt their approach to spoken word recognition, especially by slowing down lexical access. Design: Participants were children ages 9- to 12-years old with normal hearing (NH), HAs, or CIs. Participants completed a Visual World Paradigm task in which they heard a spoken word and selected the matching picture from four options. Competitor items were either phonologically similar, semantically similar, or unrelated to the target word. As the target word unfolded, children's fixations to the target word, cohort competitor, rhyme competitor, semantically related item, and unrelated item were recorded as indices of ongoing lexical access and spreading semantic activation. Results: Children with HAs and children with CIs showed slower fixations to the target, reduced fixations to the cohort competitor, and increased fixations to the rhyme competitor, relative to children with NH. This wait-and-see profile was more pronounced in the children with CIs than the children with HAs. Children with HAs and children with CIs also showed delayed fixations to the semantically related item, although this delay was attributable to their delay in activating words in general, not to a distinct semantic source. Conclusions: Children with HAs and children with CIs showed qualitatively similar patterns of real-time spoken word recognition. Findings suggest that developing spoken language via degraded auditory input causes long-term cognitive adaptations to how listeners recognize spoken words, regardless of the type of hearing device used. Delayed lexical access directly led to delays in spreading semantic activation in children with HAs and CIs. This delay in semantic processing may impact these children's ability to understand connected speech in everyday life. |
Marina Klimovich; Simon P. Tiffin-Richards; Tobias Richter In: Journal of Research in Reading, vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 123–142, 2023. @article{Klimovich2023, Background: Commercial speed-reading training programs are typically marketed with the promise to dramatically increase reading speed without impairing comprehension. From the perspective of reading psychology, it seems quite unlikely that speed-reading training can indeed have such effects. However, research on the effectiveness of modern speed-reading training programs on reading performance in typical readers is sparse. The present study had two goals. First, we sought to extend prior research on speed-reading by assessing the effects of a speed-reading application on reading performance in a pre-training and post-training design with a control group. Second, we aimed to identify the mechanism underlying speed-reading training programs. Methods: We assessed reading speed, comprehension and eye movements of 30 German-speaking undergraduates (Mage = 22.77 years |
Eva Marie Koch; Bram Bulté; Alex Housen; Aline Godfroid The predictive processing of number information in subregular verb morphology in a first and second language Journal Article In: Applied Psycholinguistics, vol. 44, no. 5, pp. 750–783, 2023. @article{Koch2023, We investigated the predictive processing of grammatical number information through stem-vowel alternations in German strong verbs by adult first language (L1) speakers and Dutch-speaking advanced second language (L2) learners of German, and the influence of working memory and awareness (i.e., whether participants consciously registered the predictive cue) thereon. While changed stem vowels indicate a singular referent (e.g., /ϵ/ in fällt3SG, falls), unchanged vowels indicate plural (e.g., /a/ in fallt2PL, fall). This target structure presents a challenge for L2 learners of German due to its subregularity and low salience. With their eye movements being tracked, participants matched German auditory sentences (VSO order) with one of two pictures, displaying identical action scenes but varying in agent number. The number cue provided by the strong verbs allowed participants to predict whether the upcoming subject would be singular or plural. The analyses revealed significant prediction, measured as predictive eye movements toward the target picture and faster button-press responses. Prediction in the L2 group was weaker than in the L1 group and present in the eye movement data only. Higher working memory scores were linked to faster predictive presses. Approximately half of the participants had become aware of the predictive cue, and being aware facilitated prediction to a limited extent. |
Deran Kong; Yu-Yin Hsu Processing covert dependency: An eye-tracking study of scope interpretations of embedded Wh-questions in Mandarin Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 18, pp. 1–15, 2023. @article{Kong2023, Non-local dependency in Mandarin wh-questions has been extensively researched in theoretical linguistics, but it remains an under-studied topic in the field of language processing. Unlike languages that require wh-movement to form wh-questions, Mandarin is a wh-in-situ language, and hence is generally assumed to require a covert dependency between a whphrase and its scope-bearing position. Mandarin therefore provides an ideal linguistic environment in which to study not only cognitive-processing mechanisms, but also how different types of non-local dependency, especially covert dependency, can be handled by readers. This paper investigates the processing of such covert non-local dependency in multiple embedded clauses, that is, multiple complementizer phrases (CPs). In wh-in-situ sentences with multiple CPs, the wh-phrases' scope varies according to the types of verbs and their embedded clauses. Based on the subcategorization of clausal verbs, we designed four experimental conditions: double-embedded low scope, double-embedded high scope, double-embedded ambiguous scope, and long distance in pivotal construction. According to memory-based and distance-based language processing theories, the low-scope condition should be easier to process than the high-scope one, because the former has a shorter linear distance than the latter when forming dependencies; and pivotal construction should be easier to process than high-scope embedded clauses, because the former has a shorter structural distance. In cases where both low- and high-scope interpretations are possible, we aim to determine whether readers exhaust every potential interpretation during comprehension, or adopt a ‘good-enough' approach to obtaining an interpretation via an easier and less costly process. To this end, we will adopt the eye-tracking technique that allows us to obtain fine-grained reading-time data, which can be used to compare processing across conditions. The results will contribute to understanding human readers' mechanisms for processing covert dependency and resolving scope ambiguity in wh-in-situ languages. |
Anastasiia Konovalova Pun processing in advertising posters: Evidence from eye tracking Journal Article In: Journal of Eye Movement Research, pp. 1–17, 2023. @article{Konovalova2023, This study examines the process of reading polycode advertising posters, focusing in particular on the effect of a pun in the headline. The pun, or a sequence of lexical items that can be perceived as ambiguous, is contained in the headline and different meanings of this sequence are supported by the picture and text. The results of the preliminary experiment showed that advertisements with puns are rated as more attractive, original, effective and positive compared to advertisements without puns. We hypothesized that puns in the headlines increase cognitive effort in processing posters, leading to higher evaluations. The main experiment tested this and examined differences in eye movement when reading posters with and without puns. Fifty-five Russian participants viewed advertisements while their eye movements were recorded. Our results showed no fundamental differences in the general pattern of viewing advertisement posters with and without puns. We found that readers start to perceive polycode advertisements from the text and spend more time reading the text than looking at an image. These findings shed light on how attention is distributed between verbal and non-verbal components of polycode texts, and which type of poster is more effective for information retrieval at different processing levels. |
Arnout Koornneef On the readability of texts presented in sentence-by-sentence segments to beginner readers: Evidence from self-paced reading and eye tracking Journal Article In: Reading and Writing, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 69–87, 2023. @article{Koornneef2023, Many digital reading applications have built-in features to control the presentation flow of texts by segmenting those texts into smaller linguistic units. Whether and how these segmentation techniques affect the readability of texts is largely unknown. With this background, the current study examined a recent proposal that a sentence-by-sentence presentation mode of texts improves reading comprehension of beginning readers because this presentation mode encourages them to engage in more effortful sentence wrap-up processing. In a series of self-paced reading and eye-tracking experiments with primary school pupils as participants (6–9 years old; n = 134), reading speed and text comprehension were assessed in a full-page control condition—i.e., texts were presented in their entirety—and in an experimental condition in which texts were presented in sentence-by-sentence segments. The results showed that text comprehension scores were higher for segmented texts than for full-page texts. Furthermore, in the final word-regions of the sentences in the texts, the segmented layout induced longer reading times than the full-page layout did. However, mediation analyses revealed that these inflated reading times had no, or even a disruptive influence on text comprehension. This indicates that the observed comprehension advantage for segmented texts cannot be attributed to more effortful sentence wrap-up. A more general implication of these findings is that the segmentation features of reading applications should be used with caution (e.g., in educational or professional settings) because it is unclear how they affect the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms that underlie reading. |
Drew J. McLaughlin; Jackson S. Colvett; Julie M. Bugg; Kristin J. Van Engen Sequence effects and speech processing: Cognitive load for speaker-switching within and across accents Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, pp. 1–11, 2023. @article{McLaughlin2023, Prior work in speech processing indicates that listening tasks with multiple speakers (as opposed to a single speaker) result in slower and less accurate processing. Notably, the trial-to-trial cognitive demands of switching between speakers or switching between accents have yet to be examined. We used pupillometry, a physiological index of cognitive load, to examine the demands of processing first (L1) and second (L2) language-accented speech when listening to sentences produced by the same speaker consecutively (no switch), a novel speaker of the same accent (within-accent switch), and a novel speaker with a different accent (across-accent switch). Inspired by research on sequential adjustments in cognitive control, we aimed to identify the cognitive demands of accommodating a novel speaker and accent by examining the trial-to-trial changes in pupil dilation during speech processing. Our results indicate that switching between speakers was more cognitively demanding than listening to the same speaker consecutively. Additionally, switching to a novel speaker with a different accent was more cognitively demanding than switching between speakers of the same accent. However, there was an asymmetry for across-accent switches, such that switching from an L1 to an L2 accent was more demanding than vice versa. Findings from the present study align with work examining multi-talker processing costs, and provide novel evidence that listeners dynamically adjust cognitive processing to accommodate speaker and accent variability. We discuss these novel findings in the context of an active control model and auditory streaming framework of speech processing. |
Hannah Mechtenberg; Cristal Giorio; Emily B. Myers Pupil dilation reflects perceptual priorities during a receptive speech task Journal Article In: Ear & Hearing, pp. 1–16, 2023. @article{Mechtenberg2023, Objectives: The listening demand incurred by speech perception fluctu- ates in normal conversation. At the acoustic-phonetic level, natural varia- tion in pronunciation acts as speedbumps to accurate lexical selection. Any given utterance may be more or less phonetically ambiguous—a problem that must be resolved by the listener to choose the correct word. This becomes especially apparent when considering two common speech registers—clear and casual—that have characteristically differ- ent levels of phonetic ambiguity. Clear speech prioritizes intelligibility through hyperarticulation which results in less ambiguity at the pho- netic level, while casual speech tends to have a more collapsed acoustic space. We hypothesized that listeners would invest greater cognitive resources while listening to casual speech to resolve the increased amount of phonetic ambiguity, as compared with clear speech. To this end, we used pupillometry as an online measure of listening effort dur- ing perception of clear and casual continuous speech in two background conditions: quiet and noise. Design: Forty-eight participants performed a probe detection task while listening to spoken, nonsensical sentences (masked and unmasked) while recording pupil size. Pupil size was modeled using growth curve analysis to capture the dynamics of the pupil response as the sentence unfolded. Results: Pupil size during listening was sensitive to the presence of noise and speech register (clear/casual). Unsurprisingly, listeners had over- all larger pupil dilations during speech perception in noise, replicating earlier work. The pupil dilation pattern for clear and casual sentences was considerably more complex. Pupil dilation during clear speech tri- als was slightly larger than for casual speech, across quiet and noisy backgrounds. Conclusions: We suggest that listener motivation could explain the larger pupil dilations to clearly spoken speech. We propose that, bounded by the context of this task, listeners devoted more resources to perceiving the speech signal with the greatest acoustic/phonetic fidelity. Further, we unexpectedly found systematic differences in pupil dilation preceding the onset of the spoken sentences. Together, these data demonstrate that the pupillary system is not merely reactive but also adaptive—sensitive to both task structure and listener motivation to maximize accurate per- ception in a limited resource system. |
Jinger Pan; Aiping Wang; Catherine McBride; Jeung Ryeul Cho; Ming Yan Online assessment of parafoveal morphological processing/Awareness during reading among Chinese and Korean adults Journal Article In: Scientific Studies of Reading, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 232–252, 2023. @article{Pan2023c, Purpose: The present study tested parafoveal morphological processing during sentence reading with two eye-tracking experiments, making use of an implicit measurement of morphological awareness. In Chinese and Korean, each character form typically corresponds to multiple mental lexicons, leading to morphological ambiguity. Method: Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm, we manipulated the relation between the homographic parafoveal preview morphemes and the target words in Chinese and Korean, respectively, in two experiments. We tested 57 Chinese and 45 Korean university students. Together with baseline conditions in which the previews were either identical or unrelated to the target, we had two critical conditions in which the homographs shared/did not share the same morphemic meaning (i.e., same morpheme/different morpheme) with the target morpheme. Results: Across the two experiments, the differences between the same and different morpheme conditions in a number of eye movement indices were significant, consistently showing that appropriate morpho-semantic information facilitates lexical processing. The different-morpheme previews facilitated the target word processing in Chinese but not in Korean reading. Conclusion: These findings suggest that morphemic meanings are activated early on during word recognition in Chinese, a logographic orthography, and Korean Hangul, a phonologically transparent writing system, before the word is fixated upon. |
Jinger Pan; Ming Yan The perceptual span in traditional Chinese Journal Article In: Language and Cognition, pp. 1–14, 2023. @article{Pan2023, The present study aimed at examining the perceptual span, the visual field area for information extraction within a single fixation, during the reading of traditional Chinese sentences. Native traditional Chinese readers' eye-movements were recorded as they read sentences that were presented using a gaze-contingent technique, in which legible text was restricted within a window that moved in synchrony with the eyes, while characters outside the window were masked. Comparisons of the window conditions with a baseline condition in which no viewing constraint was applied showed that when the window revealed one previous character and three upcoming characters around the current fixation, reading speed and oculomotor activities reached peak performance. Compared to previous results with simplified Chinese reading, based on a similar set of materials, traditional Chinese exhibits a reduction of the perceptual span. We suggest that the visual complexity of a writing system likely influences the perceptual span during reading. |
Yali Pan; Tzvetan Popov; Steven Frisson; Ole Jensen Saccades are locked to the phase of alpha oscillations during natural reading Journal Article In: PLoS Biology, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 1–19, 2023. @article{Pan2023b, AU We:saccade Pleaseconfirmthatallheadinglevelsarerepresentedcorrectly 3 to 5 times per second when reading. However,:little is known about the neuronal mechanisms coordinating the oculomotor and visual system during such rapid processing. Here, we ask if brain oscillations play a role in the temporal coordination of the visuomotor integration. We simultaneously acquired MEG and eye-tracking data while participants read sentences silently. Every sentence was embedded with a target word of either high or low lexical frequency. Our key finding demonstrated that saccade onsets were locked to the phase of alpha oscillations (8 to 13 Hz), and in particular, for saccades towards low frequency words. Source modelling demonstrated that the alpha oscillations to which the saccades were locked, were generated in the right-visual motor cortex (BA 7). Our findings suggest that the alpha oscillations serve to time the processing between the oculomotor and visual systems during natural reading, and that this coordination becomes more pronounced for demanding words. |
Adam J. Parker; Milla Räsänen; Timothy J. Slattery What is the optimal position of low-frequency words across line boundaries? An eye movement investigation Journal Article In: Applied Cognitive Psychology, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 161–173, 2023. @article{Parker2023, When displaying text on a page or a screen, only a finite number of characters can be presented on a single line. If the text exceeds that finite value, then text wrapping occurs. Often this process results in longer, more difficult to process words being positioned at the start of a line. We conducted an eye movement study to examine how this artefact of text wrapping affects passage reading. This allowed us to answer the question: should word difficulty be used when determining line breaks? Thirty-nine participants read 20 passages where low-frequency target words were either line-initial or line-final. There was no statistically reliable effect of our manipulation on passage reading time or comprehension despite several effects at a local level. Regarding our primary research question, the evidence suggests that word difficulty may not need to be accounted for when determining line breaks and assigning words to new lines. |
Olga Parshina; Nina Zdorova; Victor Kuperman Cross-linguistic comparison in reading sentences of uniform length: Visual–perceptual demands override readers' experience Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, pp. 1–9, 2023. @article{Parshina2023, Accurate saccadic targeting is critical for efficient reading and is driven by the sensory input under the eye-gaze. Yet whether a reader's experience with the distributional properties of their written language also influences saccadic targeting is an open debate. This study of Russian sentence reading follows Cutter et al.'s (2017) study in English and presents readers with sentences consisting of words of the same length. We hypothesised that if the readers' experience matters as per discrete control account, Russian readers would produce longer saccades and farther landing positions than the ones produced by English readers. On the contrary, if the saccadic targeting is primarily driven by the immediate perceptual demands that override readers' experience as per the dynamic adjustment account, the saccades of Russian and English readers would be of the same length, resulting in similar landing positions. The results in both Cutter et al. and the present study provided evidence for the latter account: Russian readers showed rapid and accurate adjustment of saccade lengths and landing positions to the highly constrained input. Crucially, the saccade lengths and landing positions did not differ between English and Russian readers even in the cross-linguistically length-matched stimuli. |
Marco Pedrotti; Anne Françoise Chambrier; Paolo Ruggeri; Jasinta Dewi; Myrto Atzemian; Catherine Thevenot; Catherine Martinet; Philippe Terrier Raw eye tracking data of healthy adults reading aloud words, pseudowords and numerals Journal Article In: Data in Brief, vol. 49, pp. 1–6, 2023. @article{Pedrotti2023, This paper describes data from de Chambrier et al. (2023). The dataset [2] contains raw eye tracking data of 36 healthy adults, collected using an EyeLink 1000 (SR Research Ltd., ON, Canada) during an on-screen reading task. Participants read 96 items including words, pseudowords and numerals. Each item was presented at the center of the screen until the participant produced an oral response and pressed the keyboard's space bar. Part of the data were analyzed to extract key metrics such as fixation number, fixation duration, saccade number, and saccade amplitude identified by the EyeLink 1000 [1]. Reuse potential includes (but is not limited to) pupil diameter data analysis, identification of fixations and saccades using custom algorithms, and secondary analyses using participant demographics (age, gender) as independent variables. |
Maud Pélissier; Dag Haugland; Bjørn Handeland; Beatrice Zitong Urland; Allison Wetterlin; Linda Wheeldon; Steven Frisson Competition between form-related words in bilingual sentence reading: Effects of language proficiency Journal Article In: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 384–401, 2023. @article{Pelissier2023, Sentence reading involves constant competition between lexical candidates. Previous research with monolinguals has shown that the neighbours of a read word are inhibited, making their retrieval as a subsequent target more difficult, but the duration of this interference may depend on reading skills. In this study, we examined neighbour priming effects in sentence reading among proficient Norwegian–English bilinguals reading in their L2. We investigated the effects of the distance between prime and target (short vs. long) and the nature of the overlap between the two words (beginning or end), and related these to differences in individual cognitive skills. Our results replicated the inhibition effects found in monolinguals, albeit slightly delayed. Interference between form-related words was affected by the L2 reading skills and, crucially, by the phonological decoding abilities of the bilingual reader. We discuss the results in light of competition models of bilingual reading as well as episodic memory accounts. |
A. I. Pérez; E. Schmidt; I. M. Tsimpli Inferential evaluation and revision in L1 and L2 text comprehension: An eye movement study Journal Article In: Bilingualism, pp. 1–14, 2023. @article{Perez2023, Text comprehension frequently demands the resolution of no longer plausible interpretations to build an accurate situation model, an ability that might be especially challenging during second language comprehension. Twenty-two native English speakers (L1) and twenty-two highly proficient non-native English speakers (L2) were presented with short narratives in English. Each text required the evaluation and revision of an initial prediction. Eye movements in the text and a comprehension sentence indicated less efficient performance in the L2 than in L1 comprehension, in both inferential evaluation and revision. Interestingly, these effects were determined by individual differences in inhibitory control and linguistic proficiency. Higher inhibitory control reduced the time rereading previous parts of the text (better evaluation) as well as revisiting the text before answering the sentence (better revision) in L2 comprehenders, whereas higher proficiency reduced the time in the sentence when the story was coherent, suggesting better general comprehension in both languages. |
Katharina Pittrich; Sascha Schroeder Reading vertically and horizontally mirrored text: An eye movement investigation Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 76, no. 2, pp. 271–283, 2023. @article{Pittrich2023, This study examined the cognitive processes involved in reading vertically and horizontally mirrored text. We tracked participants' eye movements while they were reading the Potsdam Sentence Corpus which consists of 144 sentences with target words that are manipulated for length and frequency. Sentences were presented in three different conditions: In the normal condition, text was presented with upright letters, in the vertical condition, each letter was flipped around its vertical (left-right) axis while in the horizontal condition, letters were flipped around their horizontal (up-down) axis. Results show that reading was slowed down in both mirror conditions and that horizontal mirroring was particularly disruptive. In both conditions, we found larger effects of word length than in the normal condition indicating that participants read the sentences more serially and effortfully. Similarly, frequency effects were larger in both mirror conditions in later reading measures (gaze duration, go-past time, and total reading time) and particularly pronounced in the horizontal condition. This indicates that reading mirrored script involves a late checking mechanism that is particularly important for reading a horizontally mirrored script. Together, our findings demonstrate that mirroring affects both early visual identification and later linguistic processes. |
Sotiris Plainis; Emmanouil Ktistakis; Miltiadis K. Tsilimbaris Presbyopia correction with multifocal contact lenses: Evaluation of silent reading performance using eye movements analysis Journal Article In: Contact Lens and Anterior Eye, vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 1–8, 2023. @article{Plainis2023, Purpose: Many activities of daily living rely on reading, thus is not surprising that complaints from presbyopes originate in reading difficulties rather in visual acuity. Here, the effectiveness of presbyopia correction with multifocal contact lenses (CLs) is evaluated using an eye-fixation based method of silent reading performance. Μethods: Visual performance of thirty presbyopic volunteers (age: 50 ± 5 yrs) was assessed monocularly and binocularly following 15 days of wear of monthly disposable CLs (AIR OPTIX™ plus HydraGlyde™, Alcon Laboratories) with: (a) single vision (SV) lenses – uncorrected for near (b) aspheric multifocal (MF) CLs. LogMAR acuity was measured with ETDRS charts. Reading performance was evaluated using standard IReST paragraphs displayed on a screen (0.4 logMAR print size at 40 cm distance). Eye movements were monitored with an infrared eyetracker (Eye-Link II, SR Research Ltd). Data analysis included computation of reading speed, fixation duration, fixations per word and percentage of regressions. Results: Average reading speed was 250 ± 68 and 235 ± 70 wpm, binocularly and monocularly, with SV CLs, improving statistically significantly to 280 ± 67 (p = 0.002) and 260 ± 59 wpm (p = 0.01), respectively, with MF CLs. Moreover, fixation duration, fixations per word and ex-Gaussian parameter of fixation duration, μ, showed a statistically significant improvement when reading with MF CLs, with fixation duration exhibiting the stronger correlation (r = 0.79, p < 0.001) with improvement in reading speed. The correlation between improvement in VA and reading speed was moderate (r = 0.46 |
Florian Hintz; Cesko C. Voeten; Odette Scharenborg Recognizing non-native spoken words in background noise increases interference from the native language Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 1549–1563, 2023. @article{Hintz2023, Listeners frequently recognize spoken words in the presence of background noise. Previous research has shown that noise reduces phoneme intelligibility and hampers spoken-word recognition – especially for non-native listeners. In the present study, we investigated how noise influences lexical competition in both the non-native and the native language, reflecting the degree to which both languages are co-activated. We recorded the eye movements of native Dutch participants as they listened to English sentences containing a target word while looking at displays containing four objects. On target-present trials, the visual referent depicting the target word was present, along with three unrelated distractors. On target-absent trials, the target object (e.g., wizard) was absent. Instead, the display contained an English competitor, overlapping with the English target in phonological onset (e.g., window), a Dutch competitor, overlapping with the English target in phonological onset (e.g., wimpel, pennant), and two unrelated distractors. Half of the sentences was masked by speech-shaped noise; the other half was presented in quiet. Compared to speech in quiet, noise delayed fixations to the target objects on target-present trials. For target-absent trials, we observed that the likelihood for fixation biases towards the English and Dutch onset competitors (over the unrelated distractors) was larger in noise than in quiet. Our data thus show that the presence of background noise increases lexical competition in the task-relevant non-native (English) and in the task-irrelevant native (Dutch) language. The latter reflects stronger interference of one's native language during non-native spoken-word recognition under adverse conditions. |
Nora Hollenstein; Marius Tröndle; Martyna Plomecka; Samuel Kiegeland; Yilmazcan Özyurt; Lena A. Jäger; Nicolas Langer The ZuCo benchmark on cross-subject reading task classification with EEG and eye-tracking data Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 1–20, 2023. @article{Hollenstein2023, We present a new machine learning benchmark for reading task classification with the goal of advancing EEG and eye-tracking research at the intersection between computational language processing and cognitive neuroscience. The benchmark task consists of a cross-subject classification to distinguish between two reading paradigms: normal reading and task-specific reading. The data for the benchmark is based on the Zurich Cognitive Language Processing Corpus (ZuCo 2.0), which provides simultaneous eye-tracking and EEG signals from natural reading of English sentences. The training dataset is publicly available, and we present a newly recorded hidden testset. We provide multiple solid baseline methods for this task and discuss future improvements. We release our code and provide an easy-to-use interface to evaluate new approaches with an accompanying public leaderboard: www.zuco-benchmark.com. |
Holger Hopp; Sarah Schimke; Freya Gastmann; David Öwerdieck; Gregory J. Poarch Processing to learn noncanonical word orders: Exploring linguistic and cognitive predictors of reanalysis in early L2 sentence comprehension Journal Article In: Studies in Second Language Acquisition, pp. 1–24, 2023. @article{Hopp2023, To test the contributions of processing to L2 syntax learning, this study explores (cross-) linguistic and cognitive predictors of sentence reanalysis in the L2 comprehension of relative clauses among low-intermediate L1 German adolescent learners of L2 English. Specifically, we test the degree to which L2 comprehension is affected by L2 proficiency, reanalysis ability in a related, earlier-acquired L2 structure (questions), reanalysis ability of relative clauses in the L1, cognitive control, and cognitive capacity. In visual-world eye-tracking experiments, 141 adolescent German-speaking L2 learners of English selected target pictures for auditorily presented questions and relative clauses in the L1 and in the L2. The results showed a strong subject preference for L2 relative clauses. Learners' L2 proficiency and their processing of object questions in the L2 predicted reanalysis for object relatives in eye movements, reaction times, and comprehension accuracy. In contrast, there was no evidence that cognitive control or working memory systematically affected the processing of object relatives. These findings suggest that linguistic processing outweighs cognitive processing in accounting for individual differences in low-intermediate L2 acquisition of complex grammar. Specifically, learners recruit shared processing mechanisms and routines across grammatical structures to pave a way in the acquisition of syntax. |
Jannat Hossain; Alex L. White The transposed word effect is consistent with serial word recognition and varies with reading speed Journal Article In: Cognition, vol. 238, pp. 1–11, 2023. @article{Hossain2023, The scientific study of reading has long been animated by questions of parallel vs. serial processing. Do readers recognize words serially, adding each one sequentially to a representation of the sentence structure? One fascinating phenomenon to emerge from this research is the transposed word effect: when asked to judge whether sentences are grammatical, readers often fail to notice grammatical errors caused by transposing two words. This effect could be evidence that readers recognize multiple words in parallel. Here we provide converging evidence that the transposed word effect is also consistent with serial processing because it occurs robustly when the words in each sentence are presented serially. We further investigated how the effect relates to individual differences in reading speed, to gaze fixation patterns, and to differences in difficulty across sentences. In a pretest, we first measured the natural English reading rate of 37 participants, which varied widely. In a subsequent grammatical decision task, we presented grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in two modes: one with all words presented simultaneously, and the other with single words presented sequentially at each participant's natural rate. Unlike prior studies that used a fixed sequential presentation rate, we found that the magnitude of the transposed word effect was at least as strong in the sequential presentation mode as in the simultaneous mode, for both error rates and response times. Moreover, faster readers were more likely to miss transpositions of words presented sequentially. We argue that these data favor a “noisy channel” model of comprehension in which skilled readers rely on prior knowledge to rapidly infer the meaning of sentences, allowing for apparent errors in spatial or temporal order, even when the individual words are recognized one at a time. |
Liv J. Hoversten; Clara D. Martin Parafoveal processing in bilingual readers: Semantic access within but not across languages Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, vol. 49, no. 12, pp. 1564–1578, 2023. @article{Hoversten2023, Prior research has investigated the quality of information a reader can extract from upcoming parafoveal words. However, very few studies have considered parafoveal processing in bilingual readers, who may differ from monolinguals due to slower lexical access and susceptibility to cross-language activation. This eye-tracking experiment, therefore, investigated how bilingual readers process parafoveal semantic information within and across languages. We used the boundary technique to replace a preview word in a sentence with a different target word during the first rightward saccade from the pretarget region. We manipulated both preview language (nonswitch vs. code-switch) and semantic relatedness (synonym/translation vs. unrelated) between previews and targets. Upon fixation, target words always appeared in the same language as the rest of the sentence to create an essentially monolingual language context. Semantic preview benefits emerged for nonswitched synonym previews but not for code-switched translation previews. Furthermore, participants skipped code-switched previews less often than nonswitched previews and no more often than previews that were unfamiliar to them. These data suggest that bilinguals can extract within-language semantic information from the parafovea in both native and nonnative languages, but that cross-language words are not accessible while reading in a monolingual language mode, as per the partial selectivity hypothesis of bilingual language control. |
Pei Hsuan Hsieh; Po I. Hsu Displaying software installation agreements to motivate users' reading Journal Article In: International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 39, no. 20, pp. 4006–4023, 2023. @article{Hsieh2023a, The purpose of this study is to identify an effective display mode that best motivates software users to read the software installation agreements before downloading, thereby enhancing their understanding of intellectual property rights and preventing potential legal issues. This study randomly assigned the participants to enter either an eye-tracking or a computer-based experiment in which one of three display modes was presented. A computer-based pre-test and post-test related to intellectual property rights were given to the participants. The final results showed that the “keyword mode” was the most effective in keeping their attention on the key content. The results of a survey about software installation experiences and attitudes toward reading software installation agreements and the follow-up interviews confirmed the experimental findings. The study's contribution lies in revealing to software providers the most effective reading mode that best enhances the software users' understanding of the moral and legal concepts. |
Scott S. Hsieh; David A. Cook; Akitoshi Inoue; Hao Gong; Parvathy Sudhir Pillai; Matthew P. Johnson; Shuai Leng; Lifeng Yu; Jeff L. Fidler; David R. Holmes Iii; Rickey E. Carter; Cynthia H. Mccollough; Joel G. Fletcher Understanding reader variability: A 25-radiologist study on liver metastasis detection at CT Journal Article In: Radiology, vol. 306, no. 2, pp. 1–10, 2023. @article{Hsieh2023, Background: Substantial interreader variability exists for common tasks in CT imaging, such as detection of hepatic metastases. This variability can undermine patient care by leading to misdiagnosis. Purpose: To determine the impact of interreader variability associated with (a) reader experience, (b) image navigation patterns (eg, eye movements, workstation interactions), and (c) eye gaze time at missed liver metastases on contrast-enhanced abdominal CT images. Materials and Methods: In a single-center prospective observational trial at an academic institution between December 2020 and February 2021, readers were recruited to examine 40 contrast-enhanced abdominal CT studies (eight normal, 32 containing 91 liver metastases). Readers circumscribed hepatic metastases and reported confidence. The workstation tracked image navigation and eye movements. Performance was quantified by using the area under the jackknife alternative free-response receiver operator charac- teristic (JAFROC-1) curve and per-metastasis sensitivity and was associated with reader experience and image navigation variables. Differences in area under JAFROC curve were assessed with the Kruskal-Wallis test followed by the Dunn test, and effects of image navigation were assessed by using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results: Twenty-five readers (median age, 38 years; IQR, 31–45 years; 19 men) were recruited and included nine subspecialized abdominal radiologists, five nonabdominal staff radiologists, and 11 senior residents or fellows. Reader experience explained differences in area under the JAFROC curve, with abdominal radiologists demonstrating greater area under the JAFROC curve (mean, 0.77; 95% CI: 0.75, 0.79) than trainees (mean, 0.71; 95% CI: 0.69, 0.73) (P = .02) or nonabdominal subspecialists (mean, 0.69; 95% CI: 0.60, 0.78) (P = .03). Sensitivity was similar within the reader experience groups (P = .96). Image navigation variables that were associated with higher sensitivity included longer interpretation time (P = .003) and greater use of coronal images (P < .001). The eye gaze time was at least 0.5 and 2.0 seconds for 71% (266 of 377) and 40% (149 of 377) of missed metastases, respectively. Conclusion: Abdominal radiologists demonstrated better discrimination for the detection of liver metastases on abdominal contrast-enhanced CT images. Missed metastases frequently received at least a brief eye gaze. Higher sensitivity was associated with longer interpretation time and greater use of liver display windows and coronal images. |
Jinfeng Huang; Gaoyan Zhang; Jianwu Dang; Yu Chen; Shoko Miyamoto Semantic processing during continuous speech production: An analysis from eye movements and EEG Journal Article In: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 17, pp. 1–13, 2023. @article{Huang2023c, Introduction: Speech production involves neurological planning and articulatory execution. How speakers prepare for articulation is a significant aspect of speech production research. Previous studies have focused on isolated words or short phrases to explore speech planning mechanisms linked to articulatory behaviors, including investigating the eye-voice span (EVS) during text reading. However, these experimental paradigms lack real-world speech process replication. Additionally, our understanding of the neurological dimension of speech planning remains limited. Methods: This study examines speech planning mechanisms during continuous speech production by analyzing behavioral (eye movement and speech) and neurophysiological (EEG) data within a continuous speech production task. The study specifically investigates the influence of semantic consistency on speech planning and the occurrence of “look ahead” behavior. Results: The outcomes reveal the pivotal role of semantic coherence in facilitating fluent speech production. Speakers access lexical representations and phonological information before initiating speech, emphasizing the significance of semantic processing in speech planning. Behaviorally, the EVS decreases progressively during continuous reading of regular sentences, with a slight increase for non-regular sentences. Moreover, eye movement pattern analysis identifies two distinct speech production modes, highlighting the importance of semantic comprehension and prediction in higher-level lexical processing. Neurologically, the dual pathway model of speech production is supported, indicating a dorsal information flow and frontal lobe involvement. The brain network linked to semantic understanding exhibits a negative correlation with semantic coherence, with significant activation during semantic incoherence and suppression in regular sentences. Discussion: The study's findings enhance comprehension of speech planning mechanisms and offer insights into the role of semantic coherence in continuous speech production. Furthermore, the research methodology establishes a valuable framework for future investigations in this domain. |
Linjieqiong Huang; Xingshan Li The effects of lexical- and sentence-level contextual cues on Chinese word segmentation Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, pp. 1–10, 2023. @article{Huang2023e, The present study showed that Chinese readers use the lexical-level contextual cue when segmenting words, and words supported by the lexical-level contextual cue are more likely to be segmented as words than words not supported by the lexical-level contextual cue. Moreover, when both the lexical- level contextual cue and the sentence-level contextual cue are available, the lexical-level contextual cue is used earlier than or simultaneously with the sentence-level contextual cue. |
Falk Huettig; Cesko C. Voeten; Esther Pascual; Junying Liang; Florian Hintz Do autistic children differ in language-mediated prediction? Journal Article In: Cognition, vol. 239, pp. 1–7, 2023. @article{Huettig2023, Prediction appears to be an important characteristic of the human mind. It has also been suggested that prediction is a core difference of autistic1 children. Past research exploring language-mediated anticipatory eye movements in autistic children, however, has been somewhat contradictory, with some studies finding normal anticipatory processing in autistic children with low levels of autistic traits but others observing weaker prediction effects in autistic children with less receptive language skills. Here we investigated language-mediated anticipatory eye movements in young children who differed in the severity of their level of autistic traits and were in professional institutional care in Hangzhou, China. We chose the same spoken sentences (translated into Mandarin Chinese) and visual stimuli as a previous study which observed robust prediction effects in young children (Mani & Huettig, 2012) and included a control group of typically-developing children. Typically developing but not autistic children showed robust prediction effects. Most interestingly, autistic children with lower communication, motor, and (adaptive) behavior scores exhibited both less predictive and non-predictive visual attention behavior. Our results raise the possibility that differences in language-mediated anticipatory eye movements in autistic children with higher levels of autistic traits may be differences in visual attention in disguise, a hypothesis that needs further investigation. |
Ariel N. James; Colleen J. Minnihan; Duane G. Watson Language experience predicts eye movements during online auditory comprehension Journal Article In: Journal of Cognition, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 1–29, 2023. @article{James2023, Experience-based theories of language processing suggest that listeners use the properties of their previous linguistic input to constrain comprehension in real time (e.g. MacDonald & Christiansen, 2002; Smith & Levy, 2013; Stanovich & West, 1989; Mishra, Pandey, Singh, & Huettig, 2012). This project investigates the prediction that individual differences in experience will predict differences in sentence comprehension. Participants completed a visual world eye-tracking task following Altmann and Kamide (1999) which manipulates whether the verb licenses the anticipation of a specific referent in the scene (e.g. The boy will eat/move the cake). Within this paradigm, we ask (1) are there reliable individual differences in language-mediated eye movements during this task? If so, (2) do individual differences in language experience correlate with these differences, and (3) can this relationship be explained by other, more general cognitive abilities? Study 1 finds evidence that language experience predicts an overall facilitation in fixating the target, and Study 2 replicates this effect and finds that it remains when controlling for working memory, inhibitory control, phonological ability, and perceptual speed. |
Juan Jia; Ziyu Wei; Heben Cheng; Xiaolu Wang Translation directionality and translator anxiety: Evidence from eye movements in L1-L2 translation Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 14, pp. 1–12, 2023. @article{Jia2023, While considerable research on the impact of anxiety on second language learning has been carried out in international contexts, the impact of anxiety on the translator's undertaking L2 translation, a sort of anxiety arising from the translation directionality, as well as the structure of cognitive mechanism for translational anxiety, remain under-explored. Adopting the eye-tracking and key-logging approach to data collection, this study implemented an eye-tracking experiment with EFL learners at a Chinese university to probe into how the participants responded to L1 and L2 translation-tasks and the mechanism involved in these processes. It is found that translation directionality does have a great impact on the processing of translation, which causes the change of cognitive load and then leads to the change of levels in translator anxiety. The finding further confirms the key premises of the Processing Proficiency Model and the Revised Hierarchical Model with attendant implications for translation processes. |
Yanfang Jia; Sanjun Sun Man or machine? Comparing the difficulty of human translation versus neural machine translation post-editing Journal Article In: Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice, vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 950–968, 2023. @article{Jia2023a, This study aims to compare neural machine translation (NMT) post-editing and human translation in terms of task difficulty while considering source text (ST) complexity and machine translation (MT) quality levels, two factors that have been rarely examined in previous comparison studies. Data were obtained from 60 trainee translators concerning the perceived and objective difficulties of post-editing and human translation tasks and the participants' performance. It was found that (1) the difficulty of the NMT post-editing task, compared to human translation, was significantly influenced by both NMT quality and ST complexity; the difficulty of the post-editing task was significantly lower than that of the human translation task only in the case of high-quality NMT paired with complex ST, while the results were mixed for other interactions between NMT quality and ST complexity levels; (2) no strong correlations were found between the participants' perceived difficulty and the measurements of objective difficulty and task performance for both post-editing and human translation tasks. Practical and research implications were discussed. |
Yu-Cin Cin Jian Reading behavior in science comics and its relations with comprehension performance and reading attitudes: An eye-tracker study Journal Article In: Research in Science Education, vol. 53, no. 129, pp. 689–706, 2023. @article{Jian2023, One of the ways to acquire scientific knowledge is by reading science comics. This study aims to investigate the attitudes (e.g., reading habits, interest, motivation) of university students toward reading science comics, and how they read science comics for acquiring scientific knowledge reflected by an eye tracker. Sixty-five undergraduates were invited to complete an attitudes and habits questionnaire of reading comics, after which they read a science comic where their reading processes were recorded by an eye tracker; finally, they completed a reading comprehension test. The results showed that most undergraduates had a positive attitude for reading comics, and were more likely to learn science by reading comics rather than texts. In addition, the analysis results of the linear mixed-effect models indicated that fixation with regard to re-reading durations could promote post-reading comprehension. The readers who particularly re-read the important information in relation to the boxed-in texts and graphics for a longer period scored higher in the post-test (e.g., the cause and variation processes of cancer). The analysis of variance also indicated that readers who exhibited a good test performance allocated more re-reading time on informational texts and diagrams. This meant they were more intentional and selective in re-reading the core and concept-intensive information; however, concerning the reader who performed poorly in their test, this reading pattern was unapparent. Therefore, those who exhibited a better grasp of the knowledge in the science comics were likely to fully process the areas that presented relevant information concerning important science concepts. |
Shang Jiang; Anna Siyanova-Chanturia The processing of multiword expressions in L1 and L2 Chinese: Evidence from reaction times and eye movements Journal Article In: Modern Language Journal, vol. 107, no. 2, pp. 565–605, 2023. @article{Jiang2023a, Frequency and proficiency have been found to play an important role in second language (L2) phrasal processing. However, existing research has largely focused on English and other European languages, with other commonly used languages, such as Chinese, being largely disregarded. To fill this gap, we carried out two experiments to investigate how frequency—operationalized as a dichotomy (collocation vs. control) and a continuum (log-transformed corpus frequency)—and language proficiency affect phrasal processing in first language (L1) and L2 speakers of Chinese. The results of a grammaticality judgment task (Experiment 1) and an eye-tracking experiment (Experiment 2) largely converged to show that not only L1 speakers but also L2 learners are sensitive to phrase frequency manipulations, with collocations and higher frequency phrases being processed faster than controls and lower frequency phrases, respectively. Additionally, the analysis of eye movements—but not reaction times—showed a relationship between proficiency and phrase frequency. Finally, the use of the eye-tracking methodology allowed us to tap into the mechanisms associated with earlier and later stages of phrasal processing, and to analyze multiple interest areas. |
Svetlana Kovalenko; Anton Mamonov; Vladislav Kuznetsov; Alexandr Bulygin; Irina Shoshina; Ivan Brak; Alexey Kashevnik OperatorEYEVP: Operator dataset for fatigue detection based on eye movements, heart rate data, and video information Journal Article In: Sensors, vol. 23, no. 13, pp. 1–35, 2023. @article{Kovalenko2023, Detection of fatigue is extremely important in the development of different kinds of preventive systems (such as driver monitoring or operator monitoring for accident prevention). The presence of fatigue for this task should be determined with physiological and objective behavioral indicators. To develop an effective model of fatigue detection, it is important to record a dataset with people in a state of fatigue as well as in a normal state. We carried out data collection using an eye tracker, a video camera, a stage camera, and a heart rate monitor to record a different kind of signal to analyze them. In our proposed dataset, 10 participants took part in the experiment and recorded data 3 times a day for 8 days. They performed different types of activity (choice reaction time, reading, correction test Landolt rings, playing Tetris), imitating everyday tasks. Our dataset is useful for studying fatigue and finding indicators of its manifestation. We have analyzed datasets that have public access to find the best for this task. Each of them contains data of eye movements and other types of data. We evaluated each of them to determine their suitability for fatigue studies, but none of them fully fit the fatigue detection task. We evaluated the recorded dataset by calculating the correspondences between eye-tracking data and CRT (choice reaction time) that show the presence of fatigue. |
Emmanouil Ktistakis; Panagiotis Simos; Miltiadis K. Tsilimbaris; Sotiris Plainis Efficacy οf wet age-related macular degeneration treatment οn reading: A pilot study using eye-movement analysis Journal Article In: Optometry and Vision Science, vol. 100, no. 10, pp. 670–678, 2023. @article{Ktistakis2023, SIGNIFICANCE Functional vision, as evaluated with silent passage reading speed, improves after anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) treatment in patients with wet age-related macular antidegeneration (wAMD), reflecting primarily a concomitant reduction in the number of fixations. Implementing eye movement analysis when reading may better characterize the effectiveness of therapeutic approaches in wAMD. PURPOSE This study aimed to evaluate silent reading performance by means of eye fixation analysis before and after anti-VEGF treatment in wAMD patients. METHODS Sixteen wAMD patients who underwent anti-VEGF treatment in one eye and visual acuity (VA) better than 0.5 logMAR served as the AMD group. Twenty adults without ocular pathology served as the control group. Central retinal thickness and near VA were assessed at baseline and 3 to 4 months after their first visit. Reading performance was evaluated using short passages of 0.4-logMAR print size. Eye movements were recorded using EyeLink II video eye tracker. Data analysis included computation of reading speed, fixation duration, number of fixations, and percentage of regressions. Frequency distributions of fixation durations were analyzed with ex-Gaussian fittings. RESULTS In the AMD group, silent reading speed in the treated eye correlated well with central retinal thickness reduction and improved significantly by an average of 15.9 ± 28.5 words per minute (P =.04). This improvement was accompanied by an average reduction of 0.24 ± 0.38 in fixations per word (P =.03). The corresponding improvement in monocular VA was not statistically significant. Other eye fixation parameters did not change significantly after treatment. No statistically significant differences were found in the control group. CONCLUSIONS Visual acuity tests may underestimate the potential therapeutic effects after anti-VEGF treatment in patients with relatively good acuity who are being treated for wAMD. Evaluating silent reading performance and eye fixation parameters may better characterize the effectiveness of therapeutic approaches in wAMD patients. |
Justin B. Kueser; Ryan Peters; Arielle Borovsky The role of semantic similarity in verb learning events: Vocabulary-related changes across early development Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, vol. 226, pp. 1–19, 2023. @article{Kueser2023, Verb meaning is challenging for children to learn across varied events. This study examined how the taxonomic semantic similarity of the nouns in novel verb learning events in a progressive alignment learning condition differed from the taxonomic dissimilarity of nouns in a dissimilar learning condition in supporting near (similar) and far (dissimilar) verb generalization to novel objects in an eye-tracking task. A total of 48 children in two age groups (23 girls; younger: 21–24 months |
Jan Kujala; Sasu Mäkelä; Pauliina Ojala; Jukka Hyönä; Riitta Salmelin Beta- and gamma-band cortico-cortical interactions support naturalistic reading of continuous text Journal Article In: European Journal of Neuroscience, pp. 1–14, 2023. @article{Kujala2023, Large-scale integration of information across cortical structures, building on neural connectivity, has been proposed to be a key element in supporting human cognitive processing. In electrophysiological neuroimaging studies of reading, quantification of neural interactions has been limited to the level of isolated words or sentences due to artefacts induced by eye movements. Here, we combined magnetoencephalography recording with advanced artefact rejection tools to investigate both cortico-cortical coherence and directed neural interactions during naturalistic reading of full-page texts. Our results show that reading versus visual scanning of text was associated with wide-spread increases of cortico-cortical coherence in the beta and gamma bands. We further show that the reading task was linked to increased directed neural interactions compared to the scanning task across a sparse set of connections within a wide range of frequencies. Together, the results demonstrate that neural connectivity flexibly builds on different frequency bands to support continuous natural reading. |
Victor Kuperman; Noam Siegelman; Sascha Schroeder; Cengiz Acartürk; Svetlana Alexeeva; Simona Amenta; Raymond Bertram; Rolando Bonandrini; Marc Brysbaert; Daria Chernova; Sara Maria Da Fonseca; Nicolas Dirix; Wouter Duyck; Argyro Fella; Ram Frost; Carolina A. Gattei; Areti Kalaitzi; Kaidi Lõo; Marco Marelli; Kelly Nisbet; Timothy C. Papadopoulos; Athanassios Protopapas; Satu Savo; Diego E. Shalom; Natalia Slioussar; Roni Stein; Longjiao Sui; Analí Taboh; Veronica Tønnesen; Kerem Alp Usal; Veronica Tonnesen; Kerem Alp Usal Text reading in English as a second language: Evidence from the Multilingual Eye-Movements Corpus Journal Article In: Studies in Second Language Acquisition, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 3–37, 2023. @article{Kuperman2023, Research into second language (L2) reading is an exponentially growing field. Yet, it still has a relatively short supply of comparable, ecologically valid data from readers representing a variety of first languages (L1). This article addresses this need by presenting a new data resource called MECO L2 (Multilingual Eye Movements Corpus), a rich behavioral eye-tracking record of text reading in English as an L2 among 543 university student speakers of 12 different L1s. MECO L2 includes a test battery of component skills of reading and allows for a comparison of the participants' reading performance in their L1 and L2. This data resource enables innovative large-scale cross-sample analyses of predictors of L2 reading fluency and comprehension. We first introduce the design and structure of the MECO L2 resource, along with reliability estimates and basic descriptive analyses. Then, we illustrate the utility of MECO L2 by quantifying contributions of four sources to variability in L2 reading proficiency proposed in prior literature: reading fluency and comprehension in L1, proficiency in L2 component skills of reading, extralinguistic factors, and the L1 of the readers. Major findings included (a) a fundamental contrast between the determinants of L2 reading fluency versus comprehension accuracy, and (b) high within-participant consistency in the real-time strategy of reading in L1 and L2. We conclude by reviewing the implications of these findings to theories of L2 acquisition and outline further directions in which the new data resource may support L2 reading research. |
Didem Kurt; Nazik Dinçtopal Deniz Processing focus in Turkish Journal Article In: Languages, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1–22, 2023. @article{Kurt2023, The immediately preverbal position has been argued to be the default focus position in Turkish. In absence of any overt focus markers, the constituent in this position is considered to carry sentential stress and neutral information for canonical word-order sentences and focus is projected to the whole sentence in the form of broad focus. In non-canonical word-order sentences, the immediately preverbal constituent is presumed to carry focal stress and the focused constituent would receive narrow focus. This paper tested this claim experimentally. The paper also investigated if there were any differences in the cognitive operations associated with processing and revising focus in canonical and non-canonical sentences. There were a sentence completion task and an eye-tracking experiment. The sentence completion data and the eye-tracking data supported the theoretical predictions: the immediately preverbal position was associated with default focus in Turkish when no pitch accentuation or other focus markers were available. The eye-tracking data further showed that changes to word-order were perceived as cues for broad versus narrow focus marking. The participants' processing of and revision from narrow focus were costlier than processing broad focus and assigning narrow focus for the first time. We argue, in line with previous research, that this may be due to deeper encoding of focused information in memory or heavier memory load resulting from keeping a set of alternatives of the focused constituent when it has contrastive meaning. |
Marianna Kyriacou; Kathy Conklin; Dominic Thompson Ambiguity resolution in passivized idioms: Is there a shift in the most likely interpretation? Journal Article In: Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 77, no. 3, pp. 212–226, 2023. @article{Kyriacou2023, Ambiguous but canonical idioms (kick the bucket) are processed fast in both their figurative (“die”) and literal (“boot the pail”) senses, although processing costs associated with meaning integration may emerge in postidiom regions. Modified versions (the bucket was kicked) are processed more slowly than canonical configurations when intended figuratively. We hypothesized that modifications delay idiom recognition and prioritize the literal meaning, yielding processing costs when the context warrants a figurative interpretation. To test this, we designed an eye-tracking study, where passivized idioms were followed by “WABBLE” relating to their literal (bucket—water) or figurative (dead—body) meaning, or were incongruent (time). The remaining context was identical. The findings showed a facilitation for the literal meaning: WABBLE and passivized idioms in the literal condition were read significantly faster in go-past and total reading time, respectively, compared to both the figurative and control conditions. However, both literal and figurative WABBLE were processed equally fast (and significantly faster than controls) in total reading time. In support of our hypothesis, the literal meaning of passivized idioms appears to be more highly activated and easier to integrate, although the figurative meaning receives some activation that facilitates its (full) retrieval if necessary. |
Sol Lago; Kate Stone; Elise Oltrogge; João Veríssimo Possessive processing in bilingual comprehension Journal Article In: Language Learning, vol. 73, no. 3, pp. 904–941, 2023. @article{Lago2023, Second language (L2) learners make gender errors with possessive pronouns. In production, these errors are modulated by the gender match between the possessor and possessee noun. We examined whether this so-called match effect extends to L2 comprehension by attempting to replicate a recent study on gender predictions in first language (L1) German speakers (Stone, Veríssimo, et al., 2021). By comparing Spanish and English learners of L2 German whose languages have different possessive constraints, we were able to examine whether the match effect was modulated by the participants' L1. A first experiment suggested that predictions and match effects were absent in setups with complex visual displays. A second experiment with simpler displays successfully elicited predictions and match effects, but their size was comparable in Spanish and English speakers, inconsistent with crosslinguistic influence. We interpret our results as evidence that processing difficulties with possessives result from memory interference that impacts both L1 and L2 comprehenders. |
Hend Lahoud; Zohar Eviatar; Hamutal Kreiner Eye-movement patterns in skilled Arabic readers: Effects of specific features of Arabic versus universal factors Journal Article In: Reading and Writing, pp. 1–30, 2023. @article{Lahoud2023, This study aims to shed light on the contribution of universal versus language specific factors on reading. We examined eye movements of Arabic readers and analyzed effects specific to Arabic such as perceptual complexity, diglossia and morphology, in addition to universal factors such as word length and frequency. Twenty native Arabic speakers read continuous texts in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) while their eye movements were monitored. A corpus-based analyses was carried to test effects specific to Arabic and effects of the benchmark eye movement factors. We found that perceptually more complex words received longer fixation durations, moreover, differences in processing words unique in MSA versus words shared between MSA and spoken Arabic Vernacular were found. This is the first indication for these effects during an eye movement reading task. However, the effect of morphological length was not significant when included in the model with all predictors. Lastly, the benchmark factors were significant showing effects for word length, word frequency and part of speech. Short and frequent words are processed faster than longer and less frequent words. Function words are often skipped. We conclude that eye movement of Arabic readers reflect proficient reading, yet they also exhibit an on-going challenge in processing the written language. |
Hend Lahoud; David L. Share; Adi Shechter A developmental study of eye movements in Hebrew word reading: The effects of word familiarity, word length, and reading proficiency Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 14, pp. 1–11, 2023. @article{Lahoud2023a, Previous studies examining the link between visual word recognition and eye movements have shown that eye movements reflect the time-course of cognitive processes involved in reading. Whereas most studies have been undertaken in Western European languages written in the Roman alphabet, the present developmental study investigates a non-European language—Hebrew, which is written in a non-alphabetic (abjadic) script. We compared the eye-movements of children in Grades 4 to 6 (N = 30) and university students (N = 30) reading familiar real words and unfamiliar (pseudo)words of 3 letters and 5 letters in length. Using linear mixed models, we focused on the effects of word familiarity, word length, and age group. Our results highlight both universal aspects of word reading (developmental and familiarity (lexicality) effects) as well as language-specific word length effect which appears to be related to the unique morphological and orthographic features of the Semitic abjad. |
Cheng-Ji Lai; Li-You Chang In: Social Sciences and Humanities Open, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 1–8, 2023. @article{Lai2023, This study investigated how undergraduate students with different levels of translation proficiency employed translation principles and techniques in English-Chinese sight translation tasks, and how this affected their cognitive processing and performance. Participants were grouped into high-, intermediate-, and low-levels based on placement tests, and completed pre- and post-tests after a translation course. Their use of three translation principles (fidelity, fluency, and elegance) and techniques (segmentation, conversion, and addition) was measured using EyeLink eye tracking, and participants were interviewed to evaluate their metacognitive reflections on their translations. The results show that the high- and intermediate-level groups completed the sight translation post-test faster than the pre-test. The use of segmentation, restructuring, and conversion techniques was found to benefit students the most in sight translation tasks, and the intermediate-level group outperformed the other groups by making a greater cognitive effort in restructuring and refining their translations to achieve a higher level of competence in the elegance principle. The study provides pedagogical implications and scholarly significance for the application of translation principles and techniques in sight translation between Chinese and English. |
Yao-Ying Lai; David Braze; Maria Mercedes Piñango The time-course of contextual modulation for underspecified meaning Journal Article In: The Mental Lexicon, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 41–93, 2023. @article{Lai2023a, Sentences like (1) “ The singer began the album” are ambiguous between an agentive reading (The singer began recording/playing/etc. the album) and a constitutive reading (The singer's song was the first track). The ambiguity is rooted in the meaning specification of the aspectual-verb class, which demands its complement be construed as a structured individual along a dimension (e.g., spatial, informational, eventive). In (1), the complement can be construed as a set of eventualities (eventive) or musical content (informational). Processing aspectual-verb sentences is shown to involve (a) exhaustive lexical-function retrieval and (b) construal of multiple dimension-specific structured individuals, leading to multiple compositions with agentive and constitutive readings. The ultimate interpretation depends on the biased dimensions in context. Our eye-tracking study comparing sentences in different contexts (agentive vs. constitutive-biasing) shows not only the aspectual-verb composition effect, previously reported for the agentive readings, but also a comparable processing profile for the constitutive readings, a novel finding supporting the unified linguistic analysis and processing implementation of the two readings. Regardless of reading, the composition effect is observable even after the complement has been retrieved, indicating that the fundamental lexico-semantic compositional processes must take place before context can serve as a constraining force. |
Crystal Lee; Andrew Jessop; Amy Bidgood; Michelle S. Peter; Julian M. Pine; Caroline F. Rowland; Samantha Durrant How executive functioning, sentence processing, and vocabulary are related at 3 years of age Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, vol. 233, pp. 1–21, 2023. @article{Lee2023, There is a wealth of evidence demonstrating that executive function (EF) abilities are positively associated with language development during the preschool years, such that children with good executive functions also have larger vocabularies. However, why this is the case remains to be discovered. In this study, we focused on the hypothesis that sentence processing abilities mediate the association between EF skills and receptive vocabulary knowledge, in that the speed of language acquisition is at least partially dependent on a child's processing ability, which is itself dependent on executive control. We tested this hypothesis in longitudinal data from a cohort of 3- and 4-year-old children at three age points (37, 43, and 49 months). We found evidence, consistent with previous research, for a significant association between three EF skills (cognitive flexibility, working memory [as measured by the Backward Digit Span], and inhibition) and receptive vocabulary knowledge across this age range. However, only one of the tested sentence processing abilities (the ability to maintain multiple possible referents in mind) significantly mediated this relationship and only for one of the tested EFs (inhibition). The results suggest that children who are better able to inhibit incorrect responses are also better able to maintain multiple possible referents in mind while a sentence unfolds, a sophisticated sentence processing ability that may facilitate vocabulary learning from complex input. |
Sungyoon Lee The role of spatial ability and attention shifting in reading of illustrated scientific texts: An eye tracking study Journal Article In: Reading Psychology, vol. 44, no. 8, pp. 915–935, 2023. @article{Lee2023b, The purpose of the study is to examine the role of spatial ability and attention shifting in reading of illustrated science texts. Thirty-five fourth/fifth elementary students read two science texts. Prior knowledge and retention/transfer learning outcomes were measured using researcher-developed measures. While reading, students' eye movements were monitored with an eye-tracker. Several eye movement indices were used to reflect reading processes. Fixation count on text/picture was used to represent students' attentional focus on text or picture. Text to text saccades and picture to picture saccades were used to reflect students' information organization. Students' integrative reading behavior was measured by eye movement transitions between text and picture. Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and Visual Perception Skill Test were used to assess attention shifting and visuospatial working memory, respectively. Multiple regressions were conducted to examine whether students' spatial ability and attention shifting predict text processing, picture processing, or integrative processing of text and picture. Hierarchical regressions were conducted to examine whether students' integrative reading make unique and direct contributions to their learning outcomes. The study found that 1) both spatial ability and attention shifting are significant predictors for integrative reading behavior while they are not for other processing behaviors (i.e., text processing and picture processing) and 2) integrative reading behaviors in illustrated text reading account for significant amounts of variance in the transfer outcomes while not in the retention outcomes. This study gives practical implications on the development of visual literacy interventions and on how teachers design their instruction about science text reading. |
Yen-Lin Lee; Hsuan-Chih Chen; Yu-Chen Chan The attentional bias of gelotophobes towards emotion words containing the Chinese character for ‘laugh': An eye-tracking approach Journal Article In: Current Psychology, vol. 42, no. 19, pp. 16330–16343, 2023. @article{Lee2023c, Gelotophobes are typically characterized by the fear of laughter, social withdrawal, and humorlessness, possibly related to negative experiences of being laughed at in the past. The present study seeks to expand our understanding of gelotophobia through a relatively novel approach: using eye-tracking to investigate the attentional bias of gelotophobes and non-gelotophobes towards negative emotion words that do and do not contain the Chinese character for “laugh,” by comparing responses to negative ridicule words (RID), negative contempt words (CONT), positive pleasure words (PLE) and neutral words (NEU). Results of the start time of the first run of fixations showed that gelotophobes and non-gelotophobes both focused on negative words before other words. Gelotophobes' attentional bias towards RID and CONT was greater than that of non-gelotophobes in first gaze duration, percentage of total viewing duration, total fixation count, and run count, suggesting that gelotophobes had greater difficulty in disengaging their attention from negative to neutral words. Non-gelotophobes' attentional bias, however, towards negative ridicule neutral words (RID-NEU) and negative contempt neutral words (CONT-NEU) was greater than that of gelotophobes, suggesting that non-gelotophobes were more able to shift attention from negative to neutral words. Moreover, gelotophobes paid significantly more attention to RID than CONT, suggesting that gelotophobes displayed a longer and stronger attentional bias towards RID (containing the “laugh” character). Interestingly, there was no difference for PLE between gelotophobes and non-gelotophobes. The present study contributes to our understanding of the attentional bias of gelotophobes and non-gelotophobes towards emotion words. |
Rony Lemel; Lilach Shalev; Gal Nitsan; Boaz M. Ben-David Listen up! ADHD slows spoken-word processing in adverse listening conditions: Evidence from eye movements Journal Article In: Research in Developmental Disabilities, vol. 133, pp. 1–15, 2023. @article{Lemel2023, Background: Cognitive skills such as sustained attention, inhibition and working memory are essential for speech processing, yet are often impaired in people with ADHD. Offline measures have indicated difficulties in speech recognition on multi-talker babble (MTB) background for young adults with ADHD (yaADHD). However, to-date no study has directly tested online speech processing in adverse conditions for yaADHD. Aims: Gauging the effects of ADHD on segregating the spoken target-word from its sound-sharing competitor, in MTB and working-memory (WM) load. Methods and procedures: Twenty-four yaADHD and 22 matched controls that differ in sustained attention (SA) but not in WM were asked to follow spoken instructions presented on MTB to touch a named object, while retaining one (low-load) or four (high-load) digit/s for later recall. Their eye fixations were tracked. Outcomes and results: In the high-load condition, speech processing was less accurate and slowed by 140ms for yaADHD. In the low-load condition, the processing advantage shifted from early perceptual to later cognitive stages. Fixation transitions (hesitations) were inflated for yaADHD. Conclusions and implications: ADHD slows speech processing in adverse listening conditions and increases hesitation, as speech unfolds in time. These effects, detected only by online eyetracking, relate to attentional difficulties. We suggest online speech processing as a novel purview on ADHD. What this paper adds?: We suggest speech processing in adverse listening conditions as a novel vantage point on ADHD. Successful speech recognition in noise is essential for performance across daily settings: academic, employment and social interactions. It involves several executive functions, such as inhibition and sustained attention. Impaired performance in these functions is characteristic of ADHD. However, to date there is only scant research on speech processing in ADHD. The current study is the first to investigate online speech processing as the word unfolds in time using eyetracking for young adults with ADHD (yaADHD). This method uncovered slower speech processing in multi-talker babble noise for yaADHD compared to matched controls. The performance of yaADHD indicated increased hesitation between the spoken word and sound-sharing alternatives (e.g., CANdle-CANdy). These delays and hesitations, on the single word level, could accumulate in continuous speech to significantly impair communication in ADHD, with severe implications on their quality of life and academic success. Interestingly, whereas yaADHD and controls were matched on WM standardized tests, WM load appears to affect speech processing for yaADHD more than for controls. This suggests that ADHD may lead to inefficient deployment of WM resources that may not be detected when WM is tested alone. Note that these intricate differences could not be detected using traditional offline accuracy measures, further supporting the use of eyetracking in speech tasks. Finally, communication is vital for active living and wellbeing. We suggest paying attention to speech processing in ADHD in treatment and when considering accessibility and inclusion. |
Hui Li; Xiaolu Wang; Kevin B. Paterson; Hua Zhang; Degao Li Is there a processing advantage for verb-noun collocations in Chinese reading? Evidence from eye movements during reading Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 14, pp. 1–12, 2023. @article{Li2023e, A growing number of studies show a processing advantage for collocations, which are commonly-used juxtapositions of words, such as “joint effort” or “shake hands,” suggesting that skilled readers are keenly perceptive to the occurrence of two words in phrases. With the current research, we report two experiments that used eye movement measures during sentence reading to explore the processing of four-character verb-noun collocations in Chinese, such as 修改文章 (“revise the article”). Experiment 1 compared the processing of these collocations relative to similar four-character expressions that are not collocations (e.g., 修改结尾, “revise the ending”) in neutral contexts and contexts in which the collocation was predictable from the preceding sentence context. Experiment 2 further examined the processing of these four-character collocations, by comparing eye movements for commonly-used “strong” collocations, such as 保护环境 (“protect the environment”), as compared to less commonly-used “weak” collocations, such as 保护自然 (“protect nature”), again in neutral contexts and contexts in which the collocations were highly predictable. The results reveal a processing advantage for both collocations relative to novel expressions, and for “strong” collocations relative to “weak” collocations, which was independent of effects of contextual predictability. We interpret these findings as providing further evidence that readers are highly sensitive to the frequency that words co-occur as a phrase in written language, and that a processing advantage for collocations occurs independently of contextual expectations. |
Nan Li; Dongxia Sun; Suiping Wang Semantic preview effect of relatedness and plausibility in reading Chinese: Evidence from high constraint sentences Journal Article In: Reading and Writing, vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 1319–1338, 2023. @article{Li2023o, In natural reading, the processing of words in fixation is influenced by semantic information obtained through preview (i.e., the semantic preview effect). Previous studies have confirmed that two types of semantic information exhibit the semantic preview effect: semantic association, which is reflected by the semantic relationship between preview words and target words, and semantic integration, which is reflected by the plausibility of preview words in sentences. This study examined whether and how these two types of semantic preview information interact to influence readers' processing of words in the fovea. We referenced high constraint sentences, in which contextual information strongly limits the possible meanings, and the meaning of the target word can be activated before the target word becomes fixated. Thus, the meaning of the target word can be obtained at least as early as when the pretarget word becomes fixated. Therefore, by creating a high constraint context, the reader can obtain the meaning of the upcoming word both through preview and through preactivation within the same preview time window. We tested the preview effect of semantic relatedness when preview words were implausible (Experiment 1) and plausible (Experiment 2). Readers' eye movements were measured. The results showed that the preview effect (shortened fixation duration) of semantic relatedness appeared only when the preview word was plausible. This finding suggests that readers can use semantic information from different sources within the same preview time window and that message-level representations play an immediate and pivotal role in this process. |
Qian Li A preliminary study on the online processing of anticipatory tonal coarticulation – Evidence from eye movements Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 14, pp. 1–8, 2023. @article{Li2023g, While the f0 realization of lexical tones vary extensively in contexts, little has been known on how listeners process the variation in lexical tones due to contextual effects such as tonal coarticulation in spoken word recognition. This study thus aims to fill the knowledge gap in tone perception with evidence from two types of anticipatory tonal coarticulation effects in Tianjin Mandarin, i.e., the slope raising effect due to a following low-falling tone and the overall-height raising effect due to a following low-dipping tone. An eye-tracking experiment with the Visual World Paradigm was carried out to compare participants' eye movements when they heard targets in three types of anticipatory raising conditions, i.e., the Slope Raising condition, the Overall-height Raising condition, as well as the No Raising condition (the baseline). The eye movement results showed significant differences in the proportion of looks to target between the Slope Raising condition versus the other two conditions, whereas the Overall-height Raising condition did not differ significantly from the No Raising condition. The findings thus suggest the facilitatory effect of tonal coarticulation cues in the anticipation of the upcoming tones, but listeners in this study seemed to be only sensitive to the raising in the f0 slope rather than the overall raising in the f0 height. |
Shuang Li; Xiuhong Tong; Wei Shena Influence of lexical tone similarity on spoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese: Evidence from eye tracking Journal Article In: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 66, no. 9, pp. 3453–3472, 2023. @article{Li2023h, Purpose: Using the visual world paradigm with the eye-tracking technique, this study examined the extent to which lexical tone similarity influences spoken word recognition. Method: In two experiments, participants were audibly presented with a target word and visually presented with the same target word, a tonal competitor, and two distractors, and they were required to identify the target word. In Experiment 1, the two tonal competitors shared either acoustically highly similar tones (e.g., target word: /yang2tai2/, “balcony” vs. competitor: /yang3zi3/, “adopted son”) or acoustically lowly similar tones (e.g., target word: /yang2tai2/, “balcony” vs. competitor:/yang4ben3/, “sample”). In Experiment 2, the acoustic similarity of the target words and the tonal competitors shared either acoustically highly similar tones or acoustically lowly similar tones or identical tones (e.g., target word: /yang2tai2/, “balcony” vs. competitor: /yang2mao2/, “wool”). Results: The results of the two experiments consistently demonstrated a graded tonal competitor effect, in which acoustically highly similar tonal competitors attracted more visual attention than acoustically lowly similar tonal competitors. Conclusion: Tonal similarity plays a graded constraining role in spoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese. |
Xinjing Li; Qingqing Qu Verbal working memory capacity modulates semantic and phonological prediction in spoken comprehension Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, pp. 1–10, 2023. @article{Li2023j, Mounting evidence suggests that people may use multiple cues to predict different levels of representation (e.g., semantic, syntactic, and phonological) during language comprehension. One question that has been less investigated is the relationship between general cognitive processing and the efficiency of prediction at various linguistic levels, such as semantic and phonological levels. To address this research gap, the present study investigated how working memory capacity (WMC) modulates different kinds of prediction behavior (i.e., semantic prediction and phonological prediction) in the visual world. Chinese speakers listened to the highly predictable sentences that contained a highly predictable target word, and viewed a visual display of objects. The visual display of objects contained a target object corresponding to the predictable word, a semantic or a phonological competitor that was semantically or phonologically related to the predictable word, and an unrelated object. We conducted a Chinese version of the reading span task to measure verbal WMC and grouped participants into high- and low-span groups. Participants showed semantic and phonological prediction with comparable size in both groups during language comprehension, with earlier semantic prediction in the high-span group, and a similar time course of phonological prediction in both groups. These results suggest that verbal working memory modulates predictive processing in language comprehension. |
Yutong Li; Hanwen Shi; Shan Li; Lei Gao; Xiaolei Gao The adjustment of complexity on sarcasm processing in Chinese: Evidence from reading time indicators Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 1–13, 2023. @article{Li2023m, It is controversial whether sarcasm processing should go through literal meaning processing. There is also a lack of eye movement evidence for Chinese sarcasm processing. In this study, we used eye movement experiments to explore the processing differences between sarcastic and literal meaning in Chinese text and whether this was regulated by sentence complexity. We manipulated the variables of complexity and literality. We recorded 33 participants' eye movements when they were reading Chinese text and the results were analyzed by a linear mixed model. We found that, in the early stage of processing, there was no difference between the processing time of the sarcastic meaning and the literal meaning of simple remarks, whereas for complex remarks, the time needed to process the sarcastic meaning was longer than that needed to process the literal meaning. In the later stage of processing, regardless of complexity, the processing time of the sarcastic meaning was longer than that of the literal meaning. These results suggest that sarcastic speech processing in Chinese is influenced by literal meaning, and the effect of literal meaning on sarcastic remarks is regulated by complexity. Sarcastic meaning was expressed differently in different stages of processing. These results support the hierarchical salience hypothesis of the serial modular model. |
Feifei Liang; Qi Gao; Xin Li; Yongsheng Wang; Xuejun Bai; Simon P. Liversedge In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 98–115, 2023. @article{Liang2023b, Word spacing is important in guiding eye movements during spaced alphabetic reading. Chinese is unspaced and it remains unclear as to how Chinese readers segment and identify words in reading. We conducted two parallel experiments to investigate whether the positional probabilities of the initial and the final characters of a multicharacter word affected word segmentation and identification in Chinese reading. Two-character words were selected as targets. In Experiment 1, the initial character's positional probability was manipulated as being either high or low, and the final character was kept identical across the two conditions. In Experiment 2, an analogous manipulation was made for the final character of the target word. We recorded adults' and children's eye movements when they read sentences containing these words. In Experiment 1, reading times on targets did not differ in the two conditions for both children and adults, providing no evidence that a word initial character's positional probability contributes to word segmentation. In Experiment 2, adults had shorter reading times and made fewer refixations on targets that comprised final characters with high relative to low positional probabilities; a similar effect was observed in children, but this effect had a slower time course. The results demonstrate that the positional probability of the final (but not the initial) character of a word influences segmentation commitments in reading. It suggests that Chinese readers identify where a currently fixated word ends, and via this commitment, by default, they identify where the subsequent word begins |
Agnieszka Lijewska The influence of semantic bias on triple non-identical cognates during reading: Evidence from trilinguals' eye movements Journal Article In: Second Language Research, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 1235 –1263, 2023. @article{Lijewska2023, The current study investigated how the processing of triple cognates (words sharing form and meaning across three languages) is modulated by the semantic bias of sentence context in a reading task. In the study, Polish–German–English trilinguals read English sentences while their eye movements were monitored. The sentences were either semantically biased (high-context) or neutral (low-context) towards target words. The targets were either Polish–German–English cognates whose cross-language form overlap was incomplete (e.g. DIAMENT–DIAMANT–DIAMOND) or English-only controls (e.g. KURCZAK–HÄHNCHEN–CHICKEN). The results revealed a significant effect of context in gaze durations and in total reading time. Importantly, no cognate facilitation effect was identified in any reading measure. The gaze duration data additionally revealed that English-only controls were read slower in low-context sentences than in high-context sentences but gaze durations for cognates were not affected by the sentence context. Thus, prior bilingual findings were only partially replicated in the current study with trilinguals. This suggests that bilingual models of language processing should be carefully adapted to trilinguals. The current data may also mean that non-identical cognates (even those shared across three languages) induce relatively small effects and large samples of participants and items may be needed to detect such effects across reading measures. |
Eva Puimège; Maribel Montero Perez; Elke Peters Promoting L2 acquisition of multiword units through textually enhanced audiovisual input: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Second Language Research, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 471–492, 2023. @article{Puimege2023a, This study examines the effect of textual enhancement on learners' attention to and learning of multiword units from captioned audiovisual input. We adopted a within-participants design in which 28 learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) watched a captioned video containing enhanced (underlined) and unenhanced multiword units. Using eye-tracking, we measured learners' online processing of the multiword units as they appeared in the captions. Form recall pre- and posttests measured learners' acquisition of the target items. The results of mixed effects models indicate that enhanced items received greater visual attention, with longer reading times, less single word skipping and more rereading. Further, a positive relationship was found between amount of visual attention and learning odds: items fixated longer, particularly during the first pass, were more likely to be recalled in an immediate posttest. Our findings provide empirical support for the positive effect of visual attention on form recall of multiword units encountered in captioned television. The results also suggest that item difficulty and amount of attention were more important than textual enhancement in predicting learning gains. |
Ying Que; Yueyuan Zheng; Janet H. Hsiao; Xiao Hu Studying the effect of self-selected background music on reading task with eye movements Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1–18, 2023. @article{Que2023, Using background music (BGM) during learning is a common behavior, yet whether BGM can facilitate or hinder learning remains inconclusive and the underlying mechanism is largely an open question. This study aims to elucidate the effect of self-selected BGM on reading task for learners with different characteristics. Particularly, learners' reading task performance, metacognition, and eye movements were examined, in relation to their personal traits including language proficiency, working memory capacity, music experience and personality. Data were collected from a between-subject experiment with 100 non-native English speakers who were randomly assigned into two groups. Those in the experimental group read English passages with music of their own choice played in the background, while those in the control group performed the same task in silence. Results showed no salient differences on passage comprehension accuracy or metacognition between the two groups. Comparisons on fine-grained eye movement measures reveal that BGM imposed heavier cognitive load on post-lexical processes but not on lexical processes. It was also revealed that students with higher English proficiency level or more frequent BGM usage in daily self-learning/reading experienced less cognitive load when reading with their BGM, whereas students with higher working memory capacity (WMC) invested more mental effort than those with lower WMC in the BGM condition. These findings further scientific understanding of how BGM interacts with cognitive tasks in the foreground, and provide practical guidance for learners and learning environment designers on making the most of BGM for instruction and learning. |
Begoña Arechabaleta Regulez; Silvina Montrul Production, acceptability, and online comprehension of Spanish differential object marking by heritage speakers and L2 learners Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 14, pp. 1–19, 2023. @article{Regulez2023, We analyzed the production, acceptability and online comprehension of Spanish differential object marking (DOM) by two groups of bilingual speakers living in the U.S.: heritage speakers and L2 learners. DOM is the overt marking of direct objects that are higher on the animacy and referentiality scales, such as animate and specific objects in Spanish, marked by the preposition a (Juan ve a María ‘Juan sees DOM María'). Previous studies have reported variability and high omission rates of obligatory DOM in bilingual situations where Spanish is in contact with a non-DOM language.Our study combined different methodologies to tap knowledge of DOM in the two groups. The results showed that heritage speakers and L2 learners (1) exhibited variability with DOM in production (in two oral tasks), comprehension (in an acceptability judgement task), and processing (in an eye-tracking reading task); (2) can integrate DOM into their production, judgments and processing, but they do so inconsistently, and (3) type of task and type of sentence each have an effect on speakers' use of DOM. |
Anja Rettig; Ulrich Schiefele Relations between reading motivation and reading efficiency—evidence from a longitudinal eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 4, pp. 685–709, 2023. @article{Rettig2023, Studies on the relation between children's reading motivation and early developmental stages of reading competence are rare and have neglected on-line measures of reading skill (e.g., eye movements indicating word decoding). For this reason, we investigated the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation on the efficiency of reading processes based on eye-movement data. Moreover, we examined reading efficiency as a mediator of the relation between motivation and comprehension. German elementary school students in Grades 1–3 (N = 131) were tested on three measurement occasions. Specifically, we assessed reading motivation, reading amount, and sentence comprehension at Time 1, reading efficiency at Time 2 (2 months after Time 1), and all of the variables again at Time 3 (10 months after Time 2). Reading efficiency was assessed while children read age-appropriate sentences and comprised measures of first-fixation duration, gaze duration, total reading time, forward-saccade length, and refixation probability. Linear and cross-lagged panel models showed significant favorable relations between intrinsic reading motivation (operationalized as involvement and enjoyment of reading), but not extrinsic reading motivation (operationalized as striving to outperform one's peers), and most measures of reading efficiency, while controlling for gender, grade level, and reading amount. The reverse effects of reading-efficiency indicators on intrinsic reading motivation were all significant. Moreover, the test of the mediation model revealed a significant indirect effect of Time 1 intrinsic reading motivation on Time 3 sentence comprehension mediated by Time 2 reading efficiency. We concluded that intrinsic reading motivation, in contrast to extrinsic reading motivation, facilitates reading comprehension through its effect on reading efficiency, independent of variations in reading amount. |
Tracy Reuter; Carolyn Mazzei; Casey Lew-Williams; Lauren Emberson Infants' lexical comprehension and lexical anticipation abilities are closely linked in early language development Journal Article In: Infancy, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 532–549, 2023. @article{Reuter2023, Theories across cognitive domains propose that anticipating upcoming sensory input supports information processing. In line with this view, prior findings indicate that adults and children anticipate upcoming words during real-time language processing, via such processes as prediction and priming. However, it is unclear if anticipatory processes are strictly an outcome of prior language development or are more entwined with language learning and development. We operationalized this theoretical question as whether developmental emergence of comprehension of lexical items occurs before or concurrently with the anticipation of these lexical items. To this end, we tested infants of ages 12, 15, 18, and 24 months (N = 67) on their abilities to comprehend and anticipate familiar nouns. In an eye-tracking task, infants viewed pairs of images and heard sentences with either informative words (e.g., eat) that allowed them to anticipate an upcoming noun (e.g., cookie), or uninformative words (e.g., see). Findings indicated that infants' comprehension and anticipation abilities are closely linked over developmental time and within individuals. Importantly, we do not find evidence for lexical comprehension in the absence of lexical anticipation. Thus, anticipatory processes are present early in infants' second year, suggesting they are a part of language development rather than solely an outcome of it. |
Stephanie Rich; Jesse A. Harris Global expectations mediate local constraint: Evidence from concessive structures Journal Article In: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 302–327, 2023. @article{Rich2023, Numerous studies have found facilitation for lexical processing in highly constraining contexts. However, less is known about cases in which immediately preceding (local) and broader (global) contextual constraint conflict. In two eye-tracking while reading experiments, local and global context were manipulated independently, creating a critical condition where local context biases towards a word that is incongruent with global context. Global context consisted of a clause introduced by a concessive marker generating broad expectations about upcoming material. Experiment 1 compared high- and low-predictability critical words, whereas Experiment 2 held the critical word constant and manipulated the preceding verb to impose different levels of local constraint. Facilitation from local context was reduced when it was incongruent with global context, supporting models in which information from global and local context is rapidly integrated during early lexical processing over models that would initially prioritise only local or only global context. |
Miriam Rivero-Contreras; Paul E. Engelhardt; Pablo Delgado; David Saldaña Does the timing of visual support affect sentence comprehension? An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Education, pp. 1–20, 2023. @article{RiveroContreras2023, Purpose: Recent research suggests that visual elements improve sentence processing for students, even at the university level. However, few studies have systematically examined the timing of visual support in reading. Method: We examined the impact of visual support and its timing on sentence comprehension in a sample of 40 typically developing university students. Across 60 sentences, half with images and half without, participants either viewed images simultaneously with sentences or before sentences. Word frequency was also manipulated. Results: Results showed that visual support facilitated sentence processing and that participants who viewed images before sentences exhibited a lower probability of regressions. Conclusion: In conclusion, incorporating images with text can benefit language comprehension. Moreover, the results suggest implications regarding the timing of visual support. |
Miriam Rivero-Contreras; Paul E. Engelhardt; David Saldaña Do easy-to-read adaptations really facilitate sentence processing for adults with a lower level of education? An experimental eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Learning and Instruction, vol. 84, pp. 1–13, 2023. @article{RiveroContreras2023a, The Easy-to-Read guidelines recommend visual support and lexical simplification to facilitate text processing, but few studies have empirically verified the efficacy of these guidelines. This study examined the influence of these recommendations on sentence processing by examining eye movements at the text- and word-level in adult readers. We tested 30 non-university adults (low education level) and 30 university adults (high education level). The experimental task consisted of 60 sentences. Half were accompanied by an image and half were not, and half contained a low-frequency word and half a high-frequency word. Results showed that visual support and lexical simplification facilitated processing in both groups of adults, and non-university adults were significantly slower than university adults at sentence processing. However, lexical simplification resulted in faster processing in the non-university adults' group. Conclusions focus on the mechanisms in which both adaptations benefit readers, and practical implications for reading comprehension. |
Camilo R. Ronderos; Ernesto Guerra; Pia Knoeferle When sequence matters: The processing of contextually biased German verb–object metaphors Journal Article In: Language and Cognition, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 1–28, 2023. @article{Ronderos2023, Several studies have investigated the comprehension of decontextualized English nominal metaphors. However, not much is known about how contextualized, non-nominal, non-English metaphors are processed, and how this might inform existing theories of metaphor comprehension. In the current work, we investigate the effects of context and of sequential order for an under-studied type of construction: German verb–object metaphors. In two visual-world, eye-tracking experiments, we manipulated whether a discourse context biased a spoken target utterance toward a metaphoric or a literal interpretation. We also manipulated the order of verb and object in the target utterances (e.g., Stefan interviewt eine Hyäne , ‘Stefan interviews a hyena', verb→object; and Stefan wird eine Hyäne interviewen , ‘Stefan will a hyena interview', object→verb). Experiment 1 shows that contextual cues interacted with sequential order, mediating the processing of verb–object metaphors: When the context biased toward a metaphoric interpretation, participants readily understood the object metaphorically for the verb→object sequence, whereas they likely first understood it literally for the object→verb sequence. Crucially, no such effect of sequential order was found when context biased toward a literal interpretation. Experiment 2 suggests that differences in processing found in Experiment 1 were brought on by the interaction of discourse context and sequential order and not by sequential order alone. We propose ways in which existing theoretical views could be extended to account for these findings. Overall, our study shows the importance of context during figurative language comprehension and highlights the need to test the predictions of metaphor theories on non-English and non-nominal metaphors. |
Mylène Ross-Plourde; Mylène Lachance-Grzela; Andréanne Charbonneau; Mylène Dumont; Annie Roy-Charland Parental stereotypes and cognitive processes: Evidence for a double standard in parenting roles when reading texts Journal Article In: Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 74–82, 2023. @article{RossPlourde2023, While the characteristics associated with fathers have taken on more maternal traits more recently, a similar shift has not been observed for maternal characteristics. The role of mother remains stereotyped, and those who do not adhere to this often face criticism. This study examines the impact of parental stereotypes on the cognitive processes associated with reading. A sample of 32 individuals read 24 experimental passages introducing a parent (mother or father) in a traditional or non-traditional role, and in a neutral or disambiguating context. Results show a significant interaction between the type of role and gender of the parent on reading times. Simple main effect tests revealed that for traditional roles, fixation durations were longer when the protagonist was a father than when the protagonist was a mother. There was no effect of role type for fathers, yet for mothers, fixation durations were longer when they were depicted in non-traditional roles than when they were depicted in traditional roles. This disruption of information processing of schema incongruent content suggests that mothers' parenting stereotypes remain anchored in society and are more rigid than those of fathers, supporting the idea of a double standard in parenting roles. |
Satu Saalasti; Jussi Alho; Juha M. Lahnakoski; Mareike Bacha-Trams; Enrico Glerean; Iiro P. Jääskeläinen; Uri Hasson; Mikko Sams Lipreading a naturalistic narrative in a female population: Neural characteristics shared with listening and reading Journal Article In: Brain and Behavior, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 1–17, 2023. @article{Saalasti2023, Introduction: Few of us are skilled lipreaders while most struggle with the task. Neural substrates that enable comprehension of connected natural speech via lipreading are not yet well understood. Methods: We used a data-driven approach to identify brain areas underlying the lipreading of an 8-min narrative with participants whose lipreading skills varied extensively (range 6–100% |
Nuria Sagarra; Joseph V. Casillas Practice beats age: Co-activation shapes heritage speakers' lexical access more than age of onset Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 14, pp. 1–18, 2023. @article{Sagarra2023, Probabilistic associations make language processing efficient and are honed through experience. However, it is unclear what language experience factors explain the non-monolingual processing behaviors typical of L2 learners and heritage speakers (HSs). We investigated whether AoO, language proficiency, and language use affect the recognition of Spanish stress-tense suffix associations involving a stressed syllable that cues a present suffix (SALta “s/he jumps”) and an unstressed syllable that cues a past suffix (SALtó “s/he jumped”). Adult Spanish-English HSs, English-Spanish L2 learners, and Spanish monolinguals saw a paroxytone verb (stressed initial syllable) and an oxytone verb (unstressed initial syllable), listened to a sentence containing one of the verbs, and chose the one they heard. Spanish proficiency measured grammatical and lexical knowledge, and Spanish use assessed percentage of current usage. Both bilingual groups were comparable in Spanish proficiency and use. Eye-tracking data showed that all groups fixated on target verbs above chance before hearing the syllable containing the suffix, except the HSs in the oxytones. Monolinguals fixated on targets more and earlier, although at a slower rate, than HSs and L2 learners; in turn, HSs fixated on targets more and earlier than L2 learners, except in oxytones. Higher proficiency increased target fixations in HSs (oxytones) and L2 learners (paroxytones), but greater use only increased target fixations in HSs (oxytones). Taken together, our data show that HSs' lexical access depends more on number of lexical competitors (co-activation of two L1 lexica) and type (phonotactic) frequency than token (lexical) frequency or AoO. We discuss the contribution of these findings to models in phonology, lexical access, language processing, language prediction, and human cognition. |
Johanna Abendroth; Tobias Richter Reading perspectives moderate text-belief consistency effects in eye movements and comprehension Journal Article In: Discourse Processes, vol. 60, no. 2, pp. 119–140, 2023. @article{Abendroth2023, Readers often prioritize processing and comprehension of information perceived as relevant to a particular intention. Using a repeated-measurement study, we investigated how readers' prior beliefs and external reading perspectives influence processing and comprehension of belief-relevant texts on two socioscientific controversies. University students read belief-relevant texts from a belief-consistent perspective in one experimental session and from a belief-inconsistent reading perspective in another. Eye tracking was used to measure immediate and delayed processing and a sentence verification task was used to measure comprehension. Results revealed longer first-pass reading times for belief-inconsistent claims compared to belief-consistent claims, especially in the belief-inconsistent reading perspective. Longer lookbacks on belief-consistent claims were found in the belief-consistent reading perspective but similar lookback times for both types of claims in the belief-inconsistent reading perspective. We further found better comprehension for belief-consistent information in the belief-consistent reading perspective but balanced comprehension levels in the belief-inconsistent reading perspective. |
Cengiz Acartürk; Ayşegül Özkan; Tuğçe Nur Pekçetin; Zuhal Ormanoğlu; Bilal Kırkıcı TURead: An eye movement dataset of Turkish reading Journal Article In: Behavior Research Methods, pp. 1–24, 2023. @article{Acartuerk2023, In this study, we present TURead, an eye movement dataset of silent and oral sentence reading in Turkish, an agglutinative language with a shallow orthography understudied in reading research. TURead provides empirical data to investigate the relationship between morphology and oculomotor control. We employ a target-word approach in which target words are manipulated by word length and by the addition of two commonly used suffixes in Turkish. The dataset contains well-established eye movement variables; prelexical characteristics such as vowel harmony and bigram-trigram frequencies and word features, such as word length, predictability, frequency, eye voice span measures, Cloze test scores of the root word and suffix predictabilities, as well as the scores obtained from two working memory tests. Our findings on fixation parameters and word characteristics are in line with the patterns reported in the relevant literature. |
Victoria I. Adedeji; Julie A. Kirkby; Martin R. Vasilev; Timothy J. Slattery Children's Reading of Sublexical Units in Years Three to Five: A Combined Analysis of Eye-Movements and Voice Recording Journal Article In: Scientific Studies of Reading, pp. 1–20, 2023. @article{Adedeji2023, Purpose: Children progress from making grapheme–phoneme connections to making grapho-syllabic connections before whole-word connections during reading development (Ehri, 2005a). More is known about the development of grapheme–phoneme connections than is known about grapho-syllabic connections. Therefore, we explored the trajectory of syllable use in English developing readers during oral reading. Method: Fifty-one English-speaking children (mean age: 8.9 years, 55% females, 88% monolinguals) in year groups three, four, and five read aloud sentences with an embedded target word, while their eye movements and voices were recorded. The targets contained six letters and were either one or two syllables. Result: Children in grade five had shorter gaze duration, shorter articulation duration, and larger spatial eye-voice span (EVS) than children in grade four. Children in grades three and four did not significantly differ on these measures. A syllable number effect was found for gaze duration but not for articulation duration and spatial EVS. Interestingly, one-syllable words took longer to process compared to two-syllable words, suggesting that more syllables may not always signify greater processing difficulty. Conclusion: Overall, children are sensitive to sublexical reading units; however, due to sample and stimuli limitations, these findings should be interpreted with caution and further research conducted. |
Rania Al-aqarbeh Transfer of L1 strategies in L2 processing of long-distance dependencies Journal Article In: Italian Journal of Linguistics, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 3–42, 2023. @article{Alaqarbeh2023, This study investigated the online processing of the relative clause dependency. The participants were native speakers of southern Jordanian Arabic, a grammatical resumption language, and were advanced learners of English as a second language, an intrusive resumption language. Another relevant difference between these two languages is that resumption in southern Jordanian Arabic ameliorates the relative clause island effect, while it does not in English. Two offline acceptability judgment tasks and two online eyetracking reading tasks were conducted in Jordanian Arabic (L1) and English (L2). The results revealed that the L2 learners had the pre-requisite grammatical knowledge to process the relative clause dependency in English. They seemed to posit a resumptive pronoun to resolve the dependency inside a relative clause island in their L1 and L2 alike. This result demonstrated that the L2 learners in the current study exhibited detailed syntactic processing. By doing so, they diverged from the processing behavior native speakers of English exhibited in processing similar stimuli in previous studies (Traxler & Pickering 1996; Omaki & Schulz 2011). In conclusion, the different processing behavior the L2 learners in this study manifested can be attributed to L1 transfer rather than to shallower, less detailed syntactic processing as proposed by the Shallow Structure Hypothesis. |
Abdulaziz Altamimi; Kathy Conklin Effects of pre-reading study and reading exposure on the learning and processing of collocations Journal Article In: TESOL Quarterly, pp. 1–23, 2023. @article{Altamimi2023, Little is known about the effect of pre-reading exposure on collocational learning. This study used eye-tracking and offline measures (form recall and recognition) to explore the effectiveness of pre-reading study and reading exposure on the processing and learning of novel collocations. Three learning conditions were evaluated: reading-only (target items were simply embedded in sentences), study-only (explicit learning of target items), and pre-reading study plus reading (explicit learning of target items followed by reading). Pre-reading study plus reading was the most effective learning condition, while reading-only was more effective than study-only. More specifically, studying collocations before reading led to increased attention when encountering the same collocation in subsequent reading. Furthermore, greater attention, in the pre-reading study phase, as indicated by fixations, was associated with larger collocational gains. |
Esther Álvarez-García; José Manuel Igoa González Lexico-Semantic Influence on Syntactic Processing: An Eye-Tracking Study with Spanish Relative Clauses Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 1–39, 2023. @article{AlvarezGarcia2023, This paper investigates the interaction between lexicosemantic and syntactic information in sentence processing by examining the online comprehension of Spanish relative clauses (RCs) of both restrictive and non-restrictive types. A corpus study shows that, in Spanish, a RC may be introduced by different function words (called relativizers), which differ in lexical frequency, as well as semantic features. Based on these facts, an eye-tracking experiment was conducted with the aim of analyzing whether lexicosemantic information could influence sentence processing at the early stages. The results report an early influence of lexicosemantic information not only when activating a relativizer but also when integrating it within the syntactic structure. Additionally, the semantic role played by each RC type seems to constrain sentence processing at different regions. Our results favor an interactive view of language processing, according to which language comprehension is guided from the early stages by different kinds of linguistic information rather than syntactic information alone. |
Simona Amenta; Jana Hasenäcker; Davide Crepaldi; Marco Marelli Prediction at the intersection of sentence context and word form: Evidence from eye-movements in reading Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 1081–1092, 2023. @article{Amenta2023, A key issue in language processing is how we recognize and understand words in sentences. Research on sentence reading indicates that the time we need to read a word depends on how (un)expected it is. Research on single word recognition shows that each word also has its own recognition dynamics based on the relation between its orthographic form and its meaning. It is not clear, however, how these sentence-level and word-level dynamics interact. In the present study, we examine the joint impact of these sources of information during sentence reading. We analyze existing eye-tracking and self-paced reading data (Frank et al., 2013, Behavior Research Methods, 45[4], 1182–1190) to investigate the interplay of sentence-level prediction (operationalized as Surprisal) and word Orthography-Semantics Consistency in activating word meaning in sentence processing. Results indicate that both Surprisal and Orthography-Semantics Consistency exert an influence on several reading measures. The shape of the observed interaction differs, but the results give compelling indication for a general trade-off between expectations based on sentence context and cues to meaning from word orthography. |
Rhona M. Amos; Robert J. Hartsuiker; Kilian G. Seeber; Martin J. Pickering Purposeful listening in challenging conditions: A study of prediction during consecutive interpreting in noise Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 18, pp. 1–27, 2023. @article{Amos2023, Prediction is often used during language comprehension. However, studies of prediction have tended to focus on L1 listeners in quiet conditions. Thus, it is unclear how listeners predict outside the laboratory and in specific communicative settings. Here, we report two eyetracking studies which used a visual-world paradigm to investigate whether prediction during a consecutive interpreting task differs from prediction during a listening task in L2 listeners, and whether L2 listeners are able to predict in the noisy conditions that might be associated with this communicative setting. In a first study, thirty-six Dutch-English bilinguals either just listened to, or else listened to and then consecutively interpreted, predictable sentences presented on speech-shaped sound. In a second study, another thirty-six Dutch-English bilinguals carried out the same tasks in clear speech. Our results suggest that L2 listeners predict the meaning of upcoming words in noisy conditions. However, we did not find that predictive eye movements depended on task, nor that L2 listeners predicted upcoming word form. We also did not find a difference in predictive patterns when we compared our two studies. Thus, L2 listeners predict in noisy circumstances, supporting theories which posit that prediction regularly takes place in comprehension, but we did not find evidence that a subsequent production task or noise affects semantic prediction. |
Rhona M. Amos; Kilian G. Seeber; Martin J. Pickering Student interpreters predict meaning while simultaneously interpreting - even before training Journal Article In: Interpreting, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 211–238, 2023. @article{Amos2023a, Prediction has long been considered advantageous in simultaneous interpreting, as it may allow interpreters to comprehend more rapidly and focus on their own production. However, evidence of prediction in simultaneous interpreting to date is relatively limited. In addition, it is unclear whether training in simultaneous interpreting influences predictive processing during a simultaneous interpreting task. We report on a longitudinal eye-tracking study which measured the timing and extent of prediction in students before and after two semesters of training in simultaneous interpreting. The students simultaneously interpreted sentences containing a highly predictable word as they viewed a screen containing four pictures, one of which depicted a highly predictable object. They made predictive eye movements to the highly predictable object both before and after their training in simultaneous interpreting. However, we did not find evidence that training influenced the timing or the magnitude of their prediction. |
Sally Andrews; Aaron Veldre; Roslyn Wong; Lili Yu; Erik D. Reichle How do task demands and aging affect lexical prediction during online reading of natural texts? Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 407–430, 2023. @article{Andrews2023, Facilitated identification of predictable words during online reading has been attributed to the generation of predictions about upcoming words. But highly predictable words are relatively infrequent in natural texts, raising questions about the utility and ubiquity of anticipatory prediction strategies. This study investigated the contribution of task demands and aging to predictability effects for short natural texts from the Provo corpus. The eye movements of 49 undergraduate students (mean age 21.2) and 46 healthy older adults (mean age 70.8) were recorded while they read these passages in two conditions: (a) reading for meaning to answer occasional comprehension questions; (b) proofreading to detect “transposed letter” lexical errors (e. g., clam instead of calm) in intermixed filler passages. The results suggested that the young adults, but not the older adults, engaged anticipatory prediction strategies to detect semantic errors in the proofreading condition, but neither age group showed any evidence of costs of prediction failures. Rather, both groups showed facilitated reading times for unexpected words that appeared in a high constraint within-sentence position. These findings suggest that predictability effects for natural texts reflect partial, probabilistic expectancies rather than anticipatory prediction of specific words. |