Reading and Language Eye-Tracking Publications
All EyeLink eye tracker reading and language research publications up until 2024 (with some early 2025s) are listed below by year. You can search the eye-tracking 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 research articles, please email us!
2024 |
Chuanli Zang; Shuangshuang Wang; Xuejun Bai; Guoli Yan; Simon P. Liversedge Parafoveal processing of Chinese four-character idioms and phrases in reading: Evidence for multi-constituent unit hypothesis Journal Article In: Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 136, pp. 1–26, 2024. @article{Zang2024,The perceptual span in Chinese reading extends one character to the left and three to the right of the point of fixation. Thus, four-character idioms and phrases often extend rightward beyond these limits during reading. We investigated whether such idioms, frequent phrases and equibiased strings are processed parafoveally as Multi-Constituent Units (MCUs). Using the boundary paradigm in Experiments 1 and 2, we separately manipulated preview (identities or pseudocharacters) of the first two and the last two characters of idioms and frequently used phrases. In Experiment 3, we examined processing of strings judged to be a single lexical unit, equi-biased ambiguous strings and matched unambiguous multi-word strings. Experiments 1 and 2 produced greater preview benefit for the final two characters when the first two characters were presented after identity rather than pseudocharacter previews. In Experiment 3, preview effects were largest for single units, reduced for equi-biased strings and smallest for multi-word strings. Together the results demonstrate that four-character idioms and frequently used phrases are processed as MCUs. |
Chuanli Zang; Shuangshuang Wang; Yu Guan; Zhu Meng; Manman Zhang; Simon P. Liversedge Does meaningful background speech modulate predictability effects during Chinese reading? Journal Article In: Journal of Cognitive Psychology, pp. 1–14, 2024. @article{Zang2024a,Previous research indicates that background speech disrupts reading comprehension processes, but it remains unclear whether the disruption derives from semantic or phonological speech properties, and whether it affects early lexical processing or later sentence integration. Native Chinese speaking participants read sentences containing high- or low-predictability words under meaningful Chinese speech, meaningless Uyghur speech or silence conditions. Results showed that Chinese but not Uyghur speech produced increased total fixations compared to reading in silence, suggesting disruption was semantic in nature. While a standard predictability effect was comparable across background speech conditions in target word analyses, this effect disappeared in the Chinese speech condition in later measures and regions. The findings suggest that Chinese background speech may delay higher order (post-lexical) processing associated with sentence integration during reading, with implications for the Interference-by-Process hypothesis. |
Lei Zhang; Liangyue Kang; Wanying Chen; Fang Xie; Kayleigh L. Warrington Parafoveal processing of orthography, phonology, and semantics during Chinese reading: Effects of foveal load Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 14, no. 5, pp. 1–19, 2024. @article{Zhang2024d,The foveal load hypothesis assumes that the ease (or difficulty) of processing the currently fixated word in a sentence can influence processing of the upcoming word(s), such that parafoveal preview is reduced when foveal load is high. Recent investigations using pseudo-character previews reported an absence of foveal load effects in Chinese reading. Substantial Chinese studies to date provide some evidence to show that parafoveal words may be processed orthographically, phonologically, or semantically. However, it has not yet been established whether parafoveal processing is equivalent in terms of the type of parafoveal information extracted (orthographic, phonological, semantic) under different foveal load conditions. Accordingly, the present study investigated this issue with two experiments. Participants' eye movements were recorded as they read sentences in which foveal load was manipulated by placing a low- or high-frequency word N preceding a critical word. The preview validity of the upcoming word N + 1 was manipulated in Experiment 1, and word N + 2 in Experiment 2. The parafoveal preview was either identical to word N + 1(or word N + 2); orthographically related; phonologically related; semantically related; or an unrelated pseudo-character. The results showed robust main effects of frequency and preview type on both N + 1 and N + 2. Crucially, however, interactions between foveal load and preview type were absent, indicating that foveal load does not modulate the types of parafoveal information processed during Chinese reading. |
Qian Zhang; Jinfeng Ding; Zhenyu Zhang; Xiaohong Yang; Yufang Yang The effect of congruent emotional context in emotional word processing during discourse comprehension Journal Article In: Journal of Neurolinguistics, pp. 1–18, 2024. @article{Zhang2024g,This study examined the effect of emotional context on the semantic memory of subsequent emotional words during discourse comprehension in two eye-tracking experiments. Four-sentence discourses were used as experimental materials. The first three sentences established an emotional or neutral context, while the fourth contained an emotional target word consistent with the preceding emotional context's valence. The discourses were presented twice using the text change paradigm, where the target words were replaced with strongly - or weakly-related words during the second presentation. Thus, four conditions were included in the present study: Emotional-strongly-related, Emotional-weakly-related, Neutral- strongly-related and Neutral-weakly-related. In Experiment 1, negative contexts and negative target words were used, whereas in Experiment 2, positive contexts and positive target words were used. The results revealed a semantic relatedness effect, whereby the strongly-related words have lower change detection accuracy, longer reading times and more fixations in both Experiments 1 and 2. Furthermore, across both experiments, the magnitude of the semantic relatedness effect was greater in the emotionally congruent contexts than in the neutral contexts. These results suggest that emotional context could increase efforts to change the discrimination of subsequent words and demonstrate an important role of emotional context on semantic memory during discourse processing. |
Yuhong Zhang; Qin Li; Sujal Nahata; Tasnia Jamal; Shih Cheng; Gert Cauwenberghs; Tzyy Ping Jung Integrating large language model, eeg, and eye-tracking for word-level neural state classification in reading comprehension Journal Article In: IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, vol. 32, pp. 3465–3475, 2024. @article{Zhang2024q,With the recent proliferation of large language models (LLMs), such as Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), there has been a significant shift in exploring human and machine comprehension of semantic language meaning. This shift calls for interdisciplinary research that bridges cognitive science and natural language processing (NLP). This pilot study aims to provide insights into individuals’ neural states during a semantic inference reading-comprehension task. We propose jointly analyzing LLMs, eye-gaze, and electroencephalographic (EEG) data to study how the brain processes words with varying degrees of relevance to a keyword during reading. We also use feature engineering to improve the fixation-related EEG data classification while participants read words with high versus low relevance to the keyword. The best validation accuracy in this word-level classification is over 60% across 12 subjects. Words highly relevant to the inference keyword received significantly more eye fixations per word: 1.0584 compared to 0.6576, including words with no fixations. This study represents the first attempt to classify brain states at a word level using LLM-generated labels. It provides valuable insights into human cognitive abilities and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and offers guidance for developing potential reading-assisted technologies. |
Zhihan Zhang; Chuhan Wu; Hongyi Chen; Hongyang Chen CogAware: Cognition-Aware framework for sentiment analysis with textual representations Journal Article In: Knowledge-Based Systems, vol. 299, pp. 1–9, 2024. @article{Zhang2024r,Sentiment analysis has become an important research area in artificial intelligence. Recently, the integration of sentiment analysis with cognitive neuroscience in natural language processing (NLP) tasks has attracted widespread attention. Cognitive signals and textual signals (i.e. word embeddings) both contain distinctive information for sentiment analysis tasks. However, most previous studies cannot effectively capture the specific features and cross-domain features while integrating cognitive signals acquired from brain activity and textual signals obtained from natural language processing (NLP). To address this issue, we propose CogAware, which learns to obtain a deep representation that combines purified specific features with cross-domain features from textual and cognitive signals. CogAware employs four private encoders to extract specific or cross-domain features from textual and cognitive signals alternately. It also employs feature reinforcement and orthogonality regularization to separate specific and cross-domain features from each modality. Moreover, a shared encoder and a modality discriminator are used to further capture cross-domain features from different modalities. Our designed architecture utilizes cognitive signals and word embeddings during model training, yet relies solely on word embeddings for model inference. Experiments on a public dataset show that CogAware achieves new state-of-the-art performance on the sentiment analysis task compared with other existing models. The source code of CogAware is available at: https://github.com/zhejiangzhuque/CogAware. |
Hui Zhao; Linjieqiong Huang; Xingshan Li Readers may not integrate words strictly in the order in which they appear in Chinese reading Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, pp. 1–12, 2024. @article{Zhao2024a,The current study investigated whether word integration follows a strictly sequential order during natural Chinese reading. Chinese readers' eye movements were recorded when they read sentences containing a three-character string (ABC), where BC was always a two-character word and AB was also a two-character word in the overlapping condition but not a word in the non-overlapping condition. We manipulated the extent to which word BC was plausible as an immediate continuation following prior context (cross-word plausibility); the string AB was always implausible given the prior context, and the sentence continued in a manner that was compatible with A-BC. The results showed that there were longer second-pass reading times on the string ABC region in the cross-word plausible condition than those in the cross-word implausible condition in both the overlapping condition and the non-overlapping condition. These results imply that readers do not always integrate words strictly in the order in which they appear in Chinese reading. |
Zitong Zhao; Jinfeng Ding; Jiayu Wang; Yiya Chen; Xiaoqing Li The flexibility and representational nature of phonological prediction in listening comprehension: Evidence from the visual world paradigm Journal Article In: Language and Cognition, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 481–504, 2024. @article{Zhao2024f,Using the visual world paradigmwith printed words, this study investigated the flexibility and representational nature of phonological prediction in real-time speech processing. Native speakers of Mandarin Chinese listened to spoken sentences containing highly predictable target words and viewed a visual array with a critical word and a distractor word on the screen. The critical word was manipulated in four ways: a highly predictable target word, a homophone competitor, a tonal competitor, or an unrelated word. Participants showed a preference for fixating on the homophone competitors before hearing the highly predictable target word. The predicted phonological information waned shortly but was re-activated later around the acoustic onset of the target word. Importantly, this homophone bias was observed only when participants were completing a 'pronunciation judgement' task, but not when they were completing a 'word judgement' task. No effect was found for the tonal competitors. The task modulation effect, combined with the temporal pattern of phonological pre-activation, indicates that phonological prediction can be flexibly generated by top-down mechanisms. The lack of tonal competitor effect suggests that phonological features such as lexical tone are not independently predicted for anticipatory speech processing. |
Weixi Zheng; Jie Zhang; Anbang Chendu; Yan Wang; Xiaoyi Wang; Hongwei Sun; Liping Jia; Dexiang Zhang Effect of cognitive style on text topic structure processing: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Current Psychology, pp. 27216–27224, 2024. @article{Zheng2024b,This study employed an eye-tracking methodology to explore the impact of cognitive style on the processing of text topic structure among colleges, achieved by manipulating cognitive style and sentence type. Readers' cognitive styles were divided into field-dependent and field-independent categories using the Embedded Figure Test. The dependent variables include first-pass and second-pass fixation duration, corresponding fixation counts, and verification scores after reading each text. The results of the study indicate that participants devoted longer fixation duration and made more fixation counts on headings during the first-pass reading, devoted longer fixation duration, and made more fixation counts on topic sentences during the second-pass readings. The results also show that field-dependent readers exhibited longer fixation duration and more fixation count during the first-pass reading, but they obtained lower verification scores than field-independent readers. These findings imply that their reading outcomes differ, while field-dependent and field-independent readers allocate considerable attention to text topic structure. |
Mengsi Wang; Donna E. Gill; Jeannie Judge; Chuanli Zang; Xuejun Bai; Simon P. Liversedge Column setting and text justification influence return-sweep eye movement behavior during Chinese multi-line reading Journal Article In: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1–18, 2024. @article{Wang2024e,People regularly read multi-line texts in different formats and publishers, internationally, must decide how to present text to make reading most effective and efficient. Relatively few studies have examined multi-line reading, and fewer still Chinese multi-line reading. Here, we examined whether texts presented in single or double columns, and either left-justified or fully-justified affect Chinese reading. Text format had minimal influence on overall reading time; however, it significantly impacted return-sweeps (large saccades moving the eyes from the end of one line of text to the beginning of the next). Return-sweeps were launched and landed further away from margins and involved more corrective saccades in single- than double-column format. For left- compared to fully-justified format, return-sweeps were launched and landed closer to margins. More corrective saccades also occurred. Our results showed more efficient return-sweep behavior for fully- than left-justified text. Moreover, there were clear trade-off effects such that formats requiring increased numbers of shorter return-sweeps produced more accurate targeting and reduced numbers of corrective fixations, whereas formats requiring reduced numbers of longer return-sweeps caused less accurate targeting and an increased rate of corrective fixations. Overall, our results demonstrate that text formats substantially affect return-sweep eye movement behavior during Chinese reading without affecting efficiency and effectiveness, that is, the overall time it takes to read and understand the text. |
Zhiyun Wang; Qingfang Zhang Ageing of grammatical advance planning in spoken sentence production: An eye movement study Journal Article In: Psychological Research, vol. 88, pp. 652–669, 2024. @article{Wang2024n,This study used an image-description paradigm with concurrent eye movement recordings to investigate differences of grammatical advance planning between young and older speakers in spoken sentence production. Participants were asked to produce sentences with simple or complex initial phrase structures (IPS) in Experiment 1 while producing individual words in Experiment 2. Young and older speakers showed comparable speaking latencies in sentence production task, whereas older speakers showed longer latencies than young speakers in word production task. Eye movement data showed that compared with young speakers, older speakers had higher fixation percentage on object 1, lower percentage of gaze shift from object 1 to 2, and lower fixation percentage on object 2 in simple IPS sentences, while they showed similar fixation percentage on object 1, similar percentage of gaze shift from object 1 to 2, and lower fixation percentage on object 2 in complex IPS sentences, indicating a decline of grammatical encoding scope presenting on eye movement patterns. Meanwhile, speech analysis showed that older speakers presented longer utterance duration, slower speech rate, and longer and more frequently occurred pauses in articulation, indicating a decline of speech articulation in older speakers. Thus, our study suggests that older speakers experience an ageing effect in the sentences with complex initial phrases due to limited cognitive resources. |
Aengus Ward; Shiyu He Medieval reading in the twenty-first century? Journal Article In: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 1134–1155, 2024. @article{Ward2024,Reading practices in medieval manuscripts have often been the subject of critical analysis in the past. Recent technological developments have extended the range of analytical possibilities; one such development is that of eye tracking. In the present article, we outline the results of an experiment using eye tracking technologies which were carried out recently in Spain. The analysis points to particular trends in the ways in which modern readers interact with medieval textual forms and we use this analysis to point to future possibilities in the use of eye tracking to broaden and deepen our understanding of the workings of the medieval page. |
Yanjun Wei; Yingjuan Tang; Adam John Privitera Functional priority of syntax over semantics in Chinese 'ba' construction: Evidence from eye-tracking during natural reading Journal Article In: Language and Cognition, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 380–400, 2024. @article{Wei2024b,Studies on sentence processing in inflectional languages support that syntactic structure building functionally precedes semantic processing. Conversely, most EEG studies of Chinese sentence processing do not support the priority of syntax. One possible explanation is that the Chinese language lacks morphological inflections. Another explanation may be that the presentation of separate sentence components on individual screens in EEG studies disrupts syntactic framework construction during sentence reading. The present study investigated this explanation using a self-paced reading experiment mimicking rapid serial visual presentation in EEG studies and an eye-tracking experiment reflecting natural reading. In both experiments, Chinese 'ba' sentences were presented to Chinese young adults in four conditions that differed across the dimensions of syntactic and semantic congruency. Evidence supporting the functional priority of syntax over semantics was limited to only the natural reading context, in which syntactic violations blocked the processing of semantics. Additionally, we observed a later stage of integrating plausible semantics with a failed syntax. Together, our findings extend the functional priority of syntax to the Chinese language and highlight the importance of adopting more ecologically valid methods when investigating sentence reading. |
Yipu Wei; Yingjia Wan; Michael K. Tanenhaus Spontaneous perspective-taking in real-time language comprehension: Evidence from eye-movements and grain of coordination Journal Article In: Scientific Reports, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 1–10, 2024. @article{Wei2024a,Linguistic communication requires interlocutors to consider differences in each other's knowledge (perspective-taking). However, perspective-taking might either be spontaneous or strategic. We monitored listeners' eye movements in a referential communication task. A virtual speaker gave temporally ambiguous instructions with scalar adjectives (“big” in “big cubic block”). Scalar adjectives assume a contrasting object (a small cubic block). We manipulated whether the contrasting object (a small triangle) for a competitor object (a big triangle) was in common ground (visible to both speaker and listener) or was occluded so it was in the listener's privileged ground, in which case perspective-taking would allow earlier reference-resolution. We used a complex visual context with multiple objects, making strategic perspective-taking unlikely when all objects are in the listener's referential domain. A turn-taking, puzzle-solving task manipulated whether participants could anticipate a more restricted referential domain. Pieces were either confined to a small area (requiring fine-grained coordination) or distributed across spatially distinct regions (requiring only coarse-grained coordination). Results strongly supported spontaneous perspective-taking: Although comprehension was less time-locked in the coarse-grained condition, participants in both conditions used perspective information to identify the target referent earlier when the competitor contrast was in privileged ground, even when participants believed instructions were computer-generated. |
Joshua D. Weirick; Jiyeon Lee Syntactic flexibility and lexical encoding in aging sentence production: An eye tracking study Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 15, pp. 1–16, 2024. @article{Weirick2024,Purpose: Successful sentence production requires lexical encoding and ordering them into a correct syntactic structure. It remains unclear how different processes involved in sentence production are affected by healthy aging. We investigated (a) if and how aging affects lexical encoding and syntactic formulation during sentence production, using auditory lexical priming and eye tracking-while-speaking paradigms and (b) if and how verbal working memory contributes to age-related changes in sentence production. Methods: Twenty older and 20 younger adults described transitive and dative action pictures following auditory lexical primes, by which the relative ease of encoding the agent or theme nouns (for transitive pictures) and the theme and goal nouns (for dative pictures) was manipulated. The effects of lexical priming on off-line syntactic production and real-time eye fixations to the primed character were measured. Results: In offline production, older adults showed comparable priming effects to younger adults, using the syntactic structure that allows earlier mention of the primed lexical item in both transitive and dative sentences. However, older adults showed longer lexical priming effects on eye fixations to the primed character during the early stages of sentence planning. Preliminary analysis indicated that reduced verbal working memory may in part account for longer lexical encoding, particularly for older adults. Conclusion: These findings indicate that syntactic flexibility for formulating different grammatical structures remains largely robust with aging. However, lexical encoding processes are more susceptible to age-related changes, possibly due to changes in verbal working memory. |
Matthew B. Winn The effort of repairing a misperceived word can impair perception of following words, especially for listeners with cochlear implants Journal Article In: Ear & Hearing, vol. 45, no. 6, pp. 1527–1541, 2024. @article{Winn2024,Objectives: In clinical and laboratory settings, speech recognition is typically assessed in a way that cannot distinguish accurate auditory perception from misperception that was mentally repaired or inferred from context. Previous work showed that the process of repairing misperceptions elicits greater listening effort, and that this elevated effort lingers well after the sentence is heard. That result suggests that cognitive repair strategies might appear successful when testing a single utterance but fail for everyday continuous conversational speech. The present study tested the hypothesis that the effort of repairing misperceptions has the consequence of carrying over to interfere with perception of later words after the sentence. Design: Stimuli were open-set coherent sentences that were presented intact or with a word early in the sentence replaced with noise, forcing the listener to use later context to mentally repair the missing word. Sentences were immediately followed by digit triplets, which served to probe carryover effort from the sentence. Control conditions allowed for the comparison to intact sentences that did not demand mental repair, as well as to listening conditions that removed the need to attend to the post-sentence stimuli, or removed the post-sentence digits altogether. Intelligibility scores for the sentences and digits were accompanied by time-series measurements of pupil dilation to assess cognitive load during the task, as well as subjective rating of effort. Participants included adults with cochlear implants (CIs), as well as an age-matched group and a younger group of listeners with typical hearing for comparison. Results: For the CI group, needing to repair a missing word during a sentence resulted in more errors on the digits after the sentence, especially when the repair process did not result in a coherent sensible perception. Sentences that needed repair also contained more errors on the words that were unmasked. All groups showed substantial increase of pupil dilation when sentences required repair, even when the repair was successful. Younger typical hearing listeners showed clear differences in moment-To-moment allocation of effort in the different conditions, while the other groups did not. Conclusions: For CI listeners, the effort of needing to repair misperceptions in a sentence can last long enough to interfere with words that follow the sentence. This pattern could pose a serious problem for regular communication but would go overlooked in typical testing with single utterances, where a listener has a chance to repair misperceptions before responding. Carryover effort was not predictable by basic intelligibility scores, but can be revealed in behavioral data when sentences are followed immediately by extra probe words such as digits. |
Roslyn Wong; Aaron Veldre; Sally Andrews Looking for immediate and downstream evidence of lexical prediction in eye movements during reading Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 77, no. 10, pp. 2040 –2064, 2024. @article{Wong2024a,Previous investigations of whether readers make predictions about the full identity of upcoming words have focused on the extent to which there are processing consequences when readers encounter linguistic input that is incompatible with their expectations. To date, eye-movement studies have revealed inconsistent evidence of the processing costs that would be expected to accompany lexical prediction. This study investigated whether readers' lexical predictions were observable during or downstream from their initial point of activation. Three experiments assessed readers' eye movements to predictable and unpredictable words, and then to subsequent downstream words, which probed the lingering activation of previously expected words. The results showed novel evidence of processing costs for unexpected input but only when supported by a plausible linguistic environment, suggesting that readers could strategically modulate their predictive processing. However, there was limited evidence that their lexical predictions affected downstream processing. The implications of these findings for understanding the role of prediction in language processing are discussed. |
Roslyn Wong; Aaron Veldre; Sally Andrews Are there independent effects of constraint and predictability on eye movements during reading? Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, vol. 50, no. 2, pp. 331–345, 2024. @article{Wong2024b,Evidence of processing costs for unexpected words presented in place of a more expected completion remains elusive in the eye-movement literature. The current study investigated whether such prediction error costs depend on the source of constraint violation provided by the prior context. Participants' eye movements were recorded as they read predictable words and unpredictable alternatives that were either semantically related or unrelated in three-sentence passages. The passages differed in whether the source of constraint originated solely from the global context provided by the first two semantically rich senten- ces of the passage, from the local context provided by the final sentence of the passage, from both the global and local context, or from none of the three sentences of the passage. The results revealed the expected processing advantage for predictable completions in any constraining context, although the rela- tive contributions of the different sources of constraint varied across the time course of word processing. Unpredictable completions, however, did not yield any processing costs when the context constrained to- ward a different word, instead producing immediate processing benefits in the presence of any constrain- ing context. Moreover, the initial processing of related unpredictable completions was enhanced further by the provision of a supportive global context. Predictability effects therefore do not appear to be deter- mined by cloze probability alone but also by the nature of the prior contextual constraint especially when they encourage the construction of higher-level discourse representations. The implications of these find- ings for understanding existing theoretical models of predictive processing are discussed. |
Chao Jung Wu; Chia Yu Liu An eye-tracking study of college students' infographic-reading processes Journal Article In: Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, pp. 1–31, 2024. @article{Wu2024,We know little about how readers, especially readers with various characteristics, incorporate materials with highly synthesized words and graphs like infographics. We collected eye movements from 95 college students as they read infographics and categorized them into high-/low-score groups based on comprehension scores. Participants initially inspected the word areas that corresponded to the graph areas with the highest perceptual salience. The high-score group showed greater total fixation duration (TFD), TFD ratios of graphs, and transition numbers between words and graphs, indicating more processing of infographics. The low-score group showed greater TFD ratios of words and saccade amplitudes, indicating information-searching behavior. |
Xinyi Xia; Qin Liu; Erik D. Reichle; Yanping Liu Saccadic targeting in the Landolt-C task: Implications for Chinese reading Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, vol. 50, no. 11, pp. 1749–1771, 2024. @article{Xia2024a,Participants in an eye-movement experiment performed a modified version of the Landolt-C paradigm (Williams & Pollatsek, 2007) to determine if there are preferred viewing locations when they searched for target squares embedded in linear arrays of spatially contiguous clusters of squares (i.e., sequences of one to four squares having missing segments of variable size and orientation). The results of this experiment indicate that, although the peaks of the single- and first-of-multiple-fixation landing-site distributions were respectively located near the centers and beginnings of the clusters, thereby replicating previous patterns that have been interpreted as evidence for the default saccadic-targeting hypothesis, the same dissociation was evident on nonclusters (i.e., arbitrarily defined regions of analysis). Furthermore, properties of the clusters (e.g., character number and gap size) influenced fixation durations and forward saccade length, suggesting that ongoing stimulus processing affects decisions about when and where (i.e., how far) to move the eyes. Finally, results of simulations using simple oculomotor-based, default-targeting, and dynamic-adjustment models indicated that the latter performed better than the other two, suggesting that the dynamic-adjustment strategy likely reflects the basic perceptual and motor constraints shared by a variety of visual tasks, rather than being specific to Chinese reading. The theoretical implications of these results for existing and future accounts of eye-movement control are discussed. |
Songqiao Xie; Chunyan He An empirical study on native Mandarin-speaking children's metonymy comprehension development Journal Article In: Journal of Child Language, pp. 1–28, 2024. @article{Xie2024,This study investigates Mandarin-speaking children's (age 3–7) comprehension development of novel and conventional metonymy, combining online and offline methods. Both online and offline data show significantly better performances from the oldest group (6-to-7-year-old) and a delayed acquisition of conventional metonymy compared with novel metonymy. However, part of offline data shows no significant difference between adjacent age groups, while the eye-tracking data show a chronological development from age 3–7. Furthermore, in offline tasks, the three-year-old group features a high choice randomness and the four-to-five-year-olds show the longest reaction time. Therefore, we argue that, not only age but also metonymy type can influence metonymy acquisition, and that a lack of socio-cultural experience can be a source of acquisition difficulty for children under six. Methodologically speaking, we believe that online methods should not be considered superior to offline ones as they investigate different aspects of implicit and explicit language comprehension. |
Kunyu Xu; Yu-Min Ku; Chenlu Ma; Chien-Hui Lin; Wan-Chen Chang Development of comprehension monitoring skill in Chinese children: Evidence from eye movement and probe interviews Journal Article In: Metacognition and Learning, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 103–121, 2024. @article{Xu2024a,As an important construct in the cognitive process, comprehension monitoring has received much scholarly attention. Researchers have recognized comprehension monitoring as an ability closely linked with children's reading comprehension ability and working memory capacity. Evidence is also abundant to prove that comprehension monitoring skill develops with age. It remains unclear, however, how these factors interact during reading, particularly in low-grade children. Many previous empirical studies have only employed online or offline measurements to examine children's monitoring performance, which might lead to unsolid conclusions. In this study, we utilized both online eye-tracking measures and offline probe interviews to quantify the developmental features (i.e., evaluation and regulation) of comprehension monitoring skills among Chinese beginning readers. The results indicated that the comprehension monitoring performance, as quantified by eye-tracking measures, was positively related to their reading comprehension ability and working memory capacity. Moreover, the first-graders' performances lacked online regulation skills during the error-detecting tasks, while second-graders had relatively developed online monitoring performance. Additionally, the eye-tracking measures were found as a predictor for children's performances in probe interviews, as the readers with high comprehension ability and working memory capacity successfully reported more errors embedded in the self-designed reading materials. Therefore, the findings support the claim that children's comprehension monitoring is a developing skill associated with reading comprehension and working memory capacity and further question the existence of comprehension monitoring skills in beginning readers, especially first-graders. |
Suyun Xu; Hua Zhang; Juan Fan; Xiaoming Jiang; Minyue Zhang; Jingjing Guan; Hongwei Ding; Yang Zhang Auditory challenges and listening effort in school-age children with autism: Insights from pupillary dynamics during speech-in-noise perception Journal Article In: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 67, no. 7, pp. 2410–2453, 2024. @article{Xu2024,Purpose: This study aimed to investigate challenges in speech-in-noise (SiN) processing faced by school-age children with autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) and their impact on listening effort. Method: Participants, including 23 Mandarin-speaking children with ASCs and 19 age-matched neurotypical (NT) peers, underwent sentence recognition tests in both quiet and noisy conditions, with a speech-shaped steady-state noise masker presented at 0-dB signal-to-noise ratio in the noisy condition. Recognition accuracy rates and task-evoked pupil responses were compared to assess behavioral performance and listening effort during auditory tasks. Results: No main effect of group was found on accuracy rates. Instead, significant effects emerged for autistic trait scores, listening conditions, and their interaction, indicating that higher trait scores were associated with poorer performance in noise. Pupillometric data revealed significantly larger and earlier peak dilations, along with more varied pupillary dynamics in the ASC group relative to the NT group, especially under noisy conditions. Importantly, the ASC group's peak dilation in quiet mirrored that of the NT group in noise. However, the ASC group consistently exhibited reduced mean dilations than the NT group. Conclusions: Pupillary responses suggest a different resource allocation pattern in ASCs: An initial sharper and larger dilation may signal an intense, narrowed resource allocation, likely linked to heightened arousal, engagement, and cognitive load, whereas a subsequent faster tail-off may indicate a greater decrease in resource availability and engagement, or a quicker release of arousal and cognitive load. The presence of noise further accentuates this pattern. This highlights the unique SiN processing challenges children with ASCs may face, underscoring the importance of a nuanced, individual-centric approach for interventions and support. |
Ming Yan; Reinhold Kliegl; Jinger Pan Direction-specific reading experience shapes perceptual span Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, vol. 50, no. 11, pp. 1740–1748, 2024. @article{Yan2024,Perceptual span in reading, the spatial extent for effective information extraction during a single fixation, provides a critical foundation to all studies for sentence reading. However, it is not understood fully how the perceptual span is influenced by direction-specific reading experience. Traditional Chinese sentences can be written horizontally from left to right or vertically downward, offering the best opportunity to explore readers' perceptual span in different text directions, free of possible confounding with language proficiency and cross-participant differences. Using a within-item and within-subject design, eye movements of tradi- tional Chinese readers were recorded during their reading of horizontally and vertically presented sentences. Additionally, regardless of text direction, a gaze-contingent moving-window technique was adopted to restrict visible texts within a virtual window that moved in synchrony with the reader's eye gaze, while char- acters outside the window were masked. Among several critical results, most importantly, asymptotic read- ing performance was observed in a smaller window condition for vertical reading than for horizontal reading, suggesting an overall smaller perceptual span in the former case. In addition, the size of the vertical perceptual span increased as a function of the readers' familiarity with vertical text. We conclude that factors beyond orthographic complexity and readers' language proficiency can influence the way in which humans read. Readers' direction-specific perceptual experiences can influence their perceptual span. |
Alessandra Valentini; Rachel E. Pye; Carmel Houston-Price; Jessie Ricketts; Julie A. Kirkby Online processing shows advantages of bimodal listening-while-reading for vocabulary learning: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 79–101, 2024. @article{Valentini2024,Children can learn words incidentally from stories. This kind of learning is enhanced when stories are presented both aurally and in written format, compared to just a written presentation. However, we do not know why this bimodal presentation is beneficial. This study explores two possible explanations: whether the bimodal advantage manifests online during story exposure, or later, at word retrieval. We collected eye-movement data from 34 8-to 9-year-old children exposed to two stories, one presented in written format (reading condition), and the second presented aurally and written at the same time (bimodal condition). Each story included six unfamiliar words (non-words) that were repeated three times, as well as definitions and clues to their meaning. Following exposure, the learning of the new words' meanings was assessed. Results showed that, during story presentation, children spent less time fixating the new words in the bimodal condition, compared to the reading condition, indicating that the bimodal advantage occurs online. Learning was greater in the bimodal condition than the reading condition, which may reflect either an online bimodal advantage during story presentation or an advantage at retrieval. The results also suggest that the bimodal condition was more conducive to learning than the reading condition when children looked at the new words for a shorter amount of time. This is in line with an online advantage of the bimodal condition, as it suggests that less effort is required to learn words in this condition. These results support educational strategies that routinely present new vocabulary in two modalities simultaneously. |
Willem S. Boxtel; Michael Linge; Rylee Manning; Lily N. Haven; Jiyeon Lee Online eye tracking for aphasia: A feasibility study comparing web and lab tracking and implications for clinical use Journal Article In: Brain and Behavior, vol. 14, no. 11, pp. 1–19, 2024. @article{Boxtel2024,Background & Aims: Studies using eye-tracking methodology have made important contributions to the study of language disorders such as aphasia. Nevertheless, in clinical groups especially, eye-tracking studies often include small sample sizes, limiting the generalizability of reported findings. Online, webcam-based tracking offers a potential solution to this issue, but web-based tracking has not been compared with in-lab tracking in past studies and has never been attempted in groups with language impairments. Materials & Methods: Patients with post-stroke aphasia (n = 16) and age-matched controls (n = 16) completed identical sentence-picture matching tasks in the lab (using an EyeLink system) and on the web (using WebGazer.js), with the order of sessions counterbalanced. We examined whether web-based eye tracking is as sensitive as in-lab eye tracking in detecting group differences in sentence processing. Results: Patients were less accurate and slower to respond to all sentence types than controls. Proportions of gazes to the target and foil picture were computed in 100 ms increments, which showed that the two modes of tracking were comparably sensitive to overall group differences across different sentence types. Web tracking showed comparable fluctuations in gaze proportions to target pictures to lab tracking in most analyses, whereas a delay of approximately 500–800 ms appeared in web compared to lab data. Discussion & Conclusions: Web-based eye tracking is feasible to study impaired language processing in aphasia and is sensitive enough to detect most group differences between controls and patients. Given that validations of webcam-based tracking are in their infancy and how transformative this method could be to several disciplines, much more testing is warranted. |
Ine Van der Cruyssen; Gershon Ben-Shakhar; Yoni Pertzov; Nitzan Guy; Quinn Cabooter; Lukas J. Gunschera; Bruno Verschuere The validation of online webcam-based eye-tracking: The replication of the cascade effect, the novelty preference, and the visual world paradigm Journal Article In: Behavior Research Methods, vol. 56, no. 5, pp. 4836–4849, 2024. @article{VanderCruyssen2024,The many benefits of online research and the recent emergence of open-source eye-tracking libraries have sparked an interest in transferring time-consuming and expensive eye-tracking studies from the lab to the web. In the current study, we validate online webcam-based eye-tracking by conceptually replicating three robust eye-tracking studies (the cascade effect |
Monica Vanoncini; Stefanie Hoehl; Birgit Elsner; Sebastian Wallot; Natalie Boll-Avetisyan; Ezgi Kayhan Mother-infant social gaze dynamics relate to infant brain activity and word segmentation Journal Article In: Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, vol. 65, pp. 1–8, 2024. @article{Vanoncini2024,The ‘social brain', consisting of areas sensitive to social information, supposedly gates the mechanisms involved in human language learning. Early preverbal interactions are guided by ostensive signals, such as gaze patterns, which are coordinated across body, brain, and environment. However, little is known about how the infant brain processes social gaze in naturalistic interactions and how this relates to infant language development. During free-play of 9-month-olds with their mothers, we recorded hemodynamic cortical activity of ´social brain` areas (prefrontal cortex, temporo-parietal junctions) via fNIRS, and micro-coded mother's and infant's social gaze. Infants' speech processing was assessed with a word segmentation task. Using joint recurrence quantification analysis, we examined the connection between infants' ´social brain` activity and the temporal dynamics of social gaze at intrapersonal (i.e., infant's coordination, maternal coordination) and interpersonal (i.e., dyadic coupling) levels. Regression modeling revealed that intrapersonal dynamics in maternal social gaze (but not infant's coordination or dyadic coupling) coordinated significantly with infant's cortical activity. Moreover, recurrence quantification analysis revealed that intrapersonal maternal social gaze dynamics (in terms of entropy) were the best predictor of infants' word segmentation. The findings support the importance of social interaction in language development, particularly highlighting maternal social gaze dynamics. |
João Vieira; Elisângela Teixeira; Erica Rodrigues; Hayward J. Godwin; Denis Drieghe When function words carry content Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, pp. 1–14, 2024. @article{Vieira2024,Studies on eye movements during reading have primarily focussed on the processing of content words (CWs), such as verbs and nouns. Those few studies that have analysed eye movements on function words (FWs), such as articles and prepositions, have reported that FWs are typically skipped more often and, when fixated, receive fewer and shorter fixations than CWs. However, those studies were often conducted in languages where FWs contain comparatively little information (e.g., the in English). In Brazilian Portuguese (BP), FWs can carry gender and number marking. In the present study, we analysed data from the RASTROS corpus of natural reading in BP and examined the effects of word length, predictability, frequency and word class on eye movements. Very limited differences between FWs and CWs were observed mostly restricted to the skipping rates of short words, such that FWs were skipped more often than CWs. For fixation times, differences were either nonexistent or restricted to atypical FWs, such as low frequency FWs, warranting further research. As such, our results are more compatible with studies showing limited or no differences in processing speed between FWs and CWs when influences of word length, frequency and predictability are taken into account. |
Luc Virlet; Laurent Sparrow; Jose Barela; Patrick Berquin; Cedrick Bonnet Proprioceptive intervention improves reading performance in developmental dyslexia: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Research in Developmental Disabilities, vol. 153, pp. 1–10, 2024. @article{Virlet2024,Developmental dyslexia is characterized by difficulties in learning to read, affecting cognition and causing failure at school. Interventions for children with developmental dyslexia have focused on improving linguistic capabilities (phonics, orthographic and morphological instructions), but developmental dyslexia is accompanied by a wide variety of sensorimotor impairments. The goal of this study was to examine the effects of a proprioceptive intervention on reading performance and eye movement in children with developmental dyslexia. Nineteen children diagnosed with developmental dyslexia were randomly assigned to a regular Speech Therapy (ST) or to a Proprioceptive and Speech Intervention (PSI), in which they received both the usual speech therapy and a proprioceptive intervention aimed to correct their sensorimotor impairments (prism glasses, oral neurostimulation, insoles and breathing instructions). Silent reading performance and eye movements were measured pre- and post-intervention (after nine months). In the PSI group, reading performance improved and eye movements were smoother and faster, reaching values similar to those of children with typical reading performance. The recognition of written words also improved, indicating better lexical access. These results show that PSI might constitute a valuable tool for reading improvement children with developmental dyslexia. |
Klaus Heusinger; Frederike Weeber; Jet Hoek; Andreas Brocher Informativity, information status and the accessibility of indefinite noun phrases Journal Article In: Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1–20, 2024. @article{Heusinger2024,In discourse processing, speakers collaborate toward a shared mental model by introducing discourse referents and picking them up with the adequate linguistic forms. Discourse referents compete with each other with respect to their prominence and their accessibility for pronouns. This study focuses on transitive sentences with proper names as subjects and indefinite noun phrases as second arguments, typically direct objects. An ambiguous pronoun in the subsequent sentence may access either referent of the first sentence. Various factors have been shown to influence pronoun resolution, including informativity (how informative is the phrase in which the referent is introduced? E.g., the waiter vs. the waiter at the entrance) and information status (is the referent given or new in the context?). While both factors have been independently shown to increase referent accessibility, our visual-world eye-tracking experiment shows an original and quite unexpected effect: informativity and information status interact when it comes to the accessibility of indefinite noun phrases: a higher degree of informativity increases accessibility when a referent is brand-new, but surprisingly decreases accessibility when a referent is inferred. We discuss a potential explanation for this surprising pattern in terms of a mismatch between the denotational type of the indefinite and the type required by the modification. We conclude that indefinites strongly interact with additional semantic, contextual and communicative parameters in establishing their referents. |
Andi Wang; Ana Pellicer-Sánchez Exploring L2 learners' processing of unknown words during subtitled viewing through self-reports Journal Article In: International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, no. 2, pp. 1–30, 2024. @article{Wang2024a,Studies have shown the benefits of subtitled viewing for incidental vocabulary learning, but the effects of different subtitling types varied across studies. The effectiveness of different types of subtitled viewing could be related to how unknown vocabulary is processed during viewing. However, no studies have investigated L2 learners' processing of unknown words in viewing beyond exploring learners' attention allocation. The present research followed a qualitative approach to explore L2 learners' processing of unknown words during subtitled viewing under three conditions (i.e., captions, L1 subtitles, and bilingual subtitles) by tapping into learners' reported awareness of the unknown words and the vocabulary processing strategies used to engage with unknown words. According to stimulated recall data (elicited by eye-tracking data) from 45 intermediate-to-advanced-level Chinese learners of English, captions led to increased awareness of the unknown words. Moreover, the types of strategies learners used to cope with unknown vocabulary were determined by subtitling type. |
Danhui Wang; Dingyi Niu; Tianzhi Li; Xiaolei Gao The effect of visual word segmentation cues in Tibetan reading Journal Article In: Brain Sciences, vol. 14, no. 10, pp. 1–20, 2024. @article{Wang2024b,Background/Objectives: In languages with within-word segmentation cues, the removal or replacement of these cues in a text hinders reading and lexical recognition, and adversely affects saccade target selection during reading. However, the outcome of artificially introducing visual word segmentation cues into a language that lacks them is unknown. Tibetan exemplifies a language that does not provide visual cues for word segmentation, relying solely on visual cues for morpheme segmentation. Moreover, previous studies have not examined word segmentation in the Tibetan language. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of artificially incorporated visual word segmentation cues and basic units of information processing in Tibetan reading. Methods: We used eye-tracking technology and conducted two experiments with Tibetan sentences that artificially incorporated interword spaces and color alternation markings as visual segmentation cues. Conclusions: The results indicated that interword spaces facilitate reading and lexical recognition and aid in saccade target selection during reading. Color alternation markings facilitate reading and vocabulary recognition but do not affect saccade selection. Words are more likely to be the basic units of information processing and exhibit greater psychological reality than morphemes. These findings shed light on the nature and rules of Tibetan reading and provide fundamental data to improve eye movement control models for reading alphabetic writing systems. Furthermore, our results may offer practical guidance and a scientific basis for improving the efficiency of reading, information processing, and word segmentation in Tibetan reading. |
Juliane T. Zimmermann; T. Mark Ellison; Francesco Cangemi; Simon Wehrle; Kai Vogeley; Martine Grice Lookers and listeners on the autism spectrum: The roles of gaze duration and pitch height in inferring mental states Journal Article In: Frontiers in Communication, vol. 9, pp. 1–17, 2024. @article{Zimmermann2024a,Although mentalizing abilities in autistic adults without intelligence deficits are similar to those of control participants in tasks relying on verbal information, they are dissimilar in tasks relying on non-verbal information. The current study aims to investigate mentalizing behavior in autism in a paradigm involving two important nonverbal means to communicate mental states: eye gaze and speech intonation. In an eye-tracking experiment, participants with ASD and a control group watched videos showing a virtual character gazing at objects while an utterance was presented auditorily. We varied the virtual character's gaze duration toward the object (600 or 1800 ms) and the height of the pitch peak on the accented syllable of the word denoting the object. Pitch height on the accented syllable was varied by 45 Hz, leading to high or low prosodic emphasis. Participants were asked to rate the importance of the given object for the virtual character. At the end of the experiment, we assessed how well participants recognized the objects they were presented with in a recognition task. Both longer gaze duration and higher pitch height increased the importance ratings of the object for the virtual character overall. Compared to the control group, ratings of the autistic group were lower for short gaze, but higher when gaze was long but pitch was low. Regardless of an ASD diagnosis, participants clustered into three behaviorally different subgroups, representing individuals whose ratings were influenced (1) predominantly by gaze duration, (2) predominantly by pitch height, or (3) by neither, accordingly labelled “Lookers,” “Listeners” and “Neithers” in our study. “Lookers” spent more time fixating the virtual character's eye region than “Listeners,” while both “Listeners” and “Neithers” spent more time fixating the object than “Lookers.” Object recognition was independent of the virtual character's gaze duration towards the object and pitch height. It was also independent of an ASD diagnosis. Our results show that gaze duration and intonation are effectively used by autistic persons for inferring the importance of an object for a virtual character. Notably, compared to the control group, autistic participants were influenced more strongly by gaze duration than by pitch height. |
Ruomeng Zhu; Mateo Obregón; Hamutal Kreiner; Richard Shillcock Reading left-to-right and right-to-left orthographies: Ocular prevalence, similarities, differences and the reasons for orthographic conventions Journal Article In: Scientific Studies of Reading, vol. 28, no. 5, pp. 463–484, 2024. @article{Zhu2024e,Purpose: We compare right-to-left and left-to-right orthographies to test the theory, derived from studying the latter, that small temporal asynchronies between the two eyes at the beginning and end of every fixation favor ocular prevalence for the left eye in the left hemifield and the right eye in the right hemifield. Ocular prevalence is the prioritizing of one eye's input in the conscious, fused binocular percept. Method: We analyze binocular eye-tracking data from the reading of multiline Arabic and Hebrew text by 28 Arabic (M = 28.7 |
Dina Abdel Salam El-Dakhs; Suhad Sonbul; Ahmed Masrai An eye-tracking study on the processing of L2 collocations: The effect of congruency, proficiency, and transparency Journal Article In: Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 1–30, 2024. @article{ElDakhs2024,The availability of a first language translation equivalent (i.e., congruency) has repeatedly been shown to influence second-language collocation processing in decontextualized tasks. However, no study to date has examined how L2 speakers process congruent/incongruent collocations on-line in a real-world context. The present study aimed to fill this gap by examining the eye-movement behavior of 31 Arabic-English speakers and 30 native English speakers as they read 20 congruent and 20 incongruent collocations (in addition to 40 control phrases) in short contexts. The study also examined possible modulating effects of proficiency level and transparency on congruency effects. Results showed that non-natives (similar to native speakers) showed a processing advantage for collocations over control phrases. However, there was no effect of congruency (i.e., no difference between congruent and incongruent collocations) for either group, and no modulating effect of proficiency or transparency on congruency. We discuss implications of the findings for theories of L2 lexical processing. |
Irina Elgort; Elisabeth Lisi Beyersmann Do reading times predict word learning? An eye-tracking study with novel words Journal Article In: Studies in Second Language Acquisition, vol. 46, pp. 1282–1297, 2024. @article{Elgort2024,Theories of learning and attention predict a positive relationship between reading times on unfamiliar words and their learning; however, empirical findings of contextual learning studies range from a strong positive relationship to no relationship. To test the conjecture that longer reading times may reflect different cognitive and metacognitive processes, the need to infer novel word meanings from context was deliberately manipulated. One hundred and two adult first- and second-language English language speakers read sixty passages containing pseudowords while their eye movements were recorded. The passages were either preceded or followed by pseudoword definitions. After reading, participants completed posttests of cued meaning recall and form recognition. Meaning recall was positively associated with (i) individual cumulative reading times and (ii) participants' general vocabulary knowledge, but not when definitions were provided before reading. Form recognition was unaffected by cumulative reading times. Our findings call for a cautious approach in making causative links between eye-movement measures and vocabulary learning from reading. |
Irina Elgort; Ross Wetering; Tara Arrow; Elisabeth Beyersmann Previewing novel words before reading affects their processing during reading: An eye-movement study with first and second language readers Journal Article In: Language Learning, vol. 74, no. 1, pp. 78–110, 2024. @article{Elgort2024a,In this study, we examined the effect of previewing unfamiliar vocabulary on the real-time reading behavior of first language (L1) and second language (L2) readers. University students with English as their L1 or L2 read passages with embedded pseudowords. In a within-participant manipulation, definitions of the pseudowords were either previewed before reading or reviewed after reading. Previewing significantly affected reading behavior on early and late eye-movement measures, and the patterns of change on the first three contextual encounters with the pseudowords differed for L1 and L2 readers. On the multiple-choice cloze posttest, encountering novel words in reading followed by definitions resulted in somewhat more accurate responses for L1 but not L2 participants. The learning condition did not affect the results of the meaning recall posttest. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between vocabulary support approaches and the reading behavior of L1 and L2 readers when they encounter unfamiliar words in texts. |
Hadeel Ershaid; Mikel Lizarazu; D. J. Drew McLaughlin; Martin Cooke; Olympia Simantiraki; Maria Koutsogiannaki; Marie Lallier Contributions of listening effort and intelligibility to cortical tracking of speech in adverse listening conditions Journal Article In: Cortex, vol. 172, pp. 54–71, 2024. @article{Ershaid2024,Cortical tracking of speech is vital for speech segmentation and is linked to speech intelligibility. However, there is no clear consensus as to whether reduced intelligibility leads to a decrease or an increase in cortical speech tracking, warranting further investigation of the factors influencing this relationship. One such factor is listening effort, defined as the cognitive resources necessary for speech comprehension, and reported to have a strong negative correlation with speech intelligibility. Yet, no studies have examined the relationship between speech intelligibility, listening effort, and cortical tracking of speech. The aim of the present study was thus to examine these factors in quiet and distinct adverse listening conditions. Forty-nine normal hearing adults listened to sentences produced casually, presented in quiet and two adverse listening conditions: cafeteria noise and re- verberant speech. Electrophysiological responses were registered with electroencephalogram, and listening effort was estimated subjectively using self-reported scores and objectively using pupillometry. Results indicated varying impacts of adverse conditions on intelligibility, listening effort, and cortical tracking of speech, depending on the preservation of the speech temporal envelope. The more distorted envelope in the reverberant condition led to higher listening effort, as reflected in higher subjective scores, increased pupil diameter, and stronger cortical tracking of speech in the delta band. These findings suggest that using measures of listening effort in addition to those of intelligibility is useful for interpreting cortical tracking of speech results. Moreover, reading and phonological skills of participants were positively correlated with listening effort in the cafeteria condition, suggesting a special role of expert language skills in processing speech in this noisy condition. Implications for future research and theories linking atypical cortical tracking of speech and reading disorders are further discussed. |
Michael A. Eskenazi Best practices for cleaning eye movement data in reading research Journal Article In: Behavior Research Methods, vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 2083–2093, 2024. @article{Eskenazi2024,One challenge that comes with studying eye movement behavior is deciding how to clean the eye movement data (e.g., fixation durations) before conducting analyses. Reading researchers must decide which data cleaning methods they will use and which thresholds they will set to remove eye movements that are not reflective of lexical processing. The purpose of this project was to determine what data cleaning methods are typically used and if there are any consequences of using different data cleaning methods. In the first study, an analysis of 192 recently published articles indicated that there is inconsistency in the reporting and application of data cleaning methods. In the second study, three different data cleaning methods were applied based on the literature analysis in the first study. Analyses were conducted to determine the impact of different data cleaning methods on three commonly studied effects in reading research (frequency, predictability, and length). Overall, standardized estimates decreased for each effect when more data were removed; however, removing more data also resulted in decreased variance. As a result, effects remained significant with each data cleaning method, and simulated power remained high for both a moderate and small sample size. Effect sizes remained consistent for most effects but decreased for the length effect as more data were removed. Seven suggestions are provided that are based on open science practices with the intention of helping researchers, reviewers, and the field as a whole. |
Raquel Fernández Fuertes; Tamara Gómez Carrero; Juana M. Liceras Activation and local inhibition in the bilingual child's processing of codeswitching Journal Article In: Second Language Research, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 163 –190, 2024. @article{FernandezFuertes2024,Codeswitching has been used as a tool to investigate how the properties of the two language systems interact in the bilingual mind with relatively few studies investigating bilingual children. We target two groups of L1-Spanish–L2-English children in Spain to address language activation and language inhibition in the processing of codeswitching between a determiner (DET) and a noun (N). We investigate how the mental representation of the formal features involved is responsible for the sensitivity to grammatical gender, which in turn affects how bilinguals' language activation and inhibition processes are at play and shape processing. We target both the directionality of the switch (English-DET–Spanish-N vs. Spanish-DET–English-N) and the type of implicit gender agreement mechanism (in the case of Spanish-DET–English-N switches) by using offline acceptability judgment data and eyetracking during reading data. Results suggest lower processing costs of English DET switches and higher ones of non-congruent Spanish DET switches. We interpret the preference for classifying the non-gendered Ns along the lines of the gendered Ns in the gendered language as evidence for the integrated representation hypothesis which states that both Ns depicting the same concept are connected in the mind of the bilingual. |
Leigh B. Fernandez; Lauren V. Hadley; Aybora Koç; John C. B. Gamboa; Shanley E. M. Allen Is there a cost when predictions are not met? A VWP study investigating L1 and L2 speakers Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, pp. 1–23, 2024. @article{Fernandez2024,Research has found that both first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers make predictions about upcoming linguistic information, with predictive behaviour being impacted by individual differences and methodological factors. However, it is not clear whether a cost is incurred when a prediction is made, but not met. L2 speakers have less experience with their L2 and parsing can be cognitively demanding, which together may lead L2 speakers to incur prediction costs differently relative to L1 speakers. In this study using the visual world paradigm, we test whether L1 and L2 speakers predict in the same way, within the same time frame, and incur the same costs if predictions are not met. We also explore the role of proficiency and speech rate. We found that both groups predict in a similar way and within a similar time frame. In addition, neither group incurred a prediction cost when the target was the most likely alternative, though L2 speakers take longer to shift their attention to the target object when predictions are not met. We argue that this reflects a slowing of lexical access rather than a specific cost of prediction. We only found prediction differences when speech rate was included in the analysis, highlighting the importance of attending to speech rate in studies using the visual world paradigm. Overall, this study supports research showing that both L1 and L2 speakers may make multiple partial predictions about upcoming information rather than predicting one specific lexical candidate while inhibiting less likely lexical candidates. |
Leigh B. Fernandez; Christoph Scheepers; Shanley E. M. Allen Cross-language semantic and orthographic parafoveal processing by bilingual L1 German-L2 English readers Journal Article In: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, vol. 1, pp. 512–529, 2024. @article{Fernandez2024a,In a recent study, Fernandez et al. (2021) investigated parafoveal processing in L1 English and L1 German-L2 English readers using the gaze contingent boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975). Unexpectedly, L2 readers derived an interference from a non-cognate translation parafoveal mask (arrow vs. pfeil), but derived a benefit from a German orthographic parafoveal mask (arrow vs. pfexk) when reading in English. The authors argued that bilingual readers incurred a switching cost from the complete German word, and derived a benefit by keeping both lexicons active from the partial German word. In this registered report, we further test this finding with L1 German-L2 English participants using improved items, but with the sentences presented in German. We were able to replicate the non-cognate translation interference but not the orthographic facilitation. Follow up comparisons showed that all parafoveal masks evoked similar inhibition, suggesting that bilingual readers do not process non-cognate semantic or orthographic information parafoveally. |
Laura P. Fitzgerald; Gayle DeDe; Jing Shen Effects of linguistic context and noise type on speech comprehension Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 15, pp. 1–14, 2024. @article{Fitzgerald2024,Introduction: Understanding speech in background noise is an effortful endeavor. When acoustic challenges arise, linguistic context may help us fill in perceptual gaps. However, more knowledge is needed regarding how different types of background noise affect our ability to construct meaning from perceptually complex speech input. Additionally, there is limited evidence regarding whether perceptual complexity (e.g., informational masking) and linguistic complexity (e.g., occurrence of contextually incongruous words) interact during processing of speech material that is longer and more complex than a single sentence. Our first research objective was to determine whether comprehension of spoken sentence pairs is impacted by the informational masking from a speech masker. Our second objective was to identify whether there is an interaction between perceptual and linguistic complexity during speech processing. Methods: We used multiple measures including comprehension accuracy, reaction time, and processing effort (as indicated by task-evoked pupil response), making comparisons across three different levels of linguistic complexity in two different noise conditions. Context conditions varied by final word, with each sentence pair ending with an expected exemplar (EE), within-category violation (WV), or between-category violation (BV). Forty young adults with typical hearing performed a speech comprehension in noise task over three visits. Each participant heard sentence pairs presented in either multi-talker babble or spectrally shaped steady-state noise (SSN), with the same noise condition across all three visits. Results: We observed an effect of context but not noise on accuracy. Further, we observed an interaction of noise and context in peak pupil dilation data. Specifically, the context effect was modulated by noise type: context facilitated processing only in the more perceptually complex babble noise condition. Discussion: These findings suggest that when perceptual complexity arises, listeners make use of the linguistic context to facilitate comprehension of speech obscured by background noise. Our results extend existing accounts of speech processing in noise by demonstrating how perceptual and linguistic complexity affect our ability to engage in higher-level processes, such as construction of meaning from speech segments that are longer than a single sentence. |
Elena Fornasiero; Charlotte Hauser; Chiara Branchini The subject advantage in LIS internally headed relative clauses: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, pp. 1–14, 2024. @article{Fornasiero2024,The scarce literature on the processing of internally headed relative clauses (IHRCs) seems to challenge the universality of the subject advantage (e.g., Lau & Tanaka [2021, Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 6(1), 34], for spoken languages; Hauser et al. [2021, Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 6(1), 72], for sign languages). In this study, we investigate the comprehension of subject and object IHRCs in Italian Sign Language (LIS) deaf native and non-native signers, and hearing LIS/Italian CODAs (children of deaf adults). We use the eye-tracking Visual-only World Paradigm (Hauser & Pozniak [2019, Poster presented at the AMLAP 2019 conference]) recording online and offline responses. Results show that a subject advantage is detected in the online and offline responses of CODAs and in the offline responses of deaf native signers. Results also reveal a higher rate of accuracy in CODAs' responses. We discuss the difference in performance between the two populations in the light of bilingualism-related cognitive advantages, and lack of proper educational training in Italian and LIS for the deaf population in Italy. |
Stefan L. Frank; Anna Aumeistere An eye-tracking-with-EEG coregistration corpus of narrative sentences Journal Article In: Language Resources and Evaluation, vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 641–657, 2024. @article{Frank2024,We present the Radboud Coregistration Corpus of Narrative Sentences (RaCCooNS), the first freely available corpus of eye-tracking-with-EEG data collected while participants read narrative sentences in Dutch. The corpus is intended for studying human sentence comprehension and for evaluating the cognitive validity of computational language models. RaCCooNS contains data from 37 participants (3 of which eye tracking only) reading 200 Dutch sentences each. Less predictable words resulted in significantly longer reading times and larger N400 sizes, replicating well-known surprisal effects in eye tracking and EEG simultaneously. We release the raw eye-tracking data, the preprocessed eye-tracking data at the fixation, word, and trial levels, the raw EEG after merger with eye-tracking data, and the preprocessed EEG data both before and after ICA-based ocular artifact correction. |
Rana Abu-Zhaya; Inbal Arnon Does early unit size impact the formation of linguistic predictions? Grammatical gender as a case study Journal Article In: Language Learning, vol. 74, no. 4, pp. 814–852, 2024. @article{AbuZhaya2024,Making adults learn from larger linguistic units can facilitate learning article–noun agreement. Here we ask whether initial exposure to larger units improves learning by increasing the predictive associations between the article and noun. Using an artificial language learning paradigm, we taught 106 Hebrew-speaking participants novel article–noun associations with either segmented input first or unsegmented input first, and tested their learning of the article–noun association and their ability to use articles to predict nouns. Our results showed that participants exposed to unsegmented input first were more likely to treat the article–noun unit as one word and were more accurate at learning the correct article–noun associations. However, participants in the unsegmented-first condition did not show increased gaze to the target compared to those in the segmented-first condition. We discuss how these findings inform our understanding of the challenges that adults face when learning a second language. |
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, vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 1793–1816, 2024. @article{Acartuerk2024,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, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 214–233, 2024. @article{Adedeji2024,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. |
Svetlana Alexeeva Parafoveal letter identification in Russian: Confusion matrices based on error rates Journal Article In: Behavior Research Methods, vol. 56, no. 8, pp. 8567–8587, 2024. @article{Alexeeva2024,In the present study, we introduce parafoveal letter confusion matrices for the Russian language, which uses the Cyrillic script. To ensure that our confusion rates reflect parafoveal processing and no other effects, we employed an adapted boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) that prevented the participants from directly fixating the letter stimuli. Additionally, we assessed confusability under isolated and word-like (crowded) conditions using two modern fonts, since previous research showed that letter recognition depended on crowding and font (Coates, 2015; Pelli et al., 2006). Our additional goal was to gain insight into what letter features or configurational patterns might be essential for letter recognition in Russian; thus, we conducted exploratory clustering analysis on visual confusion scores to identify groups of similar letters. To support this analysis, we conducted a comprehensive review of over 20 studies that proposed crucial properties of Latin letters relevant to character perception. The summary of this review is valuable not only for our current study but also for future research in the field. |
Na An; Clare Wright; Jun Wang How does background knowledge affect second language reading? An eye movement study Journal Article In: International Journal of Applied Linguistics, pp. 1767–1789, 2024. @article{An2024,There is broad consensus that a reader's background knowledge on a reading topic affects both their reading processes and comprehension in their first language and also in a second language. However, it is unclear whether a reader's background knowledge specifically affects reading comprehension accuracy and reading rate. The extent to which background knowledge facilitates second language reading when compared to a reader's L2 linguistic knowledge is also unclear. Moreover, the mental process accounting for the interaction between general background knowledge, type of linguistic knowledge such as vocabulary or writing system, and L2 reading abilities also need to be identified. Using texts in Mandarin Chinese, this paper investigates these problems with an eye-movement study administered to 40 L2 Chinese learners with Indo-European L1s. Results illustrate that an L2 reader's background knowledge about the text can positively impact both their reading comprehension and reading rate; however, the influence on the latter could be topic-dependent. In more challenging topics, the contribution of background knowledge to reading comprehension could outweigh any single type of linguistic knowledge, even if the target language uses a more cognitively demanding writing system. The connectionist account proposed by the construction–integration theory is suggested to be currently the best theoretical explanation for the mental process behind developing second-language reading abilities. Pedagogical implications are also considered based on these findings. |
Bernhard Angele; Ismael Gutiérrez-Cordero; Manuel Perea; Ana Marcet Reading(,) with and without commas Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 77, no. 6, pp. 1190 –1200, 2024. @article{Angele2024,All major writing systems mandate the use of commas to separate clauses and list items. However, casual writers often omit mandatory commas. Little empirical or theoretical research has been done on the effect that omitting mandatory commas has on eye movement control during reading. We present an eye-tracking experiment in Spanish, a language with a clear standard as to mandatory comma use. Sentences were presented with or without mandatory commas while readers' eye movements were recorded. There was a local increase in the go-past time for the pre-comma region when commas were presented, which was balanced out by shorter first-pass and second-pass times on the subsequent regions. In global sentence reading time, there was no evidence for an advantage of presenting commas. These findings suggest that, even when commas are mandatory, their effect is primarily to shift when processing takes place rather than to facilitate processing overall. |
Eléonore Arbona; Kilian G. Seeber; Marianne Gullberg The role of semantically related gestures in the language comprehension of simultaneous interpreters in noise Journal Article In: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, vol. 39, no. 5, pp. 584–608, 2024. @article{Arbona2024,Manual co-speech gestures can facilitate language comprehension, especially in adverse listening conditions. However, we do not know whether gestures influence simultaneous interpreters' language comprehension in adverse listening conditions, and if so, whether this influence is modulated by interpreting experience, or by active simultaneous interpreting (SI). We exposed 24 interpreters and 24 bilinguals without interpreting experience to utterances with semantically related gestures, semantically unrelated gestures, or without gestures while engaging in comprehension (interpreters and bilinguals) or in SI (interpreters only). Tasks were administered in clear and noisy speech. Accuracy and reaction time were measured, and participants' gaze was tracked. During comprehension, semantically related gestures facilitated both groups' processing in noise. Facilitation was not modulated by interpreting experience. However, when interpreting noisy speech, interpreters did not benefit from gestures. This suggests that the comprehension component, and specifically crossmodal information processing, in SI differs from that of other language comprehension. |
Scott P. Ardoin; Katherine S. Binder; Paulina A. Kulesz; Eloise Nimocks; Joshua A. Mellott Examining the influence of passage and student characteristics on test-taking strategies: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Learning and Individual Differences, vol. 109, pp. 1–12, 2024. @article{Ardoin2024,Understanding test-taking strategies (TTSs) and the variables that influence TTSs is crucial to understanding what reading comprehension tests measure. We examined how passage and student characteristics were associated with TTSs and their impact on response accuracy. Third (n = 78), fifth (n = 86), and eighth (n = 86) graders read and answered questions associated with six passages. Eye-movement records were used to code TTSs. Results indicated that TTS choice was related to passage and student characteristics. Passage characteristics that make comprehension more difficult resulted in more students choosing a TTS that did not involve reading passages in their entirety before answering questions. TTSs encompassing reading passages in their entirety before answering questions resulted in higher accuracy for 5th and 8th graders. Understanding TTS choices can aid our understanding of the processes measured by reading comprehension tests, what TTS should be encouraged, and what contributes to tests producing different outcomes. Educational relevance statement Schools spend considerable time and money collecting and interpreting the outcomes of reading comprehension tests. To truly understand what these test results mean, we must understand what students are doing when taking reading comprehension tests. Furthermore, we need to know to what extent certain tests and student characteristics might be associated with test-taking strategies that avoid reading passages for comprehension. Finally, teachers need to know whether certain test-taking strategies might positively or negatively impact response accuracy to know what strategies to teach and not to teach. The current study was designed to provide answers relevant to these important educational matters. |
Scott P. Ardoin; Katherine S. Binder; Christina Novelli; Peter L. Robertson The common element of test taking: Reading and responding to questions Journal Article In: School Psychology, pp. 1–7, 2024. @article{Ardoin2024a,Taking a reading comprehension (RC) test is a goal-oriented task, with the goal of answering questions correctly. We assume the number of questions students correctly answer represents their ability to engage successfully in the RC processes necessary to understand texts. Students, however, use various test-taking strategies, some of which negatively impact passage comprehension. The present study used eye-tracking procedures to measure what students do when reading the one part of the tests that all students must read to perform well on an RC test, the questions. Participants included 248 third-, fifth-, and eighth-grade students who read six texts and responded to associated questions while researchers recorded their eye movements. Eye-movement records were used to code students' test-taking strategy and measure the time students spent reading multiple-choice questions and each response option. Students were also administered a measure of reading achievement. Analyses suggest eye movements on multiple-choice questions were associated with reading achievement, and the challenges less-skilled readers experience with texts are also present when reading in the question region. Differences in strategies and processes do not only occur in the text region. Therefore, researchers and practitioners should pay increased attention to the strategies that are taught and used by students when reading and responding to RC questions. |
Wenfu Bao; Anja Arnhold; Juhani Järvikivi Phonology, homophony, and eyes-closed rest in Mandarin novel word learning: An eye-tracking study in adult native and non-native speakers Journal Article In: Applied Psycholinguistics, vol. 45, pp. 213–242, 2024. @article{Bao2024,This study used the visual world paradigm to investigate novel word learning in adults from different language backgrounds and the effects of phonology, homophony, and rest on the outcome. We created Mandarin novel words varied by types of phonological contrasts and homophone status. During the experiment, native (n = 34) and non-native speakers (English; n = 30) learned pairs of novel words and were tested twice with a 15-minute break in between, which was spent either resting or gaming. In the post-break test of novel word recognition, an interaction appeared between language backgrounds, phonology, and homophony: non-native speakers performed less accurately than native speakers only on non-homophones learned in pairs with tone contrasts. Eye movement data indicated that non-native speakers' processing of tones may be more effortful than their processing of segments while learning homophones, as demonstrated by the time course. Interestingly, no significant effects of rest were observed across language groups; yet after gaming, native speakers achieved higher accuracy than non-native speakers. Overall, this study suggests that Mandarin novel word learning can be affected by participants' language backgrounds and phonological and homophonous features of words. However, the role of short periods of rest in novel word learning requires further investigation. |
Alisa Baron; Katrina Connell; Daniel Kleinman; Lisa M. Bedore; Zenzi M. Griffin Grammatical gender in spoken word recognition in school-age Spanish monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual children Journal Article In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 15, pp. 1–13, 2024. @article{Baron2024,This study examined grammatical gender processing in school-aged children with varying levels of cumulative English exposure. Children participated in a visual world paradigm with a four-picture display where they heard a gendered article followed by a target noun and were in the context where all images were the same gender (same gender), where all of the distractor images were the opposite gender than the target noun (different gender), and where all of the distractor images were the opposite gender, but there was a mismatch in the gendered article and target noun pair. We investigated 51 children (aged 5;0–10;0) who were exposed to Spanish since infancy but varied in their amount of cumulative English exposure. In addition to the visual word paradigm, all children completed an article–noun naming task, a grammaticality judgment task, and standardized vocabulary tests. Parents reported on their child's cumulative English language exposure and current English language use. To investigate the time course of lexical facilitation effects, looks to the target were analyzed with a cluster-based permutation test. The results revealed that all children used gender in a facilitatory way (during the noun region), and comprehension was significantly inhibited when the article–noun pairing was ungrammatical rather than grammatical. Compared to children with less cumulative English exposure, children with more cumulative English exposure looked at the target noun significantly less often overall, and compared to younger children, older children looked at the target noun significantly more often overall. Additionally, children with lower cumulative English exposure looked at target nouns more in the different-gender condition than the same-gender condition for masculine items more than feminine items. |
Lauren S. Baron; Anna M. Ehrhorn; Peter Shlanta; Jane Ashby; Bethany A. Bell; Suzanne M. Adlof Orthographic influences on phonological processing in children with and without reading difficulties: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Reading and Writing, pp. 1–24, 2024. @article{Baron2024a,Phonological processing is an important contributor to decoding and spelling difficulties, but it does not fully explain word reading outcomes for all children. As orthographic knowledge is acquired, it influences phonological processing in typical readers. In the present study, we examined whether orthography affects phonological processing differently for children with current reading difficulties (RD), children with a history of reading difficulties who are currently presenting with typical word reading skills (Hx), and children with typical development and no history of reading difficulties (TD). School-aged children completed a phonological awareness task containing spoken words and pictures while eye movements were recorded. In this task, children had to pair a spoken stimulus word with one of four pictures that ended with the same sound. Within the task, stimulus-target picture pairs varied in the congruency and consistency of the orthographic and phonological mappings of their final consonant sounds. Eye movements revealed that children with typical word reading (the Hx and TD groups) showed better discrimination of the target from the foils compared to peers with underdeveloped word reading skills. All children were more accurate when stimulus-target pairs were congruent and consistent than when they were incongruent or inconsistent. Orthography plays an important role in the completion of phonological awareness tasks, even in the absence of written words and for children with a wide range of reading abilities. Results highlight the importance of considering orthography during interventions for phonological awareness and word reading. |
Timo T. Heikkilä; Nea Soralinna; Jukka Hyönä Relating foveal and parafoveal processing efficiency with word-level parameters in text reading Journal Article In: Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 137, pp. 1–25, 2024. @article{Heikkilae2024,The study examined whether word-level eye-movement patterns in text reading can be predicted by individual differences in foveal and parafoveal word processing efficiency. Individual differences in lexical skills were gauged by presenting words and pseudowords with short exposure times in the fovea (30–60 ms) and at varying eccentricities in the parafovea. Lexical decision was used to index orthographic processing, word naming to index phonological processing and pseudoword naming to index grapheme-phoneme decoding. The Random Forests statistical technique was used to assess the relative importance of individual difference measures in predicting readers' eye-movement patterns. The results show that individual differences in foveal word processing efficiency are better predictors of both foveal and parafoveal word processing during reading than differences in parafoveal processing efficiency. Results indicate that individual variability in foveal word recognition skills are better determinants of reading fluency among adult readers than variability in parafoveal word recognition skills. |
Kristi Hendrickson; Katlyn Bay; Philip Combiths; Meaghan Foody; Elizabeth Walker Speech sound categories affect lexical competition: Implications for analytic auditory training Journal Article In: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, vol. 67, no. 4, pp. 1281–1289, 2024. @article{Hendrickson2024,Objectives: We provide a novel application of psycholinguistic theories and methods to the field of auditory training to provide preliminary data regarding which minimal pair contrasts are more difficult for listeners with typical hearing to distinguish in real-time. Design: Using eye-tracking, participants heard a word and selected the corre-sponding image from a display of four: The target word, two unrelated words, and a word from one of four contrast categories (i.e., voiced-initial [e.g., peach-beach], voiced-final [e.g., back-bag], manner-initial [e.g., talk-sock], and manner-final [e.g., bat-bass]). Results: Fixations were monitored to measure how strongly words compete for recognition depending on the contrast type (voicing, manner) and location (word-initial or final). Manner contrasts competed more for recognition than did voicing contrasts, and contrasts that occurred in word-final position were harder to distinguish than word-initial position. Conclusion: These results are an important initial step toward creating an evidence-based hierarchy for auditory training for individuals who use cochlear implants. |
Ronen Hershman; David L. Share; Elisabeth M. Weiss; Avishai Henik; Adi Shechter Insights from eye blinks into the cognitive processes involved in visual word recognition Journal Article In: Journal of Cognition, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 1–9, 2024. @article{Hershman2024,Behavioral differences in speed and accuracy between reading familiar and unfamiliar words are well-established in the empirical literature. However, these standard measures of skill proficiency are limited in their ability to capture the moment-to-moment processing involved in visual word recognition. In the present study, the effect of word familiarity was initially investigated using an eye blink rate among adults and children. The probability of eye blinking was higher for familiar (real) words than for unfamiliar (pseudo)words. This counterintuitive pattern of results suggests that the processing of unfamiliar (pseudo)words is more demanding and perhaps less rewarding than the processing of familiar (real) words, as previously observed in both behavioral and pupillometry data. Our findings suggest that the measurement of eye blinks might shed new light on the cognitive processes involved in visual word recognition and other domains of human cognition. |
Regina Hert; Anja Arnhold; Juhani Järvikivi Focus effect unveils children's local processing of pronouns and reflexives Journal Article In: Language Acquisition, pp. 1–27, 2024. @article{Hert2024,Studies on young children's comprehension have shown that children can experience problems interpreting object pronouns, even when reflexive interpretation is already adult-like. Compared to resolving reflexives, linking pronouns to a referent is considered a more “intensive” process, because it also involves non-syntactic factors like discourse context. This could explain why children experience more difficulties with pronouns than with reflexives. Using eye-tracking and a truth value judgement task, we investigated the effect of focus via it-clefts on the processing of reflexives and pronouns in German-speaking children and adults. We analyzed gaze data of two time segments: before and during the mention of the pronoun/reflexive. The cleft segment revealed similar processing of it-clefts in children and adults. In the subsequent reflexive/pronoun segment, clefts caused adults to pay overall more attention to the local referent, while children fixated the clefted non-local referent more. The difference in focus effect, that is, children attend the clefted referent more, while adults pay more attention to the non-clefted referent, helped uncover processing differences between children and adults. That is, unlike adults, children consider only the local discourse context during referential processing. We argue that these processing differences cause children's interpretation difficulties. However, the offline data showed no effect of information structure, suggesting that whether the processing differences transfer to the final interpretation depends on the language-specific function of the pronoun system, which may aid in restricting referential links. |
Regina Hert; Juhani Järvikivi; Anja Arnhold The importance of linguistic factors: He likes subject referents Journal Article In: Cognitive Science, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 1–43, 2024. @article{Hert2024a,We report the results of one visual-world eye-tracking experiment and two referent selection tasks in which we investigated the effects of information structure in the form of prosody and word order manipulation on the processing of subject pronouns er and der in German. Factors such as subjecthood, focus, and topicality, as well as order of mention have been linked to an increased probability of certain referents being selected as the pronoun's antecedent and described as increasing this referent's prominence, salience, or accessibility. The goal of this study was to find out whether pronoun processing is primarily guided by linguistic factors (e.g., grammatical role) or nonlinguistic factors (e.g., first-mention), and whether pronoun interpretation can be described in terms of referents' “prominence” / “accessibility” / “salience.” The results showed an overall subject preference for er, whereas der was affected by the object role and focus marking. While focus increases the attentional load and enhances memory representation for the focused referent making the focused referent more available, ultimately it did not affect the final interpretation of er, suggesting that “prominence” or the related concepts do not explain referent selection preferences. Overall, the results suggest a primacy of linguistic factors in determining pronoun resolution. |
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, vol. 46, pp. 686–709, 2024. @article{Hopp2024,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. |
Lingshan Huang; Jingyang Jiang How do L1 glosses affect EFL learners' reading comprehension performance? An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Linguistics Vanguard, vol. 10, no. 866, pp. 321–333, 2024. @article{Huang2024e,This study employed eye-tracking technology to examine how English as a foreign language learners at different proficiency levels process L1-glossed words and how this processing relates to L2 reading comprehension. Forty-seven university students were divided into a higher-proficiency group (n = 23) and a lower-proficiency group (n = 24) based on their L2 proficiency. Both groups were asked to read an English passage with L1 (Chinese) glosses. Their eye movements were recorded with an eye-tracker as they read. After reading, they were immediately given a reading comprehension test. Analyses of the eye-tracking data showed that the higher-proficiency L2 learners spent more time on unfamiliar words than the lower-proficiency L2 learners. Furthermore, lower-proficiency L2 learners' longer processing time on glossed unfamiliar words was related to their higher reading comprehension scores, whereas this relationship was not found in the higher-proficiency group. These results revealed that the contribution of L1 glosses to L2 reading comprehension performance varied across L2 learners' proficiency levels. Our findings have important implications for second language instruction. |
Linjieqiong Huang; Xingshan Li The effects of lexical- and sentence-level contextual cues on Chinese word segmentation Journal Article In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 293–302, 2024. @article{Huang2024g,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. |
Xin Huang; Brian W. L. Wong; Hezul Tin Yan Ng; Werner Sommer; Olaf Dimigen; Urs Maurer Neural mechanism underlying preview effects and masked priming effects in visual word processing Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, pp. 1–20, 2024. @article{Huang2024f,Two classic experimental paradigms – masked repetition priming and the boundary paradigm – have played a pivotal role in understanding the process of visual word recognition. Traditionally, these paradigms have been employed by different communities of researchers, with their own long-standing research traditions. Nevertheless, a review of the literature suggests that the brain-electric correlates of word processing established with both paradigms may show interesting similarities, in particular with regard to the location, timing, and direction of N1 and N250 effects. However, as of yet, no direct comparison has been undertaken between the two paradigms. In the current study, we used combined eye-tracking/EEG to perform such a within-subject comparison using the same materials (single Chinese characters) as stimuli. To facilitate direct comparisons, we used a simplified version of the boundary paradigm – the single word boundary paradigm. Our results show the typical early repetition effects of N1 and N250 for both paradigms. However, repetition effects in N250 (i.e., a reduced negativity following identical-word primes/previews as compared to different-word primes/previews) were larger with the single word boundary paradigm than with masked priming. For N1 effects, repetition effects were similar across the two paradigms, showing a larger N1 after repetitions as compared to alternations. Therefore, the results indicate that at the neural level, a briefly presented and masked foveal prime produces qualitatively similar facilitatory effects on visual word recognition as a parafoveal preview before a single saccade, although such effects appear to be stronger in the latter case. |
Zhang Huiyong; Wang Yingchao Readers with trait anxiety have poor reading efficiency: Evidence from the perceptual span in Chinese reading Journal Article In: Cogent Psychology, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 1–12, 2024. @article{Huiyong2024,This study investigated the effect of trait anxiety on perceptual span among Chinese readers and its impact on reading efficiency using the moving-window paradigm.We used the Eyelink 2000 eye-tracking device to record the eye movements of readers with trait anxiety as they read Chinese sentences. The experiment used a mixed experimental design with two participant groups (high and low trait anxiety) × four window levels (L1R2, L1R3, L1R4, and FL). The results demonstrated that readers with high trait anxiety had lower reading efficiency than those with low trait anxiety. Readers with high and low trait anxiety had perceptual spans of three and four Chinese characters to the right of the fixation point, respectively. Readers with high trait anxiety exhibited smaller perceptual spans in Chinese reading than those with low trait anxiety. This study demonstrated a correlation between low reading efficiency and small perceptual span among readers with high trait anxiety. |
Jukka Hyönä; Lei Cui; Timo T. Heikkilä; Birgitta Paranko; Yun Gao; Xingzhi Su Reading compound words in Finnish and Chinese: An eye-tracking study Journal Article In: Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 134, pp. 1–16, 2024. @article{Hyoenae2024,Two eye-tracking experiments in alphabetic Finnish and two in logographic Chinese examined the recognition of two-constituent compound words in reading. In Finnish, two-constituent compound words vary greatly in length, whereas in Chinese they are identical in length. According to the visual acuity principle (Bertram & Hyönä, 2003), short Finnish compound words and all two-character Chinese compound words that fit in foveal vision are recognized holistically, whereas long Finnish compound words are recognized via components. Experiment 1 in Finnish provided evidence consistent with the account, whereas the results for long compound words presented in condensed font in Experiment 2 were inconsistent with it. In Chinese, the first-character frequency effect was non-significant even when the compound words were presented in large font. The Finnish results suggest that componential processing is necessary when the compound word entails more than 10 letters. The Chinese results are compatible with the Chinese Reading Model (Li & Pollatsek, 2020) that assumes whole-word representations to overrule the activation of components during compound word recognition. |
Sarah C. Creel; Conor I. Frye Minimal gains for minimal pairs: Difficulty in learning similar-sounding words continues into preschool Journal Article In: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, vol. 240, pp. 1–27, 2024. @article{Creel2024,A critical indicator of spoken language knowledge is the ability to discern the finest possible distinctions that exist between words in a language—minimal pairs, for example, the distinction between the novel words beesh and peesh. Infants differentiate similar-sounding novel labels like “bih” and “dih” by 17 months of age or earlier in the context of word learning. Adult word learners readily distinguish similar-sounding words. What is unclear is the shape of learning between infancy and adulthood: Is there a nonlinear increase early in development, or is there protracted improvement as experience with spoken language amasses? Three experiments tested monolingual English-speaking children aged 3 to 6 years and young adults. Children underperformed when learning minimal-pair words compared with adults (Experiment 1), compared with learning dissimilar words even when speech materials were optimized for young children (Experiment 2), and when the number of word instances during learning was quadrupled (Experiment 3). Nonetheless, the youngest group readily recognized familiar minimal pairs (Experiment 3). Results are consistent with a lengthy trajectory for detailed sound pattern learning in one's native language(s), although other interpretations are possible. Suggestions for research on developmental trajectories across various age ranges are made. |
Nannan Cui; Yang Wang; Jiefei Luo; Yan Wu The role of executive functions in 9- to 12-year-old children's sentence processing: An eye-movement study Journal Article In: Journal of Research in Reading, vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 201–219, 2024. @article{Cui2024,Background: Executive function (EF) plays a crucial role in children's reading. However, previous studies were based on offline products of reading comprehension. Online research is needed to reveal the core mechanisms underlying children's reading processing. By measuring children's working memory (WM) and cognitive flexibility (CF), we investigated whether individual differences in EF could modulate sentence processing and, if so, how they exert their roles. Methods: The present study manipulated semantic congruency and the association between crucial words in a sentence. We recruited 89 Chinese children aged 9–12 years and monitored their eye movement. Results: The study revealed distinct associations between reader- and text-related characteristics, as evidenced by eye-movement patterns during reading. A significant incongruency effect was observed in reading, underscoring the children's capacity to discern incongruent information. Children's WM and CF were found to modulate this process. Specifically, high-WM children showed more effective integration of incongruent information when the textual context was closely related during the later-stage processing. In contrast, low-WM children faced more challenges with incongruent words. Additionally, CF was influential during the early processing period. High-CF children exhibited longer early-stage reading times for incongruent words in associated contexts. Conclusions: Individual differences in EF can modulate children's online sentence processing. However, different EF components may play different roles. |
Michael G. Cutter; Kevin B. Paterson; Ruth Filik Eye-movements during reading and noisy-channel inference making Journal Article In: Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 137, pp. 1–16, 2024. @article{Cutter2024,This novel experiment investigates the relationship between readers' eye movements and their use of “noisy channel” inferences when reading implausible sentences, and how this might be affected by cognitive aging. Young (18–26 years) and older (65–87 years) adult participants read sentences which were either plausible or implausible. Crucially, readers could assign a plausible interpretation to the implausible sentences by inferring that a preposition (i.e., to) had been unintentionally omitted or included. Our results reveal that readers' fixation locations within such sentences are associated with the likelihood of them inferring the presence or absence of this critical preposition to reach a plausible interpretation. Moreover, our older adults were more likely to make these noisy-channel inferences than the younger adults, potentially because their poorer visual processing and greater linguistic experience promote such inference-making. We propose that the present findings provide novel experimental evidence for a perceptual contribution to noisy-channel inference-making during reading. |
Megan M. Dailey; Camille Straboni; Sharon Peperkamp Using allophonic variation in L2 word recognition: French listeners' processing of English vowel nasalization Journal Article In: Second Language Research, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 865 –886, 2024. @article{Dailey2024,During spoken word processing, native (L1) listeners use allophonic variation to predictively rule out word competitors and speed up word recognition. There is some evidence that second language (L2) learners develop an awareness of allophonic distributions in their L2, but whether they use their knowledge to facilitate word recognition online, like native listeners do, is largely unknown. In an offline gating experiment and an online eye-tracking experiment in the visual world paradigm, we compare advanced French learners of English and a control group of L1 English listeners on their processing of English vowel nasalization during spoken word recognition. In the gating task, the French listeners' performance did not differ from that of the English ones. The eye-tracking results show that French listeners used the allophonic distribution in the same way as English listeners, although they were not as fast. Together, these results reveal that L2 learners can develop novel processing strategies using sounds in allophonic distribution to facilitate spoken word recognition. |
Claudia Damiano; Maarten Leemans; Johan Wagemans Exploring the semantic-inconsistency effect in scenes using a continuous measure of linguistic-semantic similarity Journal Article In: Psychological Science, vol. 35, no. 6, pp. 623–634, 2024. @article{Damiano2024,Viewers use contextual information to visually explore complex scenes. Object recognition is facilitated by exploiting object–scene relations (which objects are expected in a given scene) and object–object relations (which objects are expected because of the occurrence of other objects). Semantically inconsistent objects deviate from these expectations, so they tend to capture viewers' attention (the semantic-inconsistency effect). Some objects fit the identity of a scene more or less than others, yet semantic inconsistencies have hitherto been operationalized as binary (consistent vs. inconsistent). In an eye-tracking experiment (N = 21 adults), we study the semantic-inconsistency effect in a continuous manner by using the linguistic-semantic similarity of an object to the scene category and to other objects in the scene. We found that both highly consistent and highly inconsistent objects are viewed more than other objects (U-shaped relationship), revealing that the (in)consistency effect is more than a simple binary classification. |
Roberto G. Almeida; Jordan Gallant; Caitlyn Antal; Gary Libben In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, pp. 1–25, 2024. @article{Almeida2024,How does the language comprehension system identify and interpret word constituents—or morphemes— during sentence reading? We investigated this question by employing words containing semantically ambiguous roots (e.g., bark, with meanings related to both “dog” and “tree”) which are disambiguated when affixed by -ing (e.g., barking; related to “dog” only). We aimed to understand whether higher-level access to the meaning of the root bark would be constrained by lower-level morphological affixation. In Experiment 1, using eye-tracking, participants read sentences containing words with semantically ambiguous roots, such as barking (a prime), combined with targets that were either related to two meanings of the root (dog, tree) or they were cloze and unrelated controls. All five eye-tracking measures we employed (first fixation duration, gaze duration, go-past time, total reading time, and regressions to target) showed no difference between the two root-related targets, which were slower than cloze, but faster than unrelated. Results show that even in cases where a meaning is inconsistent with the full word form (barking-tree), both meanings of the ambiguous root are activated. These results were supported by Experiment 2, employing a maze task in which the time to select the cloze (night) continuation for the sentence He heard loud barking during the… was disrupted by the presence of distractors related to both meanings of bark. We discuss the implications of these findings for the nature ofmorphological parsing and lexical ambiguity resolution in sentence contexts. We suggest that word recognition and lexical access processes involve separating roots from affixes, yielding independent and exhaustive access to root meanings—even when they are ruled out by affixation and context. |
Xizi Deng; Elise McClay; Erin Jastrzebski; Yue Wang; H. Henny Yeung Visual scanning patterns of a talking face when evaluating phonetic information in a native and non-native language Journal Article In: PLoS ONE, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 1–24, 2024. @article{Deng2024,When comprehending speech, listeners can use information encoded in visual cues from a face to enhance auditory speech comprehension. For example, prior work has shown that the mouth movements reflect articulatory features of speech segments and durational information, while pitch and speech amplitude are primarily cued by eyebrow and head movements. Little is known about how the visual perception of segmental and prosodic speech information is influenced by linguistic experience. Using eye-tracking, we studied how perceivers' visual scanning of different regions on a talking face predicts accuracy in a task targeting both segmental versus prosodic information, and also asked how this was influenced by language familiarity. Twenty-four native English perceivers heard two audio sentences in either English or Mandarin (an unfamiliar, non-native language), which sometimes differed in segmental or prosodic information (or both). Perceivers then saw a silent video of a talking face, and judged whether that video matched either the first or second audio sentence (or whether both sentences were the same). First, increased looking to the mouth predicted correct responses only for non-native language trials. Second, the start of a successful search for speech information in the mouth area was significantly delayed in non-native versus native trials, but just when there were only prosodic differences in the auditory sentences, and not when there were segmental differences. Third, (in correct trials) the saccade amplitude in native language trials was significantly greater than in non-native trials, indicating more intensely focused fixations in the latter. Taken together, these results suggest that mouth-looking was generally more evident when processing a non-native versus native language in all analyses, but fascinatingly, when measuring perceivers' latency to fixate the mouth, this language effect was largest in trials where only prosodic information was useful for the task. |
Nina Dumrukcic; Sandra Kotzor Überachiever or Developerin: Eye movements during the processing of translingual hybrid noun-formations Journal Article In: Heliyon, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 1–15, 2024. @article{Dumrukcic2024,This eye tracking experiment tests how the brain recognizes and processes hybrid German-English word-formations and how this process compares to monolingual items. Thirty bilingual German-English adults from the Oxford area (23 females; mean age = 28.0 |
Patrice Speeter Beddor; Andries W. Coetzee; Ian Calloway; Stephen Tobin; Ruaridh Purse The relation between perceptual retuning and articulatory restructuring: Individual differences in accommodating a novel phonetic variant Journal Article In: Journal of Phonetics, vol. 107, pp. 1–23, 2024. @article{Beddor2024,When language users accommodate a novel phonetic variant, they adjust their perceptual and articulatory spaces in listener- and speaker-specific ways. Motivated by the centrality of accommodation and the perception-production relation to theories of phonetics and sound change, this study tests the hypothesis that individuals who are adept at perceptually retuning for a novel variant will be more accurate imitators of that form. In perceptual eye-tracking and spontaneous imitation ultrasound-imaging tasks, 37 American English participants were exposed to a talker's novel raised /æ/ before /ɡ/ (bag), and to their familiar unraised /æk/ (back) and /eɪk/ (bake). Consistent with the hypothesis, results showed that the more participants showed perceptual facilitation (i.e., used raised /æ(ɡ)/ to disambiguate back-bag trials), the more they imitated raised /æ(ɡ)/. Perceptual retuning, though, did not predict articulatory restructuring: imitators produced not context-dependent raising, but more general “imitative” raising. For theories of sound change, the findings provide circumscribed support for especially adept perceptual adapters to an innovation having the potential to be strong disseminators of that variant. For theories of accommodation, findings point toward the importance of studying imitation of a targeted variant in the broader context of how talkers and imitators situate that variant in relation to phonetically similar forms. |
Ali Behzadnia; Signy Wegener; Audrey Bürki; Elisabeth Beyersmann The role of oral vocabulary when L2 speakers read novel words: A complex word training study Journal Article In: Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 388–399, 2024. @article{Behzadnia2024,The present study asked whether oral vocabulary training can facilitate reading in a second language (L2). Fifty L2 speakers of English received oral training over three days on complex novel words, with predictable and unpredictable spellings, composed of novel stems and existing suffixes (i.e., vishing, vishes, vished). After training, participants read the novel word stems for the first time (i.e., trained and untrained), embedded in sentences, and their eye movements were monitored. The eye-tracking data revealed shorter looking times for trained than untrained stems, and for stems with predictable than unpredictable spellings. In contrast to monolingual speakers of English, the interaction between training and spelling predictability was not significant, suggesting that L2 speakers did not generate orthographic skeletons that were robust enough to affect their eye-movement behaviour when seeing the trained novel words for the first time in print. |
Robyn Berghoff; Emanuel Bylund L2 activation during L1 processing is increased by exposure but decreased by proficiency Journal Article In: International Journal of Bilingualism, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 555–569, 2024. @article{Berghoff2024,Aims: The study investigates the effects of L2 proficiency and L2 exposure on L2-to-L1 cross-language activation (CLA) in L1-dominant bilinguals. In so doing, it tests the predictions made by prominent models of the bilingual lexicon regarding how language experience modulates CLA. Design: The participants (27 L1-dominant L1 English–L2 Afrikaans speakers) completed a visual world eye-tracking task, conducted entirely in English, in which they saw four objects on a screen: a target object, which they were instructed to click on; a competitor object, whose Afrikaans label overlapped phonetically at onset with the English target object label; and two unrelated distractors. Language background data were collected using the Language History Questionnaire 3.0. Analysis: A growth curve analysis was performed to investigate the extent to which the background variables modulated looks to the Afrikaans competitor item versus to the two unrelated distractor items. Findings: Increased L2 exposure was associated with greater CLA, which is consistent with models suggesting that exposure modulates the likelihood and speed with which a linguistic item becomes activated. Moreover, CLA was reduced at higher levels of L2 proficiency, which aligns with accounts of the bilingual lexicon positing that parasitism of the L2 on the L1 is reduced at higher proficiency levels, leading to reduced CLA. Originality: L2 activation during L1 processing and the variables that modulate it are not well documented, particularly among L1 speakers with limited proficiency in and exposure to the L2. Significance: The findings contribute to the evaluation of competing accounts of bilingual lexical organization. |
Alexandra Berlin Khenis; Maksim Markevich; Anastasiia Streltsova; Elena L. Grigorenko Eye movement patterns in Russian-speaking adolescents with differing reading comprehension proficiency: Exploratory scanpath analysis Journal Article In: Journal of Intelligence, vol. 12, no. 11, pp. 1–19, 2024. @article{BerlinKhenis2024,Previous research has indicated that individuals with varying levels of reading comprehension (often used as a proxy for general cognitive ability) employ distinct reading eye movement patterns. This exploratory eye-tracking study aimed to investigate the text-reading process in adolescents with differing reading comprehension, specifically examining how these differences manifest at the global eye movement level through scanpath analysis. Our findings revealed two distinct groups of scanpaths characterized by statistically significant differences in eye movement parameters. These groups were identified as “fast readers” and “slow readers”. Both groups exhibited similar oculomotor performance during the initial reading. However, significant differences emerged when they reread and revisited the text. Notably, these findings align with prior research conducted with different samples and languages, although discrepancies emerged in saccade amplitude and first-pass reading behavior. This study contributes to the understanding of how reading comprehension levels are reflected in global eye movement strategies among adolescents. However, limitations inherent in the experimental design, particularly the potential influence of the task on reading patterns, warrant further investigation. Future research should aim to explore these phenomena in more naturalistic reading settings, employing a design specifically tailored to capture the nuances of spontaneous reading behavior. |
Borogjoon Borjigin; Guangyao Zhang; You Hou; Xingshan Li Perceptual span in Mongolian text reading Journal Article In: Current Psychology, vol. 43, no. 29, pp. 24287–24294, 2024. @article{Borjigin2024,In this study, an eye-tracking experiment was conducted to investigate the perceptual span during traditional Mongolian reading, a script uniquely written vertically. We adopted a gaze-contingent moving-window paradigm to measure the size of the perceptual span when reading traditional Mongolian sentences. The results showed that the perceptual span was asymmetric downward, extending one syllable above the fixation and three syllables below the fixation. These findings are important for understanding how reading direction affects the underlying cognitive mechanisms during reading and will help to understand the universal mechanisms of reading. |
Ethan S. Bromberg-Martin; Yang-Yang Feng; Takaya Ogasawara; J. Kael White; Kaining Zhang; Ilya E. Monosov A neural mechanism for conserved value computations integrating information and rewards Journal Article In: Nature Neuroscience, vol. 27, pp. 1–17, 2024. @article{BrombergMartin2024,Behavioral and economic theory dictate that we decide between options based on their values. However, humans and animals eagerly seek information about uncertain future rewards, even when this does not provide any objective value. This implies that decisions are made by endowing information with subjective value and integrating it with the value of extrinsic rewards, but the mechanism is unknown. Here, we show that human and monkey value judgements obey strikingly conserved computational principles during multi-attribute decisions trading off information and extrinsic reward. We then identify a neural substrate in a highly conserved ancient structure, the lateral habenula (LHb). LHb neurons signal subjective value, integrating information's value with extrinsic rewards, and the LHb predicts and causally influences ongoing decisions. Neurons in key input areas to the LHb largely signal components of these computations, not integrated value signals. Thus, our data uncover neural mechanisms of conserved computations underlying decisions to seek information about the future. |
Laurence Bruggeman; Anne Cutler Lexical recognition processes in L2-dominant bilingualism Journal Article In: Frontiers in Language Sciences, vol. 3, pp. 1–11, 2024. @article{Bruggeman2024,To comprehend speech, listeners must resolve competition between potential candidate words. In second-language (L2) listening such competition may be inflated by spurious activation; the onsets of “reggae” and “legacy” may both activate “leg” for Japanese listeners, or the rhymes of “adapt” and “adept” may activate “apt” for Dutch listeners, while only one in each pair triggers competition for L1 listeners. Using eyetracking with L2-dominant bilingual emigrants, we directly compared within-language L1 and L2 lexical activation and competition in the same individuals. For these listeners, activation patterns did not differ across languages. Unexpectedly, however, we observed onset competition in both languages but rhyme competition in the L2 only (although the same stimuli elicited rhyme competition for control listeners in both languages). This suggests that L1 rhyme competition may disappear after long-time immersion in an L2 environment. |
Dana Bsharat-Maalouf; Jens Schmidtke; Tamar Degani; Hanin Karawani Through the pupils' lens: Multilingual effort in first and second language listening Journal Article In: Ear & Hearing, vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 494–511, 2024. @article{BsharatMaalouf2024,Objectives: The present study aimed to examine the involvement of listening effort among multilinguals in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages in quiet and noisy listening conditions and investigate how the presence of a constraining context within sentences influences listening effort. Design: A group of 46 young adult Arabic (L1)–Hebrew (L2) multilinguals participated in a listening task. This task aimed to assess participants' perceptual performance and the effort they exert (as measured through pupillometry) while listening to single words and sentences presented in their L1 and L2, in quiet and noisy environments (signal to noise ratio = 0 dB). Results: Listening in quiet was easier than in noise, supported by both perceptual and pupillometry results. Perceptually, multilinguals performed similarly and reached ceiling levels in both languages in quiet. However, under noisy conditions, perceptual accuracy was significantly lower in L2, especially when processing sentences. Critically, pupil dilation was larger and more prolonged when listening to L2 than L1 stimuli. This difference was observed even in the quiet condition. Contextual support resulted in better perceptual performance of high-predictability sentences compared with low-predictability sentences, but only in L1 under noisy conditions. In L2, pupillometry showed increased effort when listening to high-predictability sentences compared with low-predictability sentences, but this increased effort did not lead to better understanding. In fact, in noise, speech perception was lower in high-predictability L2 sentences compared with low-predictability ones. Conclusions: The findings underscore the importance of examining listening effort in multilingual speech processing and suggest that increased effort may be present in multilingual's L2 within clinical and educational settings. |
Maya Campbell; Nicole Oppenheimer; Alex L. White Severe processing capacity limits for sub-lexical features of letter strings Journal Article In: Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, vol. 86, no. 2, pp. 643–652, 2024. @article{Campbell2024,When reading, the visual system is confronted with many words simultaneously. How much of that information can a reader process at once? Previous studies demonstrated that low-level visual features of multiple words are processed in parallel, but lexical attributes are processed serially, for one word at a time. This implies that an internal bottleneck lies somewhere between early visual and lexical analysis. We used a dual-task behavioral paradigm to investigate whether this bottleneck lies at the stage of letter recognition or phonological decoding. On each trial, two letter strings were flashed briefly, one above and one below fixation, and then masked. In the letter identification experiment, participants indicated whether a vowel was present in a particular letter string. In the phonological decoding experiment, participants indicated whether the letter string was pronounceable. We compared accuracy in a focused attention condition, in which participants judged only one of the two strings, with accuracy in a divided attention condition, in which participants judged both strings independently. In both experiments, the cost of dividing attention was so large that it supported a serial model: participants were able to process only one letter string per trial. Furthermore, we found a stimulus processing trade-off that is characteristic of serial processing: When participants judged one string correctly, they were less likely to judge the other string correctly. Therefore, the bottleneck that constrains word recognition under these conditions arises at a sub-lexical level, perhaps due to a limit on the efficiency of letter recognition. |
Jon W. Carr; Monica Fantini; Lorena Perrotti; Davide Crepaldi Readers target words where they expect to minimize uncertainty Journal Article In: Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 138, pp. 1–15, 2024. @article{Carr2024,Skilled readers use multiple heuristics to guide their eye movements during reading. One possible cue that readers may rely on is the way in which information about word identity is typically spread across words. In many (but not all) languages, words are, on average, more informative on the left, predicting that readers should have a preference for left-of-center fixation when targeting words. Any such effect will, however, be modulated by important perceptual constraints and may be masked by various confounding factors. In three experiments with artificially constructed lexicons, we provide causal evidence that the way in which a language distributes information affects how readers land on words. We further support our analyses with a Bayesian cognitive model of visual word recognition that predicts where readers ought to fixate in order to minimize uncertainty about word identity. Taken together, our findings suggest that global properties of the lexicon may play a role in isolated word targeting, and may therefore make a contribution to eye movement behavior in more natural reading settings. |
Gareth Carrol; Katrien Segaert As easy as cake or a piece of pie? Processing idiom variation and the contribution of individual cognitive differences Journal Article In: Memory & Cognition, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 334–351, 2024. @article{Carrol2024,Language users routinely use canonical, familiar idioms in everyday communication without difficulty. However, creativity in idiom use is more widespread than sometimes assumed, and little is known about how we process creative uses of idioms, and how individual differences in cognitive skills contribute to this. We used eye-tracking while reading and cross-modal priming to investigate the processing of idioms (e.g., play with fire) compared with creative variants (play with acid) and literal controls (play with toys), amongst a group of 47 university-level native speakers of English. We also conducted a series of tests to measure cognitive abilities (working memory capacity, inhibitory control, and processing speed). Eye-tracking results showed that in early reading behaviour, variants were read no differently to literal phrases or idioms but showed significantly longer overall reading times, with more rereading required compared with other conditions. Idiom variables (familiarity, decomposability, literal plausibility) and individual cognitive variables had limited effects throughout, although more decomposable phrases of all kinds required less overall reading time. Cross-modal priming—which has often shown a robust idiom advantage in past studies—demonstrated no difference between conditions, but decomposability again led to faster processing. Overall, results suggest that variants were treated more like literal phrases than novel metaphors, with subsequent effort required to make sense of these in the way that was consistent with the context provided. |
Min Chang; Zhenying Pu; Jingxin Wang Oral reading promotes predictive processing in Chinese sentence reading: Eye movement evidence Journal Article In: PeerJ, vol. 12, no. 10, pp. 1–19, 2024. @article{Chang2024,Background. Fluent sentence reading is widely acknowledged to depend on top-down contextual prediction, wherein sentential and contextual cues guide the pre-activation of linguistic representations before encountering stimuli, facilitating subsequent comprehension. The Prediction-by-Production hypothesis posits an explanation for predictive processes in language comprehension, suggesting that prediction during comprehension involves processes associated with language production. However, there is a lack of eye movement evidence supporting this hypothesis within sentence reading contexts. Thus, we manipulated reading mode and word predictability to examine the influence of language production on predictive processing. Methods. Participants engaged in silent or oral reading of sentences containing either high or low-predictable target words. Eye movements were recorded using the Eyelink1000 eye tracker. Results. The findings revealed a higher skipping rate and shorter fixation times for high-predictable words compared to low-predictable ones, and for silent compared to oral reading. Notably, interactive effects were observed in the time measures (FFD, SFD, GD) during first-pass reading, indicating that word predictability effects were more pronounced during oral reading than silent reading. Discussion. The observed pattern of results suggests that the activation of the production system enhances predictive processing during the early lexical access, providing empirical support for the Prediction-by-Production hypothesis in eye movement sentence reading situations, extending the current understanding of the timing and nature of predictions in reading comprehension. |
Vassiki S. Chauhan; Krystal C. McCook; Alex L. White Reading reshapes stimulus selectivity in the visual word form area Journal Article In: eNeuro, vol. 11, no. 7, pp. 1–20, 2024. @article{Chauhan2024,Reading depends on a brain region known as the “visual word form area” (VWFA) in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex. This region's function is debated because its stimulus selectivity is not absolute, it is modulated by a variety of task demands, and it is inconsistently localized. We used fMRI to characterize the combination of sensory and cognitive factors that activate word-responsive regions that we precisely localized in 16 adult humans (4 male). We then presented three types of character strings: English words, pseudowords, and unfamiliar characters with matched visual features. Participants performed three different tasks while viewing those stimuli: detecting real words, detecting color in the characters, and detecting color in the fixation mark. There were three primary findings about the VWFA's response: (1) It preferred letter strings over unfamiliar characters even when the stimuli were ignored during the fixation task. (2) Compared with those baseline responses, engaging in the word reading task enhanced the response to words but suppressed the response to unfamiliar characters. (3) Attending to the stimuli to judge their color had little effect on the response magnitudes. Thus, the VWFA is uniquely modulated by a cognitive signal that is specific to voluntary linguistic processing and is not additive. Functional connectivity analyses revealed that communication between the VWFA and a left frontal language area increased when the participant engaged in the linguistic task. We conclude that the VWFA is inherently selective for familiar orthography, but it falls under control of the language network when the task demands it. |
Shuyuan Chen; Jinzuan Chen; Yanping Liu Are there binocular advantages in Chinese reading? Evidence from eye movements Journal Article In: Scientific Studies of Reading, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 270–283, 2024. @article{Chen2024k,Purpose: This study aims to examine whether binocular vision plays a facilitating or impeding role in lexical processing during sentence reading in Chinese. Method: Adopting the revised boundary paradigm, we orthogonally manipulated the parafoveal and foveal viewing conditions (monocular vs. binocular) of target words (high- vs. low-frequency) within sentences. Forty participants (30 females, mean age = 19.9 years) were recruited to read these sentences and their eye movements were monitored. Results: Through directly comparing the eye movement measures in different viewing conditions, the results indicated that compared with monocular viewing, binocular viewing resulted in shorter fixation durations, thereby facilitating lexical processing. Critically, in addition to the higher information encoding speed toward the currently fixated word in the fovea, the more efficient preprocessing of the upcoming text to the right of fixation in the parafovea may also contribute to the superiority of binocular vision over monocular. Conclusion: Our findings provide the first evidence to support the binocular advantages in Chinese reading, which reveals that high-quality visual input from binocular vision plays a vital role in fluent and efficient written text reading. |
Shuyuan Chen; Erik D. Reichle; Yanping Liu Direct lexical control of eye movements in Chinese reading: Evidence from the co-registration of EEG and eye tracking Journal Article In: Cognitive Psychology, vol. 153, no. 135, pp. 1–21, 2024. @article{Chen2024f,The direct-lexical-control hypothesis stipulates that some aspect of a word's processing determines the duration of the fixation on that word and/or the next. Although the direct lexical control is incorporated into most current models of eye-movement control in reading, the precise implementation varies and the assumptions of the hypothesis may not be feasible given that lexical processing must occur rapidly enough to influence fixation durations. Conclusive empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis is therefore lacking. In this article, we report the results of an eye-tracking experiment using the boundary paradigm in which native speakers of Chinese read sentences in which target words were either high- or low-frequency and preceded by a valid or invalid preview. Eye movements were co-registered with electroencephalography, allowing standard analyses of eye-movement measures, divergence point analyses of fixation-duration distributions, and fixated-related potentials on the target words. These analyses collectively provide strong behavioral and neural evidence of early lexical processing and thus strong support for the direct-lexical-control hypothesis. We discuss the implications of the findings for our understanding of how the hypothesis might be implemented, the neural systems that support skilled reading, and the nature of eye-movement control in the reading of Chinese versus alphabetic scripts. |
Sijia Chen; Jan-Louis Kruger Visual processing during computer-assisted consecutive interpreting Journal Article In: Interpreting, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 231–252, 2024. @article{Chen2024g,This study investigates the visual processing patterns during computer-assisted consecutive interpreting (CACI). In phase I of the proposed CACI workflow, the interpreter listens to the source speech and respeaks it into speech recognition (SR) software. In phase II, the interpreter produces target speech supported by the SR text and its machine translation (MT) output. A group of students performed CACI with their eye movements tracked. In phase I, the participants devoted the majority of their attention to listening and respeaking, with very limited attention distributed to the SR text. However, a positive correlation was found between the percentage of dwell time on the SR text and the quality of respeaking, which suggests that active monitoring could be important. In phase II, the participants devoted more visual attention to the MT text than to the SR text and engaged in deeper and more effortful processing when reading the MT text. We identified a positive correlation between the percentage of dwell time on the MT text and interpreting quality in the L2–L1 direction but not in the L1–L2 direction. These results contribute to our understanding of computer-assisted interpreting and can provide insights for future research and training in this area. |
Xianglan Chen; Weiqian Liu; Yuming Ma; Zhongyang Sun How pupils of different ages perceive menus denoting metaphorical and metonymic expressions: Insights from eye-tracking Journal Article In: Acta Psychologica, vol. 249, pp. 1–7, 2024. @article{Chen2024i,The “embodied” position on language comprehension proposes that metaphor or metonymy understanding can be presented in a distributed network based on previous sensorimotor experience. The current study attempted to investigate how children understood metaphor and metonymy.in the context of daily diet that provides rich sensory experience for children. We implemented an eye-tracking experiment where a 2 × 2 × 2 mixed design was employed. Thirty Chinese pupils aging from 6 to 12 were instructed to appreciate Chinese menus denoting metaphoric or metonymic expressions. Results of eye-tracking indicated that the dish image captioned with metaphorical names held the greatest attention of pupils, which held especially true for junior pupils. Moreover, the inclusion of Chinese pinyin in the menu served as a distractor that reduced pupils' attention to other menu elements. This study adds to the state of the art on embodied account of language by inspecting how the under-explored children perceived metaphorical and metonymic expressions. The context of everyday diet abundant in sensory experience managed to provide a more vivid scenario on this topic. It also provides practical insight into how to design menus to invoke particular sensory experience of infants who are undergoing both physical and mental development. |
Anna Chrabaszcz; Anna Laurinavichyute; Nina Ladinskaya; Liubov Baladzhaeva; Anat Prior; Andriy Myachykov; Olga Dragoy Writing direction influences the spatial representations of past- and future-tense forms: Evidence from eye tracking Journal Article In: Memory & Cognition, pp. 1–16, 2024. @article{Chrabaszcz2024,The present study tests the hypothesis that the directionality of reading habits (left-to-right or right-to-left) impacts individuals' representation of nonspatial events. Using the blank screen paradigm, we examine whether eye movements reflect culture-specific spatial biases in processing temporal information, specifically, grammatical tense in Russian and Hebrew. Sixty-two native speakers of Russian (a language with a left-to-right reading and writing system) and 62 native speakers of Hebrew (a language with a right-to-left reading and writing system) listened to verbs in the past or future tense while their spontaneous gaze positions were recorded. Following the verb, a visual spatial probe appeared in one of the five locations of the screen, and participants responded manually to indicate its position. While participants' response latencies to the spatial probe revealed no significant effects, their gaze positions along the horizontal axis for past- and future-tensed verbs aligned with the reading and writing direction in their language. These results provide novel evidence that eye movements during auditory processing of grammatical tense are influenced by culturally specific reading and writing conventions, shifting leftward or rightward on the horizontal plane depending on the stimuli's time reference (past or future) and the participants' language (Russian or Hebrew). This spatial bias indicates a common underlying cognitive mechanism that uses spatial dimensions to represent temporal constructs. |
Kiel Christianson; Jack Dempsey; Anna Tsiola; Sarah Elizabeth M. Deshaies; Nayoung Kim Retracing the garden-path: Nonselective rereading and no reanalysis Journal Article In: Journal of Memory and Language, vol. 137, pp. 1–17, 2024. @article{Christianson2024,When people read temporarily ambiguous (“garden-path”) sentences, the forward movement of their eyes is often interrupted by regressions. These regressions are usually followed by rereading some portion of the previously read text. Frazier and Rayner (1982) proposed the Selective Reanalysis Hypothesis (SRH), which proposed that readers regress to critical choice points in the syntactic phrase marker of garden-paths where misparses had occurred, and furthermore, then reanalyzed the syntactic structure to arrive at a correct parse in most cases. A considerable amount of more recent work, however, suggests that readers often do not derive a correct parse or interpretation from such sentences. If these more recent observations are accurate, perhaps rereading is not necessarily strategic, controlled, or predictable. The current study consists of two large-scale eye-tracking experiments designed specifically to examine where and how much people reread garden-path sentences, and whether rereading influences comprehension accuracy. A variable text-masking paradigm was employed to restrict access to portions of garden-paths and non-garden-paths during rereading. Scanpath analyses were used to determine whether some or all participants targeted syntactically critical parts of previously read text. Comprehension questions probed final interpretations. In short, readers often misinterpreted the garden-paths, and no rereading measures predicted better comprehension. Furthermore, scanpath analyses revealed considerable variation across and within readers; only small percentages of trials conformed to structurally-based predictions. Taken together, we fail to find support for structurally strategic rereading. We therefore propose that rereading of these sentences is more often “confirmatory” than “revisionary” in nature. |
Andriana L. Christofalos; Madison Laks; Stephanie Wolfer; Elisa C. Dias; Daniel C. Javitt; Heather Sheridan Lower-level oculomotor deficits in schizophrenia during multi-line reading: Evidence from return-sweeps Journal Article In: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 77, no. 7, pp. 1533–1543, 2024. @article{Christofalos2024,Reading fluency deficits in schizophrenia (Sz) have been attributed to dysfunction in both lower-level, oculomotor processing and higher-level, lexical processing, according to the two-hit deficit model. Given that prior work examining reading deficits in individuals with Sz has primarily focused on single-line and single-word reading tasks, eye movements that are unique to passage reading, such as return-sweep saccades, have not yet been examined in Sz. Return-sweep saccades are large eye movements that are made when readers move from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line during natural passage reading. Examining return-sweeps provides an opportunity to examine lower-level, oculomotor deficits during reading under circumstances when upcoming higher-level, lexical information is not available for visual processing because visual acuity constraints do not permit detailed lexical processing of line-initial words when return-sweeps are programmed. To examine the source of reading deficits in Sz, we analysed an existing data set in which participants read multi-line passages with manipulations to line spacing. Readers with Sz made significantly more return-sweep targeting errors followed by corrective saccades compared with healthy controls. Both groups showed similar effects of line spacing on return-sweep targeting accuracy, suggesting similar sensitivities to visual crowding during reading. Furthermore, the patterns of fixation durations in readers with Sz corroborate prior work indicating reduced parafoveal processing of upcoming words. Together, these findings suggest that lower-level visual and oculomotor dysfunction contribute to reading deficits in Sz, providing support for the two-hit deficit model. |
Clara Cohen Predicting this rock: Listeners use redundant phonetic information in online morphosyntactic processing Journal Article In: Glossa Psycholinguistics, vol. 3, pp. 1–52, 2024. @article{Cohen2024,Pronunciation variation is systematic, and provides listeners with cues to what the speaker is about to say. Shortened stems, for example, can indicate an upcoming suffix, while lengthened ones can indicate a word boundary follows. Previous work has shown that listeners draw on these cues to distinguish polysyllabic words, like rocket, from monosyllabic words, like rock. This strategy is useful in morphological processing, as additional morphological structure often adds additional syllables. The current study asks (i) whether listeners use these cues to distinguish words that differ only in morphological structure with no change in syllable count (e.g., rock/rocks); and (ii) how surrounding morphosyntactic context affects listeners' ability to use these cues. Ideal observer models predict that listeners should be attentive to phonetic detail in all contexts regardless of how much new information it offers, while the strategic listener account allows listeners to dynamically adjust their attentiveness to phonetic detail based on its information value in context. In a visual-world eye-tracking study, English-speaking listeners were presented with utterances containing target nouns whose stem durations were manipulated to provide cues to the presence or absence of (a) a plural suffix (rock vs. rocks) or (b) a second, non-morphological syllable (rock vs. rocket). These words were embedded in two contexts: (i) preceded by agreeing determiners, which rendered stem duration cues redundant for predicting the presence or absence of a suffix (this rock/these rocks), and (ii) preceded by non-agreeing determiners (the rock(s)), where stem duration cues carried more information. The results are consistent with ideal observer models: listeners are highly attentive to all acoustic detail, and especially so when it is predictable (and hence redundant), as long as they have the cognitive resources to handle it. |
Derya Çokal; Klaus Heusinger The role of alternatives in the cognitive processing of German demonstratives: Insights from online and offline processing Journal Article In: Frontiers in Language Sciences, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1–9, 2024. @article{Cokal2024,This study, employing eye-tracking reading and sentence completion experiments, explores the impact of competing antecedents on the German demonstratives der and dieser . It challenges prior assumptions, revealing that in competitive alternative antecedent contexts, processing dieser initially posed challenges, indicating sensitivity to alternatives. Dieser exhibited less processing difficulties than der , potentially influenced by a register effect. Consistent with previous findings, in the offline task, references to the non-prominent entity were similar for both demonstratives, but our online experiment shows functional differences in cognitive processes between the two in reading. Our results suggest that Thematic Role accounts better explain antecedent preferences for der and dieser than Centering Theory . |
Sarah E. Colby; Francis X. Smith; Bob McMurray The role of inhibitory control in spoken word recognition: Evidence from cochlear implant users Journal Article In: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, vol. 39, no. 8, pp. 1059–1071, 2024. @article{Colby2024,During spoken word recognition, listeners must quickly map sounds to meaning while suppressing competitors. It remains unclear whether domain-general inhibitory control is recruited for resolving lexical competition. Cochlear implant (CI) users present a unique population for addressing this question because they are consistently confronted with degraded auditory input, and may need to rely on domain-general mechanisms to compensate. We examined word recognition in adult CI users who were prelingually deaf (lost their hearing in childhood |