The time course of processing emotion-laden words during sentence reading: Evidence from eye movements

Abstract. We report the results of a meta-analysis of 22 experiments comparing the eye movement data obtained from young ( Mage = 21 years) and old ( Mage = 73 years) readers. The data included six eye movement measures (mean gaze duration, mean fixation duration, total sentence reading time, mean number of fixations, mean number of regressions, and mean length of progressive saccade eye movements). Estimates were obtained of the typified mean difference, d, between the age groups in all six measures. The results showed positive combined effect size estimates in favor of the young adult group (between 0.54 and 3.66 in all measures), although the difference for the mean number of fixations was not significant. Young adults make in a systematic way, shorter gazes, fewer regressions, and shorter saccadic movements during reading than older adults, and they also read faster. The meta-analysis results confirm statistically the most common patterns observed in previous research; therefore, eye movements seem to be a useful tool to measure behavioral changes due to the aging process. Moreover, these results do not allow us to discard either of the two main hypotheses assessed for explaining the observed aging effects, namely neural degenerative problems and the adoption of compensatory strategies.

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Tracking the Time Course of Spoken Word Recognition Using Eye Movements: Evidence for Continuous Mapping Models

Journal of Memory and Language ◽

10.1006/jmla.1997.2558 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 38 (4) ◽

pp. 419-439 ◽

Cited By ~ 682

Author(s):

Paul D. Allopenna ◽

James S. Magnuson ◽

Michael K. Tanenhaus

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Word Recognition ◽

Time Course ◽

Spoken Word Recognition ◽

Continuous Mapping ◽

Spoken Word ◽

Mapping Models

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Distraction by deviant sounds during reading: An eye-movement study

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1177/1747021818820816 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 72 (7) ◽

pp. 1863-1875 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Martin R Vasilev ◽

Fabrice BR Parmentier ◽

Bernhard Angele ◽

Julie A Kirkby

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Time Course ◽

Lexical Processing ◽

Repeated Sequence ◽

Reading Performance ◽

Sequence Capture ◽

Fixation Durations ◽

Movement Study ◽

Task Irrelevant ◽

Target Words

Oddball studies have shown that sounds unexpectedly deviating from an otherwise repeated sequence capture attention away from the task at hand. While such distraction is typically regarded as potentially important in everyday life, previous work has so far not examined how deviant sounds affect performance on more complex daily tasks. In this study, we developed a new method to examine whether deviant sounds can disrupt reading performance by recording participants’ eye movements. Participants read single sentences in silence and while listening to task-irrelevant sounds. In the latter condition, a 50-ms sound was played contingent on the fixation of five target words in the sentence. On most occasions, the same tone was presented (standard sound), whereas on rare and unexpected occasions it was replaced by white noise (deviant sound). The deviant sound resulted in significantly longer fixation durations on the target words relative to the standard sound. A time-course analysis showed that the deviant sound began to affect fixation durations around 180 ms after fixation onset. Furthermore, deviance distraction was not modulated by the lexical frequency of target words. In summary, fixation durations on the target words were longer immediately after the presentation of the deviant sound, but there was no evidence that it interfered with the lexical processing of these words. The present results are in line with the recent proposition that deviant sounds yield a temporary motor suppression and suggest that deviant sounds likely inhibit the programming of the next saccade.

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Systemic Effects of Selection History on Learned Ignoring

10.31234/osf.io/zca2b ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Andy Jeesu Kim ◽

Brian A. Anderson

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Reaction Time ◽

Young Adult ◽

High Probability ◽

Time Course ◽

Systemic Effects ◽

Reduced Frequency ◽

Selection History ◽

Adult Participants ◽

Task Irrelevant

Despite our best intentions, physically salient but entirely task-irrelevant stimuli can sometimes capture our attention. With learning, it is possible to more efficiently ignore such stimuli, although specifically how the visual system accomplishes this remains to be clarified. Using a sample of young-adult participants, we examined the time course of eye movements to targets and distractors. We replicate a reduced frequency of eye movements to the distractor when appearing in a location at which distractors are frequently encountered. This reduction was observed even for the earliest saccades, when selection tends to be most stimulus-driven. When the distractor appeared at the high-probability location, saccadic reaction time was slowed specifically for distractor-going saccades, suggesting a slowing of priority accumulation at this location. In the event that the distractor was fixated, disengagement from the distractor was also faster when it appeared in the high-probability location. Both proactive and reactive mechanisms of distractor suppression work together to minimize attentional capture by frequently-encountered distractors.

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Exploring the Associations between Reading Skills and Eye Movements in Elementary Children’s Silent Sentence Reading

Reading Psychology ◽

10.1080/02702711.2021.2020189 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-19

Author(s):

Sungyoon Lee ◽

Steven Woltering ◽

Christopher Prickett ◽

Qinxin Shi ◽

Huilin Sun ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Reading Skills ◽

Sentence Reading

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Eye-Head Movement Coordination: Vestibulo-Ocular Reflex Suppression with Head-Fixed Target Fixation1

Journal of Vestibular Research ◽

10.3233/ves-1991-1207 ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 161-170

Author(s):

Jean-Louis Vercher ◽

Gabriel M. Gauthier

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Time Course ◽

Mental Arithmetic ◽

Visual Space ◽

Head Movements ◽

Total Darkness ◽

Fixed Target ◽

Ocular Reflex ◽

Optokinetic Reflex ◽

Vestibulo Ocular Reflex

To maintain clear vision, the images on the retina must remain reasonably stable. Head movements are generally dealt with successfully by counter-rotation of the eyes induced by the combined actions of the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) and the optokinetic reflex. A problem of importance relates to the value of the so-called intrinsic gain of the VOR (VORG) in man, and how this gain is modulated to provide appropriate eye movements. We have studied these problems in two situations: 1. fixation of a stationary object of the visual space while the head moves; 2. fixation of an object moving with the head. These two situations were compared to a basic condition in which no visual target was allowed in order to induce “pure” VOR. Eye movements were recorded in seated subjects during stationary sinusoidal and transient rotations around the vertical axis. Subjects were in total darkness (DARK condition) and involved in mental arithmetic. Alternatively, they were provided with a small foveal target, either fixed with respect to earth (earth-fixed target: EFT condition), or moving with them (chair-fixed-target: CFT condition). The stationary rotation experiment was used as baseline for the ensuing experiment and yielded control data in agreement with the literature. In all 3 visual conditions, typical responses to transient rotations were rigorously identical during the first 200 ms. They showed, sequentially, a 16-ms delay of the eye behind the head and a rapid increase in eye velocity during 75 to 80 ms, after which the average VORG was 0.9 ± 0.15. During the following 50 to 100 ms, the gain remained around 0.9 in all three conditions. Beyond 200 ms, the VORG remained around 0.9 in DARK and increased slowly towards 1 or decreased towards zero in the EFT and CFT conditions, respectively. The time-course of the later events suggests that visual tracking mechanisms came into play to reduce retinal slip through smooth pursuit, and position error through saccades. Our data also show that in total darkness VORG is set to 0.9 in man. Lower values reported in the literature essentially reflect predictive properties of the vestibulo-ocular mechanism, particularly evident when the input signal is a sinewave.

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Eye movements do not play an important role in the adaptation of hand tracking to a visuomotor rotation

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.00814.2018 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 121 (5) ◽

pp. 1967-1976 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Niels Gouirand ◽

James Mathew ◽

Eli Brenner ◽

Frederic R. Danion

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Time Course ◽

Motor Behavior ◽

Hand Movement ◽

Visuomotor Adaptation ◽

Online Control ◽

Hand Movements ◽

Hand Tracking ◽

Gaze Fixation ◽

The Gaze

Adapting hand movements to changes in our body or the environment is essential for skilled motor behavior. Although eye movements are known to assist hand movement control, how eye movements might contribute to the adaptation of hand movements remains largely unexplored. To determine to what extent eye movements contribute to visuomotor adaptation of hand tracking, participants were asked to track a visual target that followed an unpredictable trajectory with a cursor using a joystick. During blocks of trials, participants were either allowed to look wherever they liked or required to fixate a cross at the center of the screen. Eye movements were tracked to ensure gaze fixation as well as to examine free gaze behavior. The cursor initially responded normally to the joystick, but after several trials, the direction in which it responded was rotated by 90°. Although fixating the eyes had a detrimental influence on hand tracking performance, participants exhibited a rather similar time course of adaptation to rotated visual feedback in the gaze-fixed and gaze-free conditions. More importantly, there was extensive transfer of adaptation between the gaze-fixed and gaze-free conditions. We conclude that although eye movements are relevant for the online control of hand tracking, they do not play an important role in the visuomotor adaptation of such tracking. These results suggest that participants do not adapt by changing the mapping between eye and hand movements, but rather by changing the mapping between hand movements and the cursor’s motion independently of eye movements. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Eye movements assist hand movements in everyday activities, but their contribution to visuomotor adaptation remains largely unknown. We compared adaptation of hand tracking under free gaze and fixed gaze. Although our results confirm that following the target with the eyes increases the accuracy of hand movements, they unexpectedly demonstrate that gaze fixation does not hinder adaptation. These results suggest that eye movements have distinct contributions for online control and visuomotor adaptation of hand movements.

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Using Eye Movements to Investigate Word Frequency Effects in Children's Sentence Reading

School Psychology Review ◽

10.1080/02796015.2013.12087485 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 42 (2) ◽

pp. 207-222 ◽

Cited By ~ 29

Author(s):

Holly S. S. L. Joseph ◽

Kate Nation ◽

Simon P. Liversedge

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Word Frequency ◽

Frequency Effects ◽

Sentence Reading

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The time-course of morphological constraints

The Mental Lexicon ◽

10.1075/ml.3.2.01cun ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 149-175 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Ian Cunnings ◽

Harald Clahsen

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Eye Movement ◽

Language Processing ◽

Time Course ◽

Judgment Task ◽

General Constraint ◽

Movement Data ◽

Word Forms ◽

Eye Movements During Reading ◽

Acceptability Judgment

The avoidance of regular but not irregular plurals inside compounds (e.g., *rats eater vs. mice eater) has been one of the most widely studied morphological phenomena in the psycholinguistics literature. To examine whether the constraints that are responsible for this contrast have any general significance beyond compounding, we investigated derived word forms containing regular and irregular plurals in two experiments. Experiment 1 was an offline acceptability judgment task, and Experiment 2 measured eye movements during reading derived words containing regular and irregular plurals and uninflected base nouns. The results from both experiments show that the constraint against regular plurals inside compounds generalizes to derived words. We argue that this constraint cannot be reduced to phonological properties, but is instead morphological in nature. The eye-movement data provide detailed information on the time-course of processing derived word forms indicating that early stages of processing are affected by a general constraint that disallows inflected words from feeding derivational processes, and that the more specific constraint against regular plurals comes in at a subsequent later stage of processing. We argue that these results are consistent with stage-based models of language processing.

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