Activation and Persistence of Implicit Causality Information in Spoken Language Comprehension

A visual world eye-tracking study investigated the activation and persistence of implicit causality information in spoken language comprehension. We showed that people infer the implicit causality of verbs as soon as they encounter such verbs in discourse, as is predicted by proponents of the immediate focusing account ( Greene & McKoon, 1995 ; Koornneef & Van Berkum, 2006 ; Van Berkum, Koornneef, Otten, & Nieuwland, 2007 ). Interestingly, we observed activation of implicit causality information even before people encountered the causal conjunction. However, while implicit causality information was persistent as the discourse unfolded, it did not have a privileged role as a focusing cue immediately at the ambiguous pronoun when people were resolving its antecedent. Instead, our study indicated that implicit causality does not affect all referents to the same extent, rather it interacts with other cues in the discourse, especially when one of the referents is already prominently in focus.

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Spoken language comprehension: insights from eye movements

The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198568971.013.0018 ◽

2007 ◽

pp. 308-326 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Michael K. Tanenhaus

Keyword(s):

Eye Movements ◽

Language Processing ◽

Language Comprehension ◽

Language Production ◽

World Literature ◽

Spoken Language ◽

Response Measure ◽

Visual World ◽

Spoken Language Processing ◽

Spoken Language Comprehension

Recently, eye movements have become a widely used response measure for studying spoken language processing in both adults and children, in situations where participants comprehend and generate utterances about a circumscribed “Visual World” while fixation is monitored, typically using a free-view eye-tracker. Psycholinguists now use the Visual World eye-movement method to study both language production and language comprehension, in studies that run the gamut of current topics in language processing. Eye movements are a response measure of choice for addressing many classic questions about spoken language processing in psycholinguistics. This article reviews the burgeoning Visual World literature on language comprehension, highlighting some of the seminal studies and examining how the Visual World approach has contributed new insights to our understanding of spoken word recognition, parsing, reference resolution, and interactive conversation. It considers some of the methodological issues that come to the fore when psycholinguists use eye movements to examine spoken language comprehension.

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Eye Tracking and Spoken Language Comprehension

Eye-Tracking Technology Applications in Educational Research - Advances in Educational Technologies and Instructional Design ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-1005-5.ch005 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 88-105

Author(s):

Elizabeth Kaplan ◽

Tatyana Levari ◽

Jesse Snedeker

Keyword(s):

Young Children ◽

Eye Tracking ◽

Language Processing ◽

Language Comprehension ◽

Developmental Disorders ◽

Spoken Language ◽

Syntactic Analysis ◽

Primary Focus ◽

Insight Into ◽

Spoken Language Comprehension

Constructing a more precise and deeper understanding of how listeners, and particularly young children, comprehend spoken language is a primary focus for both psycholinguists and educators alike. This chapter highlights how, over the course of the past 20 years, eye tracking has become a crucial and widely used methodology to gain insight into online spoken language comprehension. We address how various eye-tracking paradigms have informed current theories of language comprehension across the processing stream, focusing on lexical discrimination, syntactic analysis, and pragmatic inferences. Additionally, this chapter aims to bridge the gap between psycholinguistic research and educational topics, such as how early linguistic experiences influence later educational outcomes and ways in which eye-tracking methods can provide additional insight into the language processing of children with developmental disorders.

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