Alternative data analysis techniques when using the eye‐tracking paradigm to investigate spoken word recognition.

Abstract

Researchers have been using the eye‐tracking paradigm as a tool for investigating the representations and processes involved in listeners’ perception of spoken words for over a decade now (thanks in large part to the work by Tanenhaus and colleagues). Moreover, this paradigm is becoming increasingly widespread, with the number eye‐tracking researchers, laboratories and publications increasing rather substantially over the past few years. Although the eye‐tracking paradigm has been used to investigate a number of different issues related to spoken word recognition, including lexical competition, parallel activation in bilinguals, and ambiguity resolution, most (if not all) of these studies use participants’ eye fixations as the unit of measurement when performing statistical analyses (e.g., fixations on a picture that corresponds to the spoken word heard during a trial). Fixations are a perfectly fine source of data; indeed we have learned a lot about spoken word recognition from studies performing analyses of fixation data. However, there are different ways to use fixations, as well as various alternative data analysis techniques, that researchers using the eye‐tracking paradigm to investigate spoken word recognition may wish to consider. [Work was supported in part by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health (Grant No. 5 R03 DC 7316‐4).]