Abstract
In this review we focus on the close interplay between visual contextual information and real-time language processing. Crucially, we are showing that not only college-aged adults but also children and older adults can profit from visual contextual information for language comprehension. Yet, given age-related biological and experiential changes, children and older adults might not always be able to link visual and linguistic information in the same way and with the same time course as younger adults in real-time language processing. Psycholinguistic research on visually situated real-time language processing in children and even more so older adults is still scarce compared to research in this domain using college-aged participants. In order to gain more comprehensive insights into the interplay between vision and language during real-time processing, we are arguing for a lifespan approach to situated language processing.
Highlights
When communicating with other people, we are often aware of the surrounding visual world
When we write about visual context effects, what we really mean is that visual context can influence younger adults’ language processing, since the majority of our data comes from students between approximately 18 and 30 years of age
This review has focused on the facilitative integration of visual contextual information into real-time language processing across the lifespan
Summary
When communicating with other people, we are often aware of the surrounding visual world. To the extent that this scaffolding modulates visual context effects on language processing, children might not be able to use visual contextual information in the same way (i.e., as quickly and efficiently) as younger adults to facilitate real-time language comprehension. In order to investigate the nature of the link between visual and linguistic information, we can use the so-called “visual world paradigm” (Figure 1, see Pyykkönen-Klauck & Crocker, 2016) In this paradigm, eye fixations are recorded while participants, for instance, inspect agents depicted as performing different actions towards the middle character (i.e., the patient, Figures 1 & 2) and listen to a sentence. We conclude that we must pursue a lifespan approach to how visual perception contributes to language processing in order to develop more accurate models of language comprehension
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