Visual-world Eye-tracking Research Articles

Dynamics of activation of semantically similar concepts during spoken word recognition.

Semantic similarity effects provide critical insight into the organization of semantic knowledge and the nature of semantic processing. In the present study, we examined the dynamics of semantic similarity effects by using the visual world eyetracking paradigm. Four objects were shown on a computer monitor, and participants were instructed to click on a named object, during which time their gaze position was recorded. The likelihood of fixating competitor objects was predicted by the degree of semantic similarity to the target concept. We found reliable, graded competition that depended on degree of target-competitor similarity, even for distantly related items for which priming has not been found in previous priming studies. Time course measures revealed a consistently earlier fixation peak for near semantic neighbors relative to targets. Computational investigations with an attractor dynamical model, a spreading activation model, and a decision model revealed that a combination of excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms is required to obtain such peak timing, providing new constraints on models of semantic processing.

Structural and semantic constraints on the resolution of pronouns and reflexives

We present four experiments on the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives in picture noun phrases with and without possessors (e.g. Andrew’s picture of him/himself, the picture of him/himself). The experiments (two off-line studies and two visual-world eye-tracking experiments) investigate how syntactic and semantic factors guide the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives and how different kinds of information are integrated during real-time reference resolution. The results show that the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives in picture NP constructions is sensitive not only to purely structural information, as is commonly assumed in syntactically-oriented theories of anaphor resolution, but also to semantic information (see Kuno, S. (1987). Functional syntax: Anaphora, discourse and empathy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Tenny, C. (2003). Short distance pronouns in representational noun phrases and a grammar of sentience. Ms.). Moreover, the results show that pronouns and reflexives differ in the degree of sensitivity they exhibit to different kinds of information. This finding indicates that the form-specific multiple-constraints approach (see Brown-Schmidt, S., Byron, D. K., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2005). Beyond salience: Interpretation of personal and demonstrative pronouns. Journal of Memory and Language, 53, 292–313; Kaiser, E. (2003). The quest for a referent: A crosslinguistic look at reference resolution. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Kaiser, E. (2005). When salience is not enough: Pronouns, demonstratives and the quest for an antecedent. In: Laury, R. (Ed.), Minimal reference in Finnic: The use and interpretation of pronouns and zero in Finnish and Estonian discourse (pp. 135–162). Helsinki, Finland: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura; Kaiser, E., & Trueswell, J. (2008). Interpreting pronouns and demonstratives in Finnish: Evidence for a form-specific approach to reference resolution. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23(5), 709–748), which states that referential forms can exhibit asymmetrical sensitivities to the different constraints guiding reference resolution, also applies in the within-sentence domain.

Integration of syntactic and semantic information in predictive processing: cross-linguistic evidence from German and English.

Two visual-world eyetracking experiments were conducted to investigate whether, how, and when syntactic and semantic constraints are integrated and used to predict properties of subsequent input. Experiment 1 contrasted auditory German constructions such as, "The hare-nominative eats ... (the cabbage-acc)" versus "The hare-accusative eats ... (the fox-nom)," presented with a picture containing a hare, fox, cabbage, and distractor. We found that the probabilities of the eye movements to the cabbage and fox before the onset of NP2 were modulated by the case-marking of NP1, indicating that the case-marking (syntactic) information and verbs' semantic constraints are integrated rapidly enough to predict the most plausible NP2 in the scene. Using English versions of the some stimuli in active/passive voice (Experiment 2), we replicated the same effect, but at a slightly earlier position in the sentence. We discuss the discrepancies in the two Germanic languages in terms of the ease of integrating information across, or within, constituents.