Matching (3 hours)

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The visual world paradigm can be used for all kinds of different research. We have looked at examples of how it's used for studying how phonetics/phonology matters in understanding single words, and how it's used for studying predictions in sentence-level comprehension. But it can be used for pretty much any topic of linguistics; there's visual world research examining pragmatics, bilingualism, semantics, morphology, everything.

Below I have put a list of several really cool visual world eye-tracking experiments, and a list of several linguistics topics. Browse the papers and match the topics to the papers. Send me an e-mail saying which topic goes with which paper. Also, choose one paper that you find interesting, and write a brief (100 words or less) summary of what it's about and what was done in the experiment.

Experiments

1. Spivey, M., & Marian, V. (1999). DOI: 10.1111/1467-9280.00151
2. McMurray, B., Tanenhaus, M., & Aslin, R. (2000). DOI: 10.1016/S0010-0277(02)00157-9
3. Wang, X., Wang, J., & Malins, J. (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.07.013
4. Huang, Y., & Snedeker, J. (2009). DOI: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2008.09.001
5. Politzer-Ahles, S., Connell, K., Pan, L., & Hsu, Y. (in prep.). manuscript
6. Chow, W., & Chen, D. (2020). DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2020.1733627

Topics

1. Bilingualism
2. Bilingualism
3. Pragmatics
4. Sentence comprehension
5. Phonetics
6. Phonetics

What's here is only a tiny sample of the visual world eye-tracking experiments in the world. For a huge review of eye-tracking research, see this paper:

• Huettig, F., Rommers, J., & Meyer, A. S. (2011). Using the visual world paradigm to study language processing: a review and critical evaluation. Acta Psychologica, 137, 151-171.

And for those interested in eye-tracking research on reading, here's a useful bibliography of review and summary papers:

• Boland, J. (2004). Linking eye movements to sentence comprehension in reading and listening. In M. Carreiras & C. Clifton (Eds.), The on-line study of sentence comprehension: Eyetracking, ERP, & beyond. Psychology Press.
• Clifton, C., Staub, A., & Rayner, K. (2007). Eye movmements in reading words and sentences. In R. van Gompel and X. Vamvakoussi (Eds.), Eye Movements: A Window on Mind and Brain. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.
• Liversedge, S., & Blythe, H. (2007). Lexical and Sublexical Influences on Eye Movements During Reading. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1, 17-31.
• Liversedge, S., Paterson, K., & Pickering, M. (1998). Eye movements and measures of reading time. Eye Guidance in Reading and Scene Perception. pp. 55-75.
• Rayner, K., & Sereno, S. (1994). Eye movements in reading: Psycholinguistic studies. Journal of Multivariate Analysis.

When you finish this activity, you are done with the module (assuming all your work on this and the previous tasks has been satisfactory). If you are interested in leading a discussion on this module, you can go on to see the suggested discussion topics. Otherwise, you can return to the module homepage to review this module, or return to the class homepage to select a different module or assignment to do now.

by Stephen Politzer-Ahles. Last modified on 2021-07-14. CC-BY-4.0.