Presentations

Abstract

A central claim of embodied theories of cognition is that sensory representations are
routinely activated and influence language processing even in the absence of relevant
sensory input (cf. Pulvermüller, 2005; Wassenburg & Zwaan, 2010). We tested the influence
of color representations during language processing in three visual world eye tracking
experiments. The method is particularly well suited to investigate this issue because the
availability of relevant visual input can be manipulated.
We made use of the phenomena that when participants hear a word that refers to a
visual object or printed word they quickly direct their eye gaze to objects or printed words
which are similar (e.g. semantically or visually) to the heard word. We used a look and listen
task which previously has been shown to be sensitive to such relationships between spoken
words and visual items. In Experiment 1, on experimental trials, participants listened to
sentences containing a critical target word associated with a prototypical color (e.g.
'...spinach...') as they inspected a visual display with four words printed in black font. One of
the four printed words was associated with the same prototypical color (e.g. green) as the
spoken target word (e.g. FROG). On experimental trials, the spoken target word did not have
a printed word counterpart (SPINACH was not present in the display). In filler trials (70% of
trials) the target was present in the display and attracted significantly more overt attention
than the unrelated distractors. In experimental trials color competitors were not looked at
more than the distractors. In Experiment 2 the printed words were replaced with line
drawings of the objects. In order to direct the attentional focus of our participants toward
color features we used a within-participants counter-balanced design and alternated color
and greyscale trials randomly throughout the experiment. Therefore, on one trial our
participants heard a word such as 'spinach' and saw a frog (colored in green) in the visual
display. On the next trial however they saw a banana (in greyscale) on hearing 'canary'
(bananas and canaries are typically yellow), etc. The presence (or absence) of color was
thus a salient property of the experiment. Participants looked more at color competitors than
unrelated distractors on hearing the target word in the color trials but not in the greyscale
trials, i.e. on hearing 'spinach' they looked at the green frog but not the greyscale frog.
Experiment 3 was identical to Experiment 2, except that the visual display was removed at
the sentence onset, after a longer preview. This experiment examined whether the continued
presence of color in the immediate visual environment was necessary for the observation of
color-mediated eye movements. Eye movements directed towards the now blank screen
were recorded as the sentence unfolded (cf. Spivey & Geng, 2001). In the filler trials,
participants looked significantly more at the locations where the targets, rather than the
distractors, had been previously presented as the target words acoustically unfolded. In the
experimental trials, the locations where the color competitors had previously been presented
did not attract increased attention (neither in color nor greyscale trials).
These data demonstrate that language-mediated eye movements are only influenced
by color relations between spoken words and visually displayed items if color is present in the immediate visual environment. We conclude that color representations are unlikely to be
routinely activated in language processing. Our findings provide strong constraints for
embodied theories of cognition which assume that sensory representations influence language processing even in the absence of relevant sensory input. These results fit best with the notion that the main role of sensory representations in language processing is a different one, namely to contextualize language in the immediate environment, connecting language to the here and now.

Abstract

The notion that predicting upcoming linguistic information in language comprehension makes use of the production system has recently received much attention (e.g., Chang et al., 2006; Dell & Chang, 2014; Federmeier, 2007; Pickering & Garrod, 2007, 2013; Van Berkum et al., 2005). So far there has been little experimental evidence for a relation between prediction and production. I will discuss the results of several recent eye-tracking experiments with toddlers (Mani & Huettig, 2012) and adults (Rommers et al. submitted, Hintz et al., in prep.) which provide some support for the view that production abilities are linked to language-mediated anticipatory eye movements. These data however also indicate that production-based prediction is situation-dependent and only one of many mechanisms supporting prediction. Taken together, these results suggest that multiple-mechanism accounts are required to provide a complete picture of anticipatory language processing.

Abstract

Language processing does not take place in isolation from the sensory environment. Listeners are able to recognise spoken words in many different situations, ranging from carefully articulated and noise-free laboratory speech, through casual conversational speech in a quiet room, to degraded conversational speech in a busy train-station. For listeners to be able to recognize speech optimally in each of these listening situations, they must be able to adapt to the constraints of each situation. We investigated this flexibility by comparing the dynamics of the spoken-word recognition process in clear speech and speech disrupted by radio noise. In Experiment 1, Dutch participants listened to clearly articulated spoken Dutch sentences which each included a critical word while their eye movements to four visual objects presented on a computer screen were measured. There were two critical conditions. In the first, the objects included a cohort competitor (e.g., parachute, “parachute”) with the same onset as the critical spoken word (e.g., paraplu, “umbrella”) and three unrelated distractors. In the second condition, a rhyme competitor (e.g., hamer, “hammer”) of the critical word (e.g., kamer, “room”) was present in the display, again with three distractors. To maximize competitor effects pictures of the critical words themselves were not present in the displays on the experimental trials (e.g.,there was no umbrella in the display with the 'paraplu' sentence) and a passive listening task was used (Huettig McQueen, 2007). Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1 except that phonemes in the spoken sentences were replaced with radio-signal noises (as in AM radio listening conditions). In each sentence, two,three or four phonemes were replaced with noises. The sentential position of these replacements was unpredictable, but the adjustments were always made to onset phonemes. The critical words (and the immediately surrounding words) were not changed. The question was whether listeners could learn that, under these circumstances, onset information is less reliable. We predicted that participants would look less at the cohort competitors (the initial match to the competitor is less good) and more at the rhyme competitors (the initial mismatch is less bad). We observed a significant experiment by competitor type interaction. In Experiment 1 participants fixated both kinds competitors more than unrelated distractors, but there were more and earlier looks to cohort competitors than to rhyme competitors (Allopenna et al., 1998). In Experiment 2 participants still fixated cohort competitors more than rhyme competitors but the early cohort effect was reduced and the rhyme effect was stronger and occurred earlier. These results suggest that AM radio noise changes the dynamics of spoken word recognition. The well-attested finding of stronger reliance on word onset overlap in speech recognition appears to be due in part to the use of clear speech in most experiments. When onset information becomes less reliable, listeners appear to depend on it less. A core feature of the speech-recognition system thus appears to be its flexibility. Listeners are able to adjust the perceptual weight they assign to different parts of incoming spoken language.