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Updated: Aug 11, 2026

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects
Published on: November 30, 2018
The time course of metonymic language text processing by older and younger adults
Heather E Humphrey1, Susan Kemper, Jeffrey D Radel
1University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045, USA.
Abstract:
The influence of aging on the processing of figurative language was investigated by utilizing Frisson and Pickering's (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 25, 1366-1383, 1999) paradigm, monitoring eye fixation times to target words in sentences. First fixation times and total fixation times were analyzed for familiar and unfamiliar metonymies and literal control sentences. Frisson and Pickering found that processing figurative and literal expressions yielded similar patterns of eye fixations. In the current study, these methods and results were replicated and extended to include older adults' processing of metonymies. This investigation replicated their findings for young adults and found that older adults produced the same processing patterns as the younger adults.
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