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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 1, 2026

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects

Published on: November 30, 2018

Tracking the continuity of language comprehension: computer mouse trajectories suggest parallel syntactic processing.

Thomas A Farmer¹, Sarah A Cargill, Nicholas C Hindy

¹Department of Psychology, Cornell UniversityUniversity of Memphis.

Cognitive Science

|June 4, 2011

Summary

This study used computer mouse movements to investigate how people process ambiguous sentences. Results show that multiple sentence structures are processed simultaneously, with visual context influencing the competition between them.

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Area of Science:

Psycholinguistics
Cognitive Science
Computational Linguistics

Background:

Theories of syntactic processing often propose parallel activation of multiple representations.
Empirical evidence for simultaneous syntactic activation remains inconclusive.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate parallel versus serial processing in online syntactic comprehension.
To explore the role of visual context in resolving structural ambiguity.

Main Methods:

Utilized continuous mouse movement trajectories (x, y coordinates) as a measure of cognitive processing.
Presented participants with structurally ambiguous sentences paired with visual scenes.
Manipulated visual scene properties to support or not support specific interpretations.

Main Results:

Mouse movement curvature patterns indicated parallel activation of syntactic representations.
Visual context significantly influenced the competition between simultaneously active representations.
Demonstrated graded competition, suggesting a dynamic interplay between interpretations.

Conclusions:

Mouse tracking provides a sensitive measure for studying online sentence processing.
Findings support models of sentence processing that incorporate parallel activation and interactive context.
The study contributes to understanding the mechanisms underlying syntactic ambiguity resolution.