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Updated: Mar 15, 2026

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects
Published on: November 30, 2018
Now or … later: Perceptual data are not immediately forgotten during language processing
Klinton Bicknell1, T Florian Jaeger2, Michael K Tanenhaus2
1Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-0854. kbicknell@northwestern.edu http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/kbicknell/
Abstract:
Christiansen & Chater (C&C) propose that language comprehenders must immediately compress perceptual data by "chunking" them into higher-level categories. Effective language understanding, however, requires maintaining perceptual information long enough to integrate it with downstream cues. Indeed, recent results suggest comprehenders do this. Although cognitive systems are undoubtedly limited, frameworks that do not take into account the tasks that these systems evolved to solve risk missing important insights.
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