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Updated: Jul 14, 2026

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects
Published on: November 30, 2018
Subjects are not all alike: Eye-tracking the agent preference in Spanish
Beatriz Gómez-Vidal1, Miren Arantzeta1, Jon Paul Laka2
1The Bilingual Mind Research Group, Department of Linguistics and Basque Studies, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque Country, Spain.
This study on sentence processing found that agent subjects are processed faster than theme subjects, supporting the Agent First Hypothesis. This reveals a distinction in how unaccusative and unergative predicates are understood.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Computational Linguistics
Background:
- Experimental research on argument structure shows mixed results for unaccusative and unergative predicates.
- A processing distinction between agent and theme subjects in sentence comprehension remains underexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the processing distinction between agent and theme subjects.
- To test the Unaccusative Hypothesis and the Agent First Hypothesis using eye-tracking.
Main Methods:
- Eye tracking in the visual world paradigm with 44 native speakers.
- Processing of sentences with unaccusative, unergative, and transitive verbs.
- Analysis of gaze fixations across verb, post-verb, and global post-verbal frames.
Main Results:
- Sentential subjects were significantly activated upon hearing the verb, indicating a post-verbal reactivation effect.
- Gaze fixation patterns align with the Agent First Hypothesis, showing greater reactivation for agent subjects.
- Evidence supports a processing distinction between unaccusative and unergative predicates.
Conclusions:
- Sentence comprehension shows a processing distinction between unaccusative and unergative predicates.
- An attentional preference for agent subjects over theme subjects is reflected in processing.
- Findings support the Agent First Hypothesis in psycholinguistic research.
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