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Updated: Aug 27, 2025

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects
Published on: November 30, 2018
Continuous cursor-captured conceptual competition: Investigating the spatiotemporal dynamics of spoken word
Josef Toon1, Marie-Josee Bisson2, Mark Scase2
1Division of Psychology, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH, UK. josef.toon@my365.dmu.ac.uk.
Abstract:
Semantically related concepts are coactivated during spoken word comprehension. Two internet-mediated cursor-tracking experiments examined the spatiotemporal dynamics of this coactivation. Participants viewed visual arrays containing images of a target (e.g., accordion) and a semantically related (e.g., banjo) or unrelated (e.g., plum) distractor whilst hearing the target word (e.g., "accordion"). Participants were tasked with moving their cursor from the bottom of the visual array to the target in one of the upper corners. In contrast to Experiment 1, the onset of stimulus presentation was triggered by cursor movement in Experiment 2. Across both experiments, temporal (e.g., RT) and spatial (e.g., AUC) measures revealed significantly greater attraction to images of semantically related compared with unrelated distractors. These results reveal that online cursor-tracking methods are sensitive to semantic competition and suitable for studying the activation of semantic knowledge during language comprehension.
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