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Updated: Aug 6, 2025
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Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects
Published on: November 30, 2018
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Can object identification difficulty be predicted based on disfluencies and eye-movements in connected speech?
Aurélie Pistono1, Robert J Hartsuiker1
1Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Plos One
|March 14, 2023
Summary
Delays in early picture naming stages can cause speech disfluencies. While visual blurring didn't increase overall disfluency, pattern analysis showed it altered individual speech patterns, linking them to cognitive factors like inhibition.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Psycholinguistics
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Speech disfluencies are common but their underlying causes are complex.
- Understanding the relationship between visual processing, conceptualization, and speech production is crucial.
- Previous research suggests disfluencies may arise from various cognitive processes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if early-stage delays in picture naming, induced by visual blurring, trigger speech disfluency.
- To differentiate disfluency related to word preparation from other stalling strategies using eye-tracking.
- To explore the impact of impeded conceptual generation on disfluency patterns.
Main Methods:
- Participants described object networks while eye movements were tracked.
- Visual blurring was used to hinder visual identification and slow lexical concept selection.
- Multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) was applied to disfluency and eye-tracking data.
Main Results:
- Overall disfluency rates did not increase with blurred pictures; viewing times decreased.
- MVPA successfully predicted above chance whether participants were naming blurred or control pictures based on disfluency patterns.
- Individual disfluency patterns were affected by blurring, but not consistently across participants.
- Some disfluency and eye-movement variables correlated with individual differences in inhibition.
Conclusions:
- Impeding conceptual message generation affects individual speech disfluency patterns, even if overall rates don't change.
- Disfluency patterns are sensitive to early-stage processing disruptions in picture naming.
- Eye-tracking and advanced pattern analysis can reveal subtle links between cognitive processes and speech production.
- Individual cognitive differences, particularly inhibition, play a role in speech disfluency.
