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Updated: Jul 13, 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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Speakers prioritise affordance-based object semantics in scene descriptions
M Barker1, G Rehrig1, F Ferreira1
1Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis.
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
|October 16, 2023
Summary
Speakers use object semantics, like interactability, to decide what to mention first when describing scenes. This research reveals how object features influence language production in multi-utterance sequences.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
- Psychology
Background:
- Understanding how humans plan spoken language production for complex scenes is crucial.
- Previous research has explored various factors influencing utterance sequencing, but object-specific semantic influences remain less understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the semantic features of objects that predict their order of mention in scene descriptions.
- To explore how affordance-based properties influence linguistic linearization strategies in multi-utterance sequences.
Main Methods:
- Thirty participants described real-world scenes aloud.
- Quantified semantic features (meaning, graspability, interactability) using whole-object ratings and feature map values.
- Analyzed the relationship between object features and their order of mention.
Main Results:
- Object-level semantic features, particularly affordance-based ones, significantly predicted the order in which objects were mentioned.
- Interactability emerged as a key predictor of mention order in scene descriptions.
Conclusions:
- Provides the first empirical evidence for object-related semantic features guiding linguistic ordering decisions.
- Supports the role of object semantics in cognitive processes underlying scene perception and verbal description.
- Offers insights into the production plans for multi-utterance sequences.
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