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Updated: Jun 3, 2026

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects
Published on: November 30, 2018
Writing direction influences the spatial representations of past- and future-tense forms: Evidence from eye tracking
Anna Chrabaszcz1, Anna Laurinavichyute2, Nina Ladinskaya3
1Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Murdoch Building, 3420 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA. anc211@pitt.edu.
Reading direction influences how people mentally represent time. Eye movements show that Russian and Hebrew speakers align past and future tense processing with their language
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Linguistics
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Cultural reading habits can shape cognitive processes.
- Spatial representations are often used for abstract concepts like time.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if reading direction (left-to-right vs. right-to-left) affects the spatial representation of temporal information.
- To examine how grammatical tense processing is influenced by language-specific reading conventions.
Main Methods:
- Utilized the blank screen paradigm to record spontaneous eye movements.
- Participants (Russian and Hebrew speakers) listened to past and future tense verbs.
- Gaze positions were analyzed in relation to verb tense and reading direction.
Main Results:
- Eye movements along the horizontal axis shifted based on the time reference (past/future) and language.
- Russian speakers (left-to-right) showed different gaze patterns than Hebrew speakers (right-to-left).
- No significant differences were found in manual response latencies to a spatial probe.
Conclusions:
- Culturally specific reading and writing systems influence the spatial mapping of temporal concepts.
- Eye movements during auditory processing of grammatical tense reflect reading direction biases.
- Suggests a shared cognitive mechanism linking spatial dimensions to temporal representation.
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