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Viewing and naming objects: eye movements during noun phrase production
A S Meyer1, A M Sleiderink, W J Levelt
1Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. asmeyer@mpi.nl
Cognition
|July 25, 1998
Summary
Eye movements during object naming reflect speech planning. Object features and name frequency influence eye movements, suggesting these reflect lexical retrieval and phonological planning in language production.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Eye movements during reading and auditory comprehension indicate cognitive processing.
- The role of eye movements in speech production, specifically object naming, remains less understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether eye movements during object naming reflect speech planning processes.
- To determine if visual attention is linked to linguistic processes like lexical retrieval and phonological encoding.
Main Methods:
- Participants named pairs of objects presented as line drawings.
- Object properties manipulated included contour clarity and name frequency (high/low).
- A second experiment involved object categorization to isolate naming-specific effects.
Main Results:
- Object contour type and name frequency significantly affected naming latencies and visual attention duration.
- Frequency effects on eye movements were absent during object categorization, indicating they are specific to naming.
Conclusions:
- Eye movements during object naming are indicative of linguistic planning processes.
- The decision to shift gaze between objects is contingent upon retrieving the phonological form of object names.