Top-down anticipation versus bottom-up lexical access: Which dominates eye movements in visual scenes?
Andréa Weber, Matthew W. Crocker · Max Planck Digital Library · 2006
- During the recognition of spoken words multiple word candidates that match the speech input are activated and compete for recognition. Numerous eye-tracking studies have confirmed this phonological competition process [e.g., 1]: I.e., listeners fixate objects with names that overlapin onset with the name of a target object more than objects with unrelated names. - Subsequent studies have shown that competitor activation is further modulated by lexical frequency: When asked to click on target pictures, English listeners fixate pictures of high frequency competitors more than pictures of low frequency competitors [2]. - Furthermore, in sentence context, semantic information from preceding verbs has been found to reduce competitor activation: Dutch listeners no longer fixate competitor pictures more than distractor pictures when a preceding verb constrains the subject noun phrase [3]. Similarly, English listeners start looking at pictures of suitable object noun phrases after semantically constraining verbs [4]. - Using eye tracking, the present study investigated the interaction of lexical frequency effects with effects from verb constraints in German.