Moving eyes and naming objects

Abstract

The coordination between eye movements and speech was examined while speakers were naming objects. Earlier research has shown that eye movements reflect on the underlying visual attention. Also, eye movements were found to reflect upon not only the visual and conceptual processing of an object, but also on the length of linguistic planning processes of retrieval of the object's name. In one series of experiments speakers used noun phrases and pronouns to name objects that were recently seen before. Looking rates were lower when pronouns instead of noun phrases were used, and viewing time on the objects were shorter, reflecting the shorter, easier processing needed to name a pronoun compared to a noun phrase. In another experiment speakers named the object names and two adjectives, describing colour and size, either early or late in the sentence. Speakers fixated the information on the screen that was being verbalized, and returned their gaze to that visual information when it was mentioned later (The mouse, which is next to the ball, is large and red). In a final experiment, the order of mentioning four objects was either given or needed to be retrieved from the visual presentation. Speakers previewed the information they needed to decide upon the correct word order first (comparing two of the four objects), and than fixated each and every one of the objects while producing the correct name for them. Previewing the objects caused viewing times during the naming phase to be significantly reduced, indicating that (part of) the underlying processing was speeded up or skipped when seeing the previewed object again. In all experiments viewing times were found to reflect upon the underlying linguistic processing of producing the object's name or referent: speakers kept their eyes on an object to be named for the time they needed to retrieve the object's name. Therefore, the timing of eye movements reflects on both conceptual and linguistic processing, and records of eye movements can be used to study object naming and language production, even when experimental tasks get more complicated or when sentences get longer