Parallel object activation and attentional gating of information: Evidence from eye movements in the multiple object naming paradigm.

Schotter, Elizabeth R.; Ferreira, Victor S.; Rayner, Keith

doi:10.1037/a0028646

Cited by 13 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…This is a technique in which, during the saccade from one object to the next, the object on which the saccade would have landed (the interloper) is replaced by a different object (the target). It has been observed that gaze durations on the target were shorter when the target and the interloper were identical, or each other's mirror image, or associated with the same name than when target and interloper were unrelated Morgan and Meyer, 2005;Schotter et al, 2013). This suggests that speakers processed the interloper prior to fixating on its location.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Lateralized electrical brain activity reveals covert attention allocation during speaking

2017

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A B S T R A C TSpeakers usually begin to speak while only part of the utterance has been planned. Earlier work has shown that speech planning processes are reflected in speakers' eye movements as they describe visually presented objects. However, to-be-named objects can be processed to some extent before they have been fixated upon, presumably because attention can be allocated to objects covertly, without moving the eyes. The present study investigated whether EEG could track speakers' covert attention allocation as they produced short utterances to describe pairs of objects (e.g., "dog and chair"). The processing difficulty of each object was varied by presenting it in upright orientation (easy) or in upside down orientation (difficult). Background squares flickered at different frequencies in order to elicit steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs). The N2pc component, associated with the focusing of attention on an item, was detectable not only prior to speech onset, but also during speaking. The time course of the N2pc showed that attention shifted to each object in the order of mention prior to speech onset. Furthermore, greater processing difficulty increased the time speakers spent attending to each object. This demonstrates that the N2pc can track covert attention allocation in a naming task. In addition, an effect of processing difficulty at around 200-350 ms after stimulus onset revealed early attention allocation to the second to-be-named object. The flickering backgrounds elicited SSVEPs, but SSVEP amplitude was not influenced by processing difficulty. These results help complete the picture of the coordination of visual information uptake and motor output during speaking.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Lateralized electrical brain activity reveals covert attention allocation during speaking

2017

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“…Due to this brief presentation, the distracter pictures might not have been processed up to the lexical level, thereby yielding facilitation rather than interference. This ties in with other studies finding facilitation (preview benefits) from visually related distractor pictures (e.g., Pollatsek, Rayner, & Collins, 1984;Schotter, Ferreira, & Rayner, 2013). In fact, it has been argued that the small effects of facilitation stemming from visualconceptual overlap can be overruled by the stronger interference effects stemming from lexical-semantic overlap (e.g., Abdel Rahman & Melinger, 2009;Aristei et al, 2012, Navarrete & Costa, 2005.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 57%

“…When they shifted their eye gaze to the second picture, this picture was replaced with a new picture. Facilitation was found when the old and new picture were identical or homophonous, suggesting that the second (old) picture was processed while the participants were still looking at the first picture (see also Mädebach, Jescheniak, Oppermann, & Schriefers, 2011;Malpass & Meyer, 2010;Morgan, Van Elswijk, & Meyer, 2008;Schotter, Ferreira, & Rayner, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of parallel planning on agreement production

2015

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a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f oAn important issue in current psycholinguistics is how the time course of utterance planning affects the generation of grammatical structures. The current study investigated the influence of parallel activation of the components of complex noun phrases on the generation of subject-verb agreement. Specifically, the lexical interference account (Gillespie & Pearlmutter, 2011b;Solomon & Pearlmutter, 2004) predicts more agreement errors (i.e., attraction) for subject phrases in which the head and local noun mismatch in number (e.g., the apple next to the pears) when nouns are planned in parallel than when they are planned in sequence. We used a speeded picture description task that yielded sentences such as the apple next to the pears is red. The objects mentioned in the noun phrase were either semantically related or unrelated. To induce agreement errors, pictures sometimes mismatched in number. In order to manipulate the likelihood of parallel processing of the objects and to test the hypothesized relationship between parallel processing and the rate of agreement errors, the pictures were either placed close together or far apart. Analyses of the participants' eye movements and speech onset latencies indicated slower processing of the first object and stronger interference from the related (compared to the unrelated) second object in the close than in the far condition. Analyses of the agreement errors yielded an attraction effect, with more errors in mismatching than in matching conditions. However, the magnitude of the attraction effect did not differ across the close and far conditions. Thus, spatial proximity encouraged parallel processing of the pictures, which led to interference of the associated conceptual and/or lexical representation, but, contrary to the prediction, it did not lead to more attraction errors.

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“…When speaking about objects in our environment, planning ahead can be measured by a subject’s ability to pre-process upcoming, to-be-named objects before looking at them (Meyer & Dobel, 2003; Meyer, Ouellet, & Hacker, 2008; Morgan & Meyer, 2005; Morgan, van Elswijk & Meyer, 2008; Pollatsek, Rayner, & Collins, 1984; Schotter, Ferreira & Rayner, 2013; for reviews see Meyer, 2004; Schotter, 2011). This ability for simultaneous processing raises the issue of how processing and management of information from multiple objects is achieved.…”

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confidence: 99%

Preview benefit in speaking occurs regardless of preview timing

et al. 2013

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Speakers access information from objects they will name but have not looked at yet, indexed by preview benefit—faster processing of the target when a preview object previously occupying its location was related compared to unrelated. This suggests that speakers distribute attention over multiple objects, but does not reveal the time course of processing of a current and to-be-named object. Is preview benefit a consequence of attention shifting to the next-to-be-named object shortly before the eyes move to that location, or does preview benefit reflect a more unconstrained deployment of attention to upcoming objects? Using the multiple object-naming paradigm with a gaze-contingent display change manipulation, we addressed this issue by manipulating the latency of the onset of the preview (SOA) and whether the preview represented the same concept as (but a different visual token of) the target or an unrelated concept. Results revealed that preview benefit was robust, regardless of the latency of the preview onset (SOA) or the latency of the saccade to the target (the lag between preview offset and fixation on the target). Together, these data suggest that preview benefit is not restricted to the time during an attention shift preceding an eye movement, and that speakers are able to take advantage of information from non-foveal objects whenever they are visually available.

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Parallel object activation and attentional gating of information: Evidence from eye movements in the multiple object naming paradigm.

Cited by 13 publications

References 38 publications

Lateralized electrical brain activity reveals covert attention allocation during speaking

Lateralized electrical brain activity reveals covert attention allocation during speaking

Effects of parallel planning on agreement production

Preview benefit in speaking occurs regardless of preview timing

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