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Predictive language processing is often studied by measuring eye movements as participants look at objects on a computer screen while they listen to spoken sentences. This variant of the visual-world paradigm has revealed that information encountered by a listener at a spoken verb can give rise to anticipatory eye movements to a target object, which is taken to indicate that people predict upcoming words. The ecological validity of such findings remains questionable, however, because these computer experiments used two-dimensional stimuli that were mere abstractions of real-world objects. Here we present a visual-world paradigm study in a three-dimensional (3-D) immersive virtual reality environment. Despite significant changes in the stimulus materials and the different mode of stimulus presentation, language-mediated anticipatory eye movements were still observed. These findings thus indicate that people do predict upcoming words during language comprehension in a more naturalistic setting where natural depth cues are preserved. Moreover, the results confirm the feasibility of using eyetracking in rich and multimodal 3-D virtual environments.

Original publication

DOI

10.3758/s13428-017-0929-z

Type

Journal article

Journal

Behav Res Methods

Publication Date

06/2018

Volume

50

Pages

1102 - 1115

Keywords

Eyetracking, Language Comprehension, Prediction, Virtual Reality, Visual World, Acoustic Stimulation, Adult, Comprehension, Cues, Eye Movement Measurements, Eye Movements, Female, Humans, Language, Male, Photic Stimulation, Virtual Reality