Eye-tracking

In order to determine how speakers process auditory data, eye tracking was employed. By evaluating fixations and scan patterns in relation to particular regions of interest, eye tracking offers objective measures of automatic processing to identify patterns in attention. This methodology will give precise insights into the categorisation-related cognitive processes. Participants were first presented with a center attention grabber before a pair of images that were congruent or incongruent with that classifier in terms of usage and number was displayed on the left and right of the screen. Eye tracking was used to answer the question: Are decision times longer for classifiers with more complicated and diverse semantic domains?

Method

All participants were familiarised with the visual stimuli. The images were presented twice, with simultaneous audio recordings of the name of the image in the participant’s language. All participants completed an eye calibration before the experiment began. The experiment started with an auditory cue (a possessive classifier) during the whirligig attention grabber portion before an image was displayed. An audio classifier was played when the image appeared, either congruent or incongruent to one of the visual objects. A message on the screen encouraged participants to click the mouse after three seconds. The next audio classifier cue was presented for two seconds, and the next image of two pairs of images appeared.  Up until the end of all the trials, this was repeated. Finally, participants were presented with each image and a possessive classifier. Participants had to state whether the classifier they heard is congruent with the image.

Results

Results indicate that mean overall fixation periods across all languages were significantly longer for congruent images than for incongruent images. In addition, there were varying results in terms of variations in fixation periods on congruent and incongruent images between the languages with simple and complex semantic categorisation. Findings suggest that the impact of language on cognition varies between languages and that the semantic complexity of a classifier cannot predict decision-making processes.

The full analysis is underway.

Data

Data can be accessed…