| Literature DB >> 23460816 |
Carolin Dudschig1, Jan Souman, Martin Lachmair, Irmgard de la Vega, Barbara Kaup.
Abstract
Traditionally, language processing has been attributed to a separate system in the brain, which supposedly works in an abstract propositional manner. However, there is increasing evidence suggesting that language processing is strongly interrelated with sensorimotor processing. Evidence for such an interrelation is typically drawn from interactions between language and perception or action. In the current study, the effect of words that refer to entities in the world with a typical location (e.g., sun, worm) on the planning of saccadic eye movements was investigated. Participants had to perform a lexical decision task on visually presented words and non-words. They responded by moving their eyes to a target in an upper (lower) screen position for a word (non-word) or vice versa. Eye movements were faster to locations compatible with the word's referent in the real world. These results provide evidence for the importance of linguistic stimuli in directing eye movements, even if the words do not directly transfer directional information.Entities:
Mesh:
Year: 2013 PMID: 23460816 PMCID: PMC3584096 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0056872
Source DB: PubMed Journal: PLoS One ISSN: 1932-6203 Impact factor: 3.240
Figure 1Exemplary trial procedure for a word (left panel) and a non-word trial (right panel).
Participants responded in the first half of the experiment to indicate that a word is presented by looking upward (downward) and to indicate that a non-word is presented by looking downward (upward). In the second half of the experiment this mapping was reversed.
Figure 2Example of eye movement data.
Vertical eye position (upper panel) and eye velocity (lower panel) as a function of time since fixation onset at 0 ms. Saccade onset was defined as the moment where vertical eye movement velocity exceeded the saccade threshold of 50°/s. The shaded area shows the time interval in which the stimulus word was presented.
Figure 3Mean saccadic latencies.
Filled circles represent the conditions in which participants responded with a downward eye movement to indicate that the stimulus was an existing German word; open circles show the saccadic latencies when participants responded with an upward eye movement. Error bars represent the 95% confidence intervals of the mean based on within-subject differences [36].