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Delayed Anticipatory Spoken Language Processing in Adults with Dyslexia—Evidence from Eye‐tracking
Author(s) -
Huettig Falk,
Brouwer Susanne
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
dyslexia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.694
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1099-0909
pISSN - 1076-9242
DOI - 10.1002/dys.1497
Subject(s) - dyslexia , psychology , eye movement , spoken language , eye tracking , comprehension , reading (process) , cognitive psychology , anticipation (artificial intelligence) , developmental psychology , linguistics , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy , neuroscience
It is now well established that anticipation of upcoming input is a key characteristic of spoken language comprehension. It has also frequently been observed that literacy influences spoken language processing. Here, we investigated whether anticipatory spoken language processing is related to individuals' word reading abilities. Dutch adults with dyslexia and a control group participated in two eye‐tracking experiments. Experiment 1 was conducted to assess whether adults with dyslexia show the typical language‐mediated eye gaze patterns. Eye movements of both adults with and without dyslexia closely replicated earlier research: spoken language is used to direct attention to relevant objects in the environment in a closely time‐locked manner. In Experiment 2, participants received instructions (e.g., ‘Kijk naar de COM afgebeelde piano COM ’, look at the displayed piano) while viewing four objects. Articles (Dutch ‘het’ or ‘de’) were gender marked such that the article agreed in gender only with the target, and thus, participants could use gender information from the article to predict the target object. The adults with dyslexia anticipated the target objects but much later than the controls. Moreover, participants' word reading scores correlated positively with their anticipatory eye movements. We conclude by discussing the mechanisms by which reading abilities may influence predictive language processing. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.