THE GAZE OF SCHROEDINGER’S CAT: EYE-TRACKING IN PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

Abstract

The book addresses the study of reading mechanisms and visual perception using the method of eye-tracking. The authors conduct their research in the Laboratory for Cognitive Studies of Saint Petersburg State University that was the first in Russia to utilize eye-tracking in experimental studies of language more than 15 years ago. Psycholinguistic experiments aimed at analyzing reading in Russian are described; a systematic description of factors which influence reading process at different stages and linguistic levels from a single letter to a coherent text is provided. The mechanisms of separate graphemes recognition, activation and competition processes in word recognition, contextual integration processes, syntactic parsing, and anaphora resolution in eye-tracking experiments are described. The influence of the text type on its processing is demonstrated, the advantages and disadvantages of the infographics compared to verbal text are described, the relationship between visual perception of images and their verbalization is discussed. The significant role of context is highlighted: on the one hand, it helps the reader to anticipate new information, and on the other hand, it enables different multiple interpretations of a sentence or text. In the book a virtual assistant — Schroedinger’s cat — is used as a model of a subject who processes and transmits information. The book will appeal to linguists and cognitive psychologists who use eye-tracking in their research, as well as for the wide range of those who are interested in objective methods of studying language processing and human behavior.