How does information status affect sentence planning: An eye-tracking study

This study investigates online sentence formulation as a function of the information structure of an utterance. In an eye-tracking experiment, participants described pictures of transitive events. Information status of the message was manipulated in the discourse preceding each picture. In the Literal condition, the subject character was literally mentioned. In the Associative condition, the subject character was primed without literal mention. In the No Mention condition, the subject character was neither literally mentioned nor primed. The response was expected to be the same in all conditions. Results showed that participants looked first at the subject character and then the object character regardless of the condition. The time course of the gaze patterns, however, did differ across the three conditions, which reflects the availability of the to-be-encoded information as a function of the preceding discourse context.