Role descriptions induce gender mismatch effects in eye movements during reading
نویسندگان
چکیده
The present eye-tracking study investigates the effect of gender typicality on the resolution of anaphoric personal pronouns in English. Participants read descriptions of a person performing a typically male, typically female or gender-neutral occupational activity. The description was followed by an anaphoric reference (he or she) which revealed the referent's gender. The first experiment presented roles which were highly typical for men (e.g., blacksmith) or for women (e.g., beautician), the second experiment presented role descriptions with a moderate degree of gender typicality (e.g., psychologist, lawyer). Results revealed a gender mismatch effect in early and late measures in the first experiment and in early stages in the second experiment. Moreover, eye-movement data for highly typical roles correlated with explicit typicality ratings. The results are discussed from a cross-linguistic perspective, comparing natural gender languages and grammatical gender languages. An interpretation of the cognitive representation of typicality beliefs is proposed.
منابع مشابه
Eye movements and on-line comprehension processes
Reading is a rather complex process in which comprehension at a number of levels is essential. In this chapter, we will provide an overview of how different kinds of variable influence eye movements. We want to stress at the outset that eye movement data are highly informative with respect to understanding reading. They provide a moment-to-moment indicator of the ease (or the difficulty) with w...
متن کاملTracking the mind during reading via eye movements: comments on Kliegl, Nuthmann, and Engbert (2006).
R. Kliegl, A. Nuthmann, and R. Engbert reported an impressive set of data analyses dealing with the influence of the prior, present, and next word on the duration of the current eye fixation during reading. They argued that outcomes of their regression analyses indicate that lexical processing is distributed across a number of words during reading. The authors of this comment question their con...
متن کاملReading performance is not affected by a prism induced increase of horizontal and vertical vergence demand
PURPOSE Dyslexia is the most common developmental reading disorder that affects language skills. Latent strabismus (heterophoria) has been suspected to be causally involved. Even though phoria correction in dyslexic children is commonly applied, the evidence in support of a benefit is poor. In order to provide experimental evidence on this issue, we simulated phoria in healthy readers by modify...
متن کاملTask relevance induces momentary changes in the functional visual field during reading.
In the research reported here, we examined whether task demands can induce momentary tunnel vision during reading. More specifically, we examined whether the size of the functional visual field depends on task relevance. Forty participants read an expository text with a specific task in mind while their eye movements were recorded. A display-change paradigm with random-letter strings as preview...
متن کاملVergence eye movements during fixations in reading.
The purpose of this explorative study was to examine vergence eye movements during fixations in reading. Eye movements of twelve normal adults were assessed during reading of different materials, that is, words within context (prose passages) and words without context (word lists), as well as during different tasks, that is, reading while attending to the meaning and reading while attending to ...
متن کامل