TY - JOUR A1 - Elsner, Birgit A1 - Adam, Maurits T1 - Infants’ goal prediction for simple action events BT - the role of experience and agency cues JF - Topics in cognitive science / Cognitive Science Society N2 - Looking times and gaze behavior indicate that infants can predict the goal state of an observed simple action event (e.g., object-directed grasping) already in the first year of life. The present paper mainly focuses on infants' predictive gaze-shifts toward the goal of an ongoing action. For this, infants need to generate a forward model of the to-be-obtained goal state and to disengage their gaze from the moving agent at a time when information about the action event is still incomplete. By about 6 months of age, infants show goal-predictive gaze-shifts, but mainly for familiar actions that they can perform themselves (e.g., grasping) and for familiar agents (e.g., a human hand). Therefore, some theoretical models have highlighted close relations between infants' ability for action-goal prediction and their motor development and/or emerging action experience. Recent research indicates that infants can also predict action goals of familiar simple actions performed by non-human agents (e.g., object-directed grasping by a mechanical claw) when these agents display agency cues, such as self-propelled movement, equifinality of goal approach, or production of a salient action effect. This paper provides a review on relevant findings and theoretical models, and proposes that the impacts of action experience and of agency cues can be explained from an action-event perspective. In particular, infants' goal-predictive gaze-shifts are seen as resulting from an interplay between bottom-up processing of perceptual information and top-down influences exerted by event schemata that store information about previously executed or observed actions. KW - Action events KW - Infant action‐ goal prediction KW - Infant gaze KW - behavior KW - Eye tracking KW - Feedforward processes KW - Perception of KW - agency  cues Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12494 SN - 1756-8765 VL - 13 IS - 1 SP - 45 EP - 62 PB - Wiley CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adam, Maurits A1 - Elsner, Birgit T1 - Action effects foster 11-month-olds’ prediction of action goals for a non-human agent JF - Infant behavior & development : an international and interdisciplinary journal N2 - Action effects have been stated to be important for infants’ processing of goal-directed actions. In this study, 11-month-olds showed equally fast predictive gaze shifts to a claw’s action goal when the grasping action was presented either with three agency cues (self-propelled movement, equifinality of goal achievement and a salient action effect) or with only a salient action effect, but infants showed tracking gaze when the claw showed only self-propelled movement and equifinality of goal achievement. The results suggest that action effects, compared to purely kinematic cues, seem to be especially important for infants' online processing of goal-directed actions. KW - Infancy KW - Eye tracking KW - Goal anticipation KW - Action effects KW - Agency cues Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2018.09.002 SN - 0163-6383 SN - 1879-0453 VL - 53 SP - 49 EP - 55 PB - Elsevier CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Risse, Sarah A1 - Seelig, Stefan T1 - Stable preview difficulty effects in reading with an improved variant of the boundary paradigm JF - The quarterly journal of experimental psychology N2 - Using gaze-contingent display changes in the boundary paradigm during sentence reading, it has recently been shown that parafoveal word-processing difficulties affect fixations on words to the right of the boundary. Current interpretations of this post-boundary preview difficulty effect range from delayed parafoveal-on-foveal effects in parallel word-processing models to forced fixations in serial word-processing models. However, these findings are based on an experimental design that, while allowing to isolate preview difficulty effects, might have established a bias with respect to asymmetries in parafoveal preview benefit for high-frequent and low-frequent target words. Here, we present a revision of this paradigm varying the preview’s lexical frequency and keeping the target word constant. We found substantial effects of the preview difficulty in fixation durations after the boundary confirming that preview processing affects the oculomotor decisions not only via trans-saccadic integration of preview and target word information. An additional time-course analysis showed that the preview difficulty effect was significant across the full fixation duration distribution on the target word without any evidence on the pretarget word before the boundary. We discuss implications of the accumulating evidence of post-boundary preview difficulty effects for models of eye movement control during reading. KW - Eye tracking KW - reading KW - parafoveal preview benefit KW - delayed parafoveal-on-foveal effects KW - forced fixations Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021818819990 SN - 1747-0218 SN - 1747-0226 VL - 72 IS - 7 SP - 1632 EP - 1645 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adelt, Anne A1 - Stadie, Nicole A1 - Lassotta, Romy A1 - Adani, Flavia A1 - Burchert, Frank T1 - Feature dissimilarities in the processing of German relative clauses in aphasia JF - Journal of neurolinguistics : an international journal for the study of brain function in language behavior and experience N2 - The cross-linguistic finding of greater demands in processing object relatives as compared to subject relatives in individuals with aphasia and non-brain-damaged speakers has been explained within the Relativized Minimality approach. Based on this account, the asymmetry is attributed to an element intervening between the moved element and its extraction site in object relatives, but not in subject relatives. Moreover, it has been proposed that processing of object relatives is facilitated if the intervening and the moved elements differ in their internal feature structure. The present study investigates these predictions in German-speaking individuals with aphasia and a group of control participants by combining the visual world eye-tracking methodology with an auditory referent identification task. Our results provide support for the Relativized Minimality approach. Particularly, the degree of featural distinctness was shown to modulate the occurrence of the effects in aphasia. We claim that, due to reduced processing capacities, individuals with aphasia need a higher degree of featural dissimilarity to distinguish the moved from the intervening element in object relatives to overcome their syntactic deficit. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. KW - Aphasia KW - Relative clauses KW - Relativized Minimality KW - Sentence processing KW - Morpho-syntactic features KW - Eye tracking Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2017.01.002 SN - 0911-6044 VL - 44 SP - 17 EP - 37 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adam, Maurits A1 - Reitenbach, Ivanina A1 - Papenmeier, Frank A1 - Gredebäck, Gustaf A1 - Elsner, Claudia A1 - Elsner, Birgit T1 - actions, but not for mechanical claws JF - Meteoritics & planetary science : journal of the Meteoritical Society N2 - Previous research indicates that infants’ prediction of the goals of observed actions is influenced by own experience with the type of agent performing the action (i.e., human hand vs. non-human agent) as well as by action-relevant features of goal objects (e.g., object size). The present study investigated the combined effects of these factors on 12-month-olds’ action prediction. Infants’ (N = 49) goal-directed gaze shifts were recorded as they observed 14 trials in which either a human hand or a mechanical claw reached for a small goal area (low-saliency goal) or a large goal area (high-saliency goal). Only infants who had observed the human hand reaching for a high-saliency goal fixated the goal object ahead of time, and they rapidly learned to predict the action goal across trials. By contrast, infants in all other conditions did not track the observed action in a predictive manner, and their gaze shifts to the action goal did not change systematically across trials. Thus, high-saliency goals seem to boost infants’ predictive gaze shifts during the observation of human manual actions, but not of actions performed by a mechanical device. This supports the assumption that infants’ action predictions are based on interactive effects of action-relevant object features (e.g., size) and own action experience. KW - Infancy KW - Goal saliency KW - Anticipatory gaze shifts KW - Eye tracking KW - Action processing Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2016.05.001 SN - 0163-6383 SN - 1879-0453 VL - 44 SP - 29 EP - 37 PB - Elsevier CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brzezicka, Aneta A1 - Krejtz, Izabela A1 - von Hecker, Ulrich A1 - Laubrock, Jochen T1 - Eye movement evidence for defocused attention in dysphoria - A perceptual span analysis JF - International journal of psychophysiology N2 - The defocused attention hypothesis (von Hecker and Meiser, 2005) assumes that negative mood broadens attention, whereas the analytical rumination hypothesis (Andrews and Thompson, 2009) suggests a narrowing of the attentional focus with depression. We tested these conflicting hypotheses by directly measuring the perceptual span in groups of dysphoric and control subjects, using eye tracking. In the moving window paradigm, information outside of a variable-width gaze-contingent window was masked during reading of sentences. In measures of sentence reading time and mean fixation duration, dysphoric subjects were more pronouncedly affected than controls by a reduced window size. This difference supports the defocused attention hypothesis and seems hard to reconcile with a narrowing of attentional focus. KW - Dysphoria KW - Defocused attention KW - Eye tracking KW - Moving window paradigm KW - Perceptual span Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2011.09.022 SN - 0167-8760 VL - 85 IS - 1 SP - 129 EP - 133 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dimigen, Olaf A1 - Kliegl, Reinhold A1 - Sommer, Werner T1 - Trans-saccadic parafoveal preview benefits in fluent reading: A study with fixation-related brain potentials JF - NeuroImage : a journal of brain function N2 - During natural reading, a parafoveal preview of the upcoming word facilitates its subsequent recognition (e.g., shorter fixation durations compared to masked preview) but nothing is known about the neural correlates of this so-called preview benefit. Furthermore, while the evidence is strong that readers preprocess orthographic features of upcoming words, it is controversial whether word meaning can also be accessed parafoveally. We investigated the timing, scope, and electrophysiological correlates of parafoveal information use in reading by simultaneously recording eye movements and fixation-related brain potentials (FRPs) while participants read word lists fluently from left to right. For one word the target (e.g., "blade") parafoveal information was manipulated by showing an identical ("blade"), semantically related ("knife"), or unrelated ("sugar") word as preview. In boundary trials, the preview was shown parafoveally but changed to the correct target word during the incoming saccade. Replicating classic findings, target words were fixated shorter after identical previews. In the EEG, this benefit was reflected in an occipitotemporal preview positivity between 200 and 280 ms. In contrast, there was no facilitation from related previews. In parafoveal-on-foveal trials, preview and target were embedded at neighboring list positions without a display change. Consecutive fixation of two related words produced N400 priming effects, but only shortly (160 ms) after the second word was directly fixated. Results demonstrate that neural responses to words are substantially altered by parafoveal preprocessing under normal reading conditions. We found no evidence that word meaning contributes to these effects. Saccade-contingent display manipulations can be combined with EEG recordings to study extrafoveal perception in vision. KW - EEG KW - Eye tracking KW - Active vision KW - Eye-fixation-related potentials (EFRP) KW - Parafoveal vision KW - Boundary technique Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.04.006 SN - 1053-8119 SN - 1095-9572 VL - 62 IS - 1 SP - 381 EP - 393 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Burchert, Frank A1 - Hanne, Sandra A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Sentence comprehension disorders in aphasia the concept of chance performance revisited JF - Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal N2 - Background: In behavioural tests of sentence comprehension in aphasia, correct and incorrect responses are often randomly distributed. Such a pattern of chance performance is a typical trait of Broca's aphasia, but can be found in other aphasic syndromes as well. Many researchers have argued that chance behaviour is the result of a guessing strategy, which is adopted in the face of a syntactic breakdown in sentence processing. Aims: Capitalising on new evidence from recent studies investigating online sentence comprehension in aphasia using the visual world paradigm, the aim of this paper is to review the concept of chance performance as a reflection of a syntactic impairment in sentence processing and to re-examine the conventional interpretation of chance performance as a guessing behaviour. Main Contribution: Based on a review of recent evidence from visual world paradigm studies, we argue that the assumption of chance performance equalling guessing is not necessarily compatible with actual real-time parsing procedures in people with aphasia. We propose a reinterpretation of the concept of chance performance by assuming that there are two distinct processing mechanisms underlying sentence comprehension in aphasia. Correct responses are always the result of normal-like parsing mechanisms, even in those cases where the overall performance pattern is at chance. Incorrect responses, on the other hand, are the result of intermittent deficiencies of the parser. Hence the random guessing behaviour that persons with aphasia often display does not necessarily reflect a syntactic breakdown in sentence comprehension and a random selection between alternatives. Instead it should be regarded as a result of temporal deficient parsing procedures in otherwise normal-like comprehension routines. Conclusion: Our conclusion is that the consideration of behavioural offline data alone may not be sufficient to interpret a performance in language tests and subsequently draw theoretical conclusions about language impairments. Rather it is important to call on additional data from online studies that look at language processing in real time in order to gain a comprehensive picture about syntactic comprehension abilities of people with aphasia and possible underlying deficits. KW - Sentence comprehension in aphasia KW - Chance performance KW - Visual world paradigm KW - Eye tracking KW - Online sentence processing Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2012.730603 SN - 0268-7038 VL - 27 IS - 1 SP - 112 EP - 125 PB - Wiley CY - Hove ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Elsner, Birgit A1 - Pfeifer, Caroline A1 - Parker, Charlene A1 - Hauf, Petra T1 - Infants' perception of actions and situational constraints - an eye-tracking study JF - Journal of experimental child psychology N2 - Rational action understanding requires that infants evaluate the efficiency of a movement in achieving a goal with respect to situational constraints. In contrast, recent accounts have highlighted the impact of perceptual characteristics of the demonstrated movement or constraints to explain infants' behavior in so-called rational imitation tasks. The current study employed eye tracking to investigate how 13- to 15-month-old infants distribute their visual attention to different aspects of an action demonstration. In three tasks (touchlight, house, and obstacle), infants watched videos in which a model performed an unusual action while she was or was not restricted by situational constraints. Infants' overall looking to the demonstration as well as looking to four segments of the video (initial segment, constraint demonstration, action performance, and final segment) and to specific areas (constraint area of interest [AOI] and action AOI) was analyzed. Overall, infants looked longer at the demonstration in the constraint condition compared with the no-constraint condition. The condition differences occurred in the two video segments where the constraint or action was displayed and were especially profound for the constraint AOI. These findings indicate that infants processed the situational constraints. However, the pattern of condition differences varied slightly in the three tasks. In sum, the data imply that infants process perceptual characteristics of the movement or constraints and that low-level perceptual processes interact with higher level cognitive processes in infants' action perception. KW - Eye tracking KW - Infant action processing KW - 13-to 15-month-old infants KW - Visual attention KW - Rational action understanding KW - Motor resonance account Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2012.11.014 SN - 0022-0965 SN - 1096-0457 VL - 116 IS - 2 SP - 428 EP - 442 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER -