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The role of accent in reference resolution was investigated by monitoring eye fixations to lexical competitors (e.g., candy and candle) as participants followed prerecorded instructions to move objects above or below fixed geometric shapes using a computer mouse.

In 2 experiments, eye movements were monitored as participants followed instructions containing temporary syntactic ambiguities (e.g., "Pour the egg in the bowl over the flour"). The authors varied the affordances of task-relevant objects with respect to the action required by the instruction (e.g., whether 1 or both eggs in the visual workspace were in liquid form, allowing them to be poured). The number of candidate objects that could afford the action was found to determine whether listeners initially misinterpreted the ambiguous phrase ("in the bowl") as specifying a location. The findings indicate that syntactic decisions are guided by the listener's situation-specific evaluation of how to achieve the behavioral goal of an utterance.

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Real-time spoken word recognition processes appear similar for younger and older adults in most conditions; however, age-related differences may be found in the discrimination of rhyming words (especially in noise), even when there are no age differences in word recognition accuracy. These results highlight the utility of eye movement methodologies for studying speech processing across the life span.

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A spoken language eye-tracking methodology was used to evaluate the effects of sentence context and proficiency on parallel language activation during spoken language comprehension. Nonnative speakers with varying proficiency levels viewed visual displays while listening to French sentences (e.g., Marie va décrire la poule [Marie will describe the chicken]). Displays depicted several objects including the final noun target (chicken) and an interlingual near-homophone (e.g., pool) whose name in English is phonologically similar to the French target (poule). Listeners' eye movements reflected temporary consideration of the interlingual competitor when hearing the target noun, demonstrating cross-language lexical competition. However, competitor fixations were dramatically reduced when prior sentence information was incompatible with the competitor (e.g., Marie va nourrir... [Marie will feed...]). In contrast, interlingual competition from English did not vary according to participants' rated proficiency in French, even though proficiency reliably predicted other aspects of processing behavior, suggesting higher proficiency in the active language does not provide a significant independent source of control over interlingual competition. The results provide new insights into the nature of parallel language activation in naturalistic sentential contexts.

Two experiments investigated 4-year-olds' use of descriptive sentences to learn non-obvious properties of unfamiliar kinds. Novel creatures were described using generic or nongeneric sentences (e.g., These are pagons. Pagons/These pagons are friendly). Children's willingness to extend the described property to a new category member was then measured. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that children reliably extended the property to new instances after hearing generic but not nongeneric sentences. Further, the influence of generic language was much greater than effects related to the amount of tangible evidence provided (the number of creatures bearing the critical property). Experiment 2 revealed that children continued to extend properties mentioned in generic descriptions even when incompatible evidence was presented (e.g., an example of an unfriendly 'pagon'). The findings underscore preschoolers' keen understanding of the semantics of generic sentences and suggest that inferences based on generics are more robust than those based on observationally grounded evidence. The ability to associate objects and individuals with characteristic properties is critical for the human ability to categorise, reason, and communicate information to others. However, the process of identifying relevant properties