Discerning Temporal Expectancy Effects in Script Processing: Evidence from Pupillary and Eye Movement Recordings

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Accessing the temporal position of events (early or late in the event sequence) can influence the generation of predictions about upcoming events. However, it is unclear how the temporal position is processed strategically. To investigate this, we presented event pairs to 23 healthy volunteers manipulating temporal order (chronological, inverse) and temporal position (early, late). Pupil dilation, eye movements, and behavioral data, showed that chronological and early event pairs are processed with more ease than inverse and late event pairs. Indexed by the pupillary response late events and inversely presented event pairs elicited greater cognitive processing demands than early events and chronologically presented event pairs. Regarding eye movements, fixation duration was less sensitive to temporal position than to temporal order. Looking at each item of the event sequence only once was behaviorally more effective than looking multiple times at each event regardless of whether temporal position or temporal order was processed. These results emphasize that accessing temporal position and temporal order information results in dissociable behavioral patterns. While more cognitive resources are necessary for processing late and inverse items, change of information acquisition strategies turns out to be most effective when temporal order processing is required. (<jats:italic>JINS</jats:italic>, 2012,<jats:italic>18</jats:italic>, 351–360)</jats:p>

Exploring Temporal Progression of Events Using Eye Tracking

“…We hypothesized that processing the two adjectives only once would reflect that subjects were using the superficial context-independent strategy to identify the antonymous relationship. Since we expected the more sparse context-independent strategy to be indicated by the RO pattern, which corresponds moreover to the more efficient responding strategy (see Landgraf et al, 2012), we hypothesized that, overall, the RO pattern would be associated with shorter RTs than the RMO pattern.…”

“…In many of the studies carried out to date, temporal effects were only obtained when temporal or causal information was considered explicitly (Eikmeier, Schr€ oter, Maienborn, Alex-Ruf, & Ulrich, 2013;Fenker, Waldmann, & Holyoak, 2005;Landgraf, Raisig, & van der Meer, 2012;Raisig et al, 2007Raisig et al, , 2010Ulrich & Maienborn, 2010;Ulrich et al, 2012). The study by Fenker et al (2005), for instance, shows that information about the temporal order of causally related entities such as spark and fire is only accessed when the task explicitly requires the causal relationship to be identified.…”

“…An initial analysis by the eyes (i.e., the RO pattern) provides lexical access to the words (i.e., a context-independent strategy), followed by a reanalysis by the eyes (i.e., the RMO pattern), which takes into account the context (i.e., a contextual strategy). In the present study, we analyzed different eye movement patterns on the basis of the patterns found by Landgraf et al (2012). We hypothesized that processing the two adjectives only once would reflect that subjects were using the superficial context-independent strategy to identify the antonymous relationship.…”

The Seduction Script: Psychological and Cultural Norms of Interpersonal Approaches As Markers for Sexual Aggression and Abuse

“…Technically, they are mentally structured along a rigid temporal dimension from the beginning of an activity until its end (Grafman, 1995; Rosen et al, 2003). Scripts entail stereotypical and situationally bound expectations and goal hierarchies, which reinforce (socially and culturally accepted) behavior (Landgraf et al, 2011, 2012). Thereby, scripts improve the predictability of events and reduce cognitive resource allocation, which represents cognitive effort, during event planning and action execution (Zacks and Tversky, 2001; Zacks and Swallow, 2007).…”

“…In other words, more behavioral options may be available within a shorter period of time (Landgraf et al, 2012). Since it is unclear how individual preferences influence behavioral options during pre-sexual approaches and sexual activity, investigations with regard to embodied cognition may be of utmost importance.…”