Pupillometry reveals processing load during spoken language comprehension

Abstract

This study investigated processing effort by measuring peoples' pupil diameter as they listened to sentences containing a temporary syntactic ambiguity. In the first experiment, we manipulated prosody. The results showed that when prosodic structure conflicted with syntactic structure, pupil diameter reliably increased. In the second experiment, we manipulated both prosody and visual context. The results showed that when visual context was consistent with the correct interpretation, prosody had very little effect on processing effort. However, when visual context was inconsistent with the correct interpretation, prosody had a large effect on processing effort. The interaction between visual context and prosody shows that visual context has an effect on online processing and that it can modulate the influence of linguistic sources of information, such as prosody. Pupillometry is a sensitive measure of processing effort during spoken language comprehension.

Effects of age and task difficulty on ERP responses to novel sounds presented during a speech-perception-in-noise test

“…Recently, there have been various approaches using psychophysiological measures such as pupillometry (Engelhardt et al, 2010;Kuchinsky et al, 2013;Zekveld et al, 2013;Zekveld and Kramer, 2014;Zekveld et al, 2010;, eye movement tracking (Ben-David et al, 2011), galvanic skin response, electromyographic activity, heart rate variability (Mackersie and Cones, 2011;Mackersie et al, 2014), and electroencephalography (EEG) frequency bands (Obleser et al, 2012).…”

Cognitive load in simultaneous interpreting: Model meets data

“…These data suggest that this paradigm can be used to assess overall cognitive load during simultaneous interpreting. Similarly, Scheepers and Crocker (2004) and Engelhardt, Ferreira, and Patsenko (2010) successfully applied this technique to show the local manifestation of cognitive load in a comprehension task. However, to date no attempt has been made to identify local cognitive load during simultaneous interpreting using online psychophysiological measures.…”

Pupillary responses reflect ambiguity resolution in pronoun processing

“…Van Rijn, Dalenberg, Borst, & Sprenger, 2012). Measures of pupil dilation reliably reflect cognitive effort in language processing (Engelhardt, Ferreira, & Patsenko, 2010;Just & Carpenter, 1993), and have been shown to reveal subtle differences in effort in processes that are hard to distinguish by other means (e.g. Wierda, van Rijn, Taatgen, & Martens, 2012) and in processes that do not feel effortful to listeners (e.g.…”