Visual Working Memory in Situated Language Comprehension
Speaker: Emilia Ellsiepen
Abstract:
In this talk, I will present two experiments which address the mutual influence of visual working memory and language in situated language comprehension. Psycholinguistic research in the visual world paradigm has shown that spoken language and visual attention rapidly influence each other: While language guides referential and anticipatory gaze in a scene, the acquired information from the scene may conversely help in resolving ambiguities in the utterance. Scenes used in influential studies, however, usually include only four to five co-present scene entities.
The first experiment investigates the extent to which richer visual contexts are used in language comprehension, and the influence of visual working memory. The second experiment tests whether linguistic context can in turn influence the accessibility of visual material in working memory for language comprehension.
