First things first: cross-linguistic analyses of event apprehension
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2018-08-23
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en
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Apprehension is the rapid visual process during which the gist of a scene can be extracted. This study investigates top-down effects of task demands (different language production tasks) and speakers’ language backgrounds (Mandarin Chinese and Dutch) on event apprehension. In two experiments, we present causative event pictures for only 300ms. Upon stimulus offset, Dutch and Chinese participants describe pictures following the different task demands. We measure the first fixation location, as an index of the information processed during apprehension, and as such, as a reflection of the result of this process. For the first time, we show that apprehension is a flexible process, modulated by task demands: first fixation locations differ depending on the task requirements. Furthermore, we find that accuracy, specificity and the starting point of speakers’ verbal descriptions cannot be predicted by first fixation locations, indicating that this measure reflects processes prior to linguistic formulation in language production.
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