Neurocognition and ­Action - Biomechanics

Spatial Language and Attention (SPLAT)

Project duration: 2016/01 - 2018/12
Project funding: 230.000 Euro

It is well established that spatial language processing requires attention mechanisms (Carlson & Logan, 2005; Logan, 1994) but how precisely people deploy visual attention during spatial language comprehension, is still unclear. Spatial language accounts (Franconeri, Scimeca, Roth, Helseth & Kahn, 2012; Regier & Carlson, 2001) postulate that to comprehend a spatial description such as "The clock is above the vase" people must shift their attention between the object, precisely from the vase ('reference object') to the clock (located object, e.g., Carlson-Radvansky & Irwin, 1994; Carlson & Logan, 2005). However, our recent findings suggest that such directional shift is not mandatory (Burigo & Knoeferle, 2015) and that eye movements might not be the key mechanism behind spatial language comprehension. In the current project we aim to examine the role of eye movement in spatial language and investigate whether the necessary attentional shift can be performed on a mental representation (therefore without the direct contribution of eye movements). If evidence corroborating this hypothesis will be found, we would also suggest that not only spatial language but several other aspects of spatial cognition can operate without the direct contribution of eye movements.