Objective When humans process language, they rarely do so in isolation. Linguistic input often occurs synchronously with visual input, e.g. in everyday activities such as attending a lecture or following directions on a map. The visual context constrains the interpretation of the linguistic input, and vice versa, making processing more efficient and less ambiguous. Given the ubiquity of synchronous linguistic and visual processing, it is surprising that there is only a sparse experimental literature that deals with this topic, while virtually no computational models exist that capture the synchronous interpretation process. We propose an experimental research program that will investigate key features of synchronous processing by tracking participants' eye movements when they view a naturalistic scene and listen to a speech stimulus at the same time. The aim is to understand synchronous processing better by studying the interaction of saliency and ambiguity, and the role of incrementality, object context, and task factors. These experimental results will feed into a series of computational models that predict the eye-movement patterns that humans exhibit when they view a scene and listen to speech at the same time. The key modeling idea is to treat synchronous processing as an alignment problem, for which a rich literature exists in computational linguistics. Building on this literature, we will develop models that incrementally construct aligned linguistic and visual representations, and that can be evaluated against eye-tracking data. Fields of science humanitieslanguages and literaturelinguisticssocial sciencesmedia and communicationsgraphic design Keywords Language processing alignment cognitive modeling computational linguistics eye-tracking synchronous grammars visual processing Programme(s) FP7-IDEAS-ERC - Specific programme: "Ideas" implementing the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007 to 2013) Topic(s) ERC-SG-SH3 - ERC Starting Grant - Environment and society Call for proposal ERC-2007-StG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-SG - ERC Starting Grant Host institution THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH EU contribution € 1 126 000,00 Address OLD COLLEGE, SOUTH BRIDGE EH8 9YL Edinburgh United Kingdom See on map Region Scotland Eastern Scotland Edinburgh Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Principal investigator Frank Keller (Dr.) Administrative Contact Angela Noble (Ms.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by EU Contribution Expand all Collapse all THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH United Kingdom EU contribution € 1 126 000,00 Address OLD COLLEGE, SOUTH BRIDGE EH8 9YL Edinburgh See on map Region Scotland Eastern Scotland Edinburgh Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Principal investigator Frank Keller (Dr.) Administrative Contact Angela Noble (Ms.) Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Total cost No data
