Project description
Eye tracking helps us better understand the causes of disfluency
Disfluency is a frequently occurring phenomenon in everyday speech: about six per 100 words are affected by interruptions to the smooth and fluent flow of speech such as pauses and repetitions of words. The causes of such speech disruptions remain unclear. The aim of the EU-funded DEMOS project is to reveal the underlying causes of disfluency by manipulating different levels of language production. The project also aims to bring together different accounts of disfluency through eye tracking. Findings of the study will pave the way for further investigations to improve our understanding of discourse production, in clinical populations and society at large.
Objective
Speech production is full of disfluencies, which are “phenomena that interrupt the flow of speech and do not add propositional content to an utterance”. However, it is not well understood why speakers are so often disfluent. To reveal the underlying causes of disfluency, most approaches attempt to relate the pattern of disfluencies to difficulties at specific levels of language production. The current project will also investigate disfluency by manipulating different levels of production. In addition, we will bring together different accounts of disfluency by 1) capturing monitoring or stalling strategy using eye-tracking and 2) identifying the role of non-linguistic cognitive functions and individual differences through neuropsychological tests. Findings will open new avenues for the investigation and understanding of discourse production, in normal and in clinical populations.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF-EF-CAR - CAR – Career Restart panelCoordinator
9000 Gent
Belgium