Chambers, Craig

When people speak, they strike a balance between information conveyed with language and information conveyed in other ways, e.g., through gestures, intonation, and the environment where conversation is taking place. Listeners, in turn, must draw on all these information sources to understand what the speaker means. The goal of research in my laboratory is to understand the mental components that underlie this comprehension process. Recently, we have been investigating how the real-time understanding of spoken language is influenced by aspects of action planning. This research uses a technique in which eye movements are recorded as listeners follow instructions to manipulate objects in a visual workspace