The auditory moving-window is a psycholinguistic paradigm developed at Michigan State University by Fernanda Ferreira and colleagues. Ferreira and colleagues built the paradigm in order to address the scarcity of (fluent) spoken-language comprehension literature versus the robustness of that for visual-word processing. Auditory moving-window can be used to assess indirectly the processing load of a sentence: this processing load is assessed by an analogue of reaction time within the paradigm (discussed below). Reaction times within the paradigm are sensitive to at least word frequency and garden path effects.
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The paradigm has been used in the study of syntactic processing in the study of aphasic patients. One such study suggests that many aphasic patients retain their abilities to process syntactic structures on-line. Further, evidence suggests that Expressive aphasics have a degraded ability to process complex syntax on-line, whereas Receptive aphasics are impaired only after on-line comprehension concludes
Application of the auditory moving-window
The auditory moving-window paradigm, because of its similarity to the eye tracking paradigm, has a broad range of applications. It is at least sensitive enough to detect frequency effects on comprehension: low frequency words had a greater IRT and DT than high frequency words, suggesting a relative difficulty of lexical access. Further, it is sensitive to garden path effects
Technical details
Because one of the aims of the auditory moving-window is to investigate fluent speech, the paradigm is several steps more complex than simple auditory word-by-word presentation:
The presentation of a prepared sample depends on what software is being used. What follows is an abstraction of the general strategy.
The auditory moving-window is roughly analogous to an eye tracking task presented in the auditory modality. The eye tracking variable of interest that is thought to be closest to the DT is that of fixation duration. They are held to be directly related: a greater DT is correspondent to a greater fixation duration. Several eye-tracking studies use fixation duration as an indirect measure of processing load: a greater fixation duration is correspondent to a greater processing load . The same applies to DTs.