Article published in:
Approaches to learning, testing, and researching L2 vocabulary
Edited by Stuart Webb
[ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics 169:1] 2018
► pp. 5–29

Eye movements in vocabulary research

| UCL Institute of Education, UK
| Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
The field of vocabulary research is witnessing a growing interest in the use of eye-tracking to investigate topics that have traditionally been examined using offline measures, providing new insights into the processing and learning of vocabulary. During an eye-tracking experiment, participants’ eye movements are recorded while they attend to written or auditory input, resulting in a rich record of online processing behaviour. Because of its many benefits, eye-tracking is becoming a major research technique in vocabulary research. However, before this emerging trend of eye-tracking based vocabulary research continues to proliferate, it is important to step back and reflect on what current studies have shown about the processing and learning of vocabulary, and the ways in which we can use the technique in future research. To this aim, the present paper provides a comprehensive overview of current eye-tracking research findings, both in terms of the processing and learning of single words and formulaic sequences. Current research gaps and potential avenues for future research are also discussed.
Keywords: eye movements, vocabulary, formulaic language, lexical processing, vocabulary learning.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The eye-tracking methodology
  • 3.Processing of single words
    • 3.1Cross-language activation: Cognates, interlingual homographs and orthographic neighbourhood
  • 4.Processing of formulaic language
    • 4.1Processing of figurative formulaic sequences
      • 4.1.1L1 influence on L2 idiom processing
    • 4.2Processing of compositional formulaic sequences
  • 5.Learning of single words
  • 6.Learning of formulaic language
  • 7.Conclusions and directions for future research
    • 7.1Processing of words and formulaic sequences
    • 7.2Learning of words and formulaic sequences
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 April 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/itl.00004.pel
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