Role descriptions induce gender mismatch effects in eye movements during reading

Eye movements during text reading align with the rate of speech production

Across languages, the speech signal is characterized by a predominant modulation of the amplitude spectrum between about 4.3 and 5.5 Hz, reflecting the production and processing of linguistic information chunks (syllables and words) every ~200 ms. Interestingly, ~200 ms is also the typical duration of eye fixations during reading. Prompted by this observation, we demonstrate that German readers sample written text at ~5 Hz. A subsequent meta-analysis of 142 studies from 14 languages replicates this result and shows that sampling frequencies vary across languages between 3.9 Hz and 5.2 Hz. This variation systematically depends on the complexity of the writing systems (character-based versus alphabetic systems and orthographic transparency). Finally, we empirically demonstrate a positive correlation between speech spectrum and eye movement sampling in low-skilled non-native readers, with tentative evidence from post hoc analysis suggesting the same relationship in low-skilled native readers. On the basis of this convergent evidence, we propose that during reading, our brain's linguistic processing systems imprint a preferred processing rate-that is, the rate of spoken language production and perception-onto the oculomotor system.

The male bias of a generically-intended masculine pronoun: Evidence from eye-tracking and sentence evaluation

Two experiments tested whether the Dutch possessive pronoun zijn ‘his’ gives rise to a gender inference and thus causes a male bias when used generically in sentences such as Everyone was putting on his shoes. Experiment 1 (N = 120, 48 male) was a conceptual replication of a previous eye-tracking study that had not found evidence of a male bias. The results of the current eye-tracking experiment showed the generically-intended masculine pronoun to trigger a gender inference and cause a male bias, but for male participants and in stereotypically neutral stereotype contexts only. No evidence for a male bias was thus found in stereotypically female and male context nor for female participants altogether. Experiment 2 (N = 80, 40 male) used the same stimuli as Experiment 1, but employed the sentence evaluation paradigm. No evidence of a male bias was found in Experiment 2. Taken together, the results suggest that the generically-intended masculine pronoun zijn ‘his’ can cause a male bias for male participants even when the referents are previously introduced by inclusive and grammatically gender-unmarked iedereen ‘everyone’. This male bias surfaces with eye-tracking, which taps directly into early language processing, but not in offline sentence evaluations. Furthermore, the results suggest that the intended generic reading of the masculine possessive pronoun zijn ‘his’ is more readily available for women than for men.

Are New Gender-Neutral Pronouns Difficult to Process in Reading? The Case of Hen in SWEDISH

Hen is a Swedish gender-neutral pronoun used for non-binary individuals and as a generic singular pronoun form. Hen was added to the Swedish Academy Glossary (SAOL) in 2015, and opponents of hen have argued that gender-neutral pronouns are difficult to process, and therefore should not be used. As of yet, this has not been empirically tested. This pre-registered study used eye-tracking to experimentally test if hen has a processing cost by measuring the process of understanding whom a pronoun refers to (i.e., pronoun resolution). Participants (N = 120) read 48 sentence pairs where the first sentence included a noun referring to a person (e.g., sister, hairdresser, person) and the second included a pronoun referring to the noun. The pronouns were either gendered (she and he) or gender-neutral (hen). The nouns were either neutral (e.g., person, colleague) or gendered, either by lexically referring to gender (e.g., sister, king), or by being associated with stereotypes based on occupational gender segregation (e.g., occupational titles like hairdresser, carpenter). We tested if hen had a greater processing cost than gendered pronouns, and whether the type of noun moderated this effect. The hypotheses were that hen referring to neutral nouns would lead to a smaller processing cost than hen referring to gendered nouns. Furthermore, we hypothesized that hen referring to lexically gendered nouns would lead to larger processing costs than stereotypically gendered role nouns. The processing cost of hen was measured by reading time spent on three regions of the sentence pairs; the pronoun, the spillover region (i.e., the words following the pronoun), and the noun. The only processing cost for hen occurred in the spillover region. The processing cost in this region was greater when hen referred to neutral nouns than when hen referred to a noun associated with gender. In contrast to the hypothesis, the type of gender information associated with the noun did not interact with these effects (i.e., the same reading time for hen following e.g., the queen or carpenter). Altogether, the results do not support that gender-neutral pronouns should be avoided because they are difficult to process.

The processing of the Dutch masculine generic zijn 'his' across stereotype contexts: An eye-tracking study

Language users often infer a person's gender when it is not explicitly mentioned. This information is included in the mental model of the described situation, giving rise to expectations regarding the continuation of the discourse. Such gender inferences can be based on two types of information: gender stereotypes (e.g., nurses are female) and masculine generics, which are grammatically masculine word forms that are used to refer to all genders in certain contexts (e.g., To each his own). In this eye-tracking experiment (N = 82), which is the first to systematically investigate the online processing of masculine generic pronouns, we tested whether the frequently used Dutch masculine generic zijn 'his' leads to a male bias. In addition, we tested the effect of context by introducing male, female, and neutral stereotypes. We found no evidence for the hypothesis that the generically-intended masculine pronoun zijn 'his' results in a male bias. However, we found an effect of stereotype context. After introducing a female stereotype, reading about a man led to an increase in processing time. However, the reverse did not hold, which parallels the finding in social psychology that men are penalized more for gender-nonconforming behavior. This suggests that language processing is not only affected by the strength of stereotype contexts; the associated disapproval of violating these gender stereotypes affects language processing, too.

Experience-Based Probabilities Modulate Expectations in a Gender-Coded Artificial Language

The current study combines artificial language learning with visual world eyetracking to investigate acquisition of representations associating spoken words and visual referents using morphologically complex pseudowords. Pseudowords were constructed to consistently encode referential gender by means of suffixation for a set of imaginary figures that could be either male or female. During training, the frequency of exposure to pseudowords and their imaginary figure referents were manipulated such that a given word and its referent would be more likely to occur in either the masculine form or the feminine form, or both forms would be equally likely. Results show that these experience-based probabilities affect the formation of new representations to the extent that participants were faster at recognizing a referent whose gender was consistent with the induced expectation than a referent whose gender was inconsistent with this expectation. Disambiguating gender information available from the suffix did not mask the induced expectations. Eyetracking data provide additional evidence that such expectations surface during online lexical processing. Taken together, these findings indicate that experience-based information is accessible during the earliest stages of processing, and are consistent with the view that language comprehension depends on the activation of perceptual memory traces.