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ECOLOGICAL VALIDITY IN EYE-TRACKING

An Empirical Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 June 2013

Patti Spinner ,
Susan M. Gass  and
Jennifer Behney
Patti Spinner*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Susan M. Gass
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Jennifer Behney
Affiliation:
Youngstown State University
*
*Correspondence concerning this articleshould be addressed to Patti Spinner, SLS Program, B-258 Wells Hall, MichiganState University, East Lansing, MI 48824; E-mail: spinnerp@msu.edu
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Abstract

Eye-trackers are becoming increasingly widespread as a tool to investigate secondlanguage (L2) acquisition. Unfortunately, clear standards formethodology—including font size, font type, and placement of interestareas—are not yet available. Although many researchers stress theneed for ecological validity—that is, the simulation of naturalreading conditions—it may not be prudent to use such a design toinvestigate new directions in eye-tracking research, and particularly inresearch involving small lexical items such as articles. In this study, weexamine whether two different screen layouts can lead to different results in aneye-tracking study on the L2 acquisition of Italian gender. The results of anexperiment with an ecologically valid design are strikingly different than theresults of an experiment with a design tailored to track eye movements toarticles. We conclude that differences in screen layout can have significanteffects on results and that it is crucial that researchers report screen layoutinformation.

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Articles
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Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 35 , Issue 2: Eye-Movement Recordings in Second Language Research , June 2013 , pp. 389 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

We thank Aline Godfroid for early discussions on research design and SehoonJung and Russ Werner for assistance with the eye-tracker. We also thank ZhenZhang for assistance with the statistical analysis.

Versions of this article were presented at SLRF 2010 and Eurosla 2010 and2011.

References

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