Virtual Moving Window

The virtual moving window task is a paradigm born of two similar methods for assessing language comprehension. The first, the rapid serial visual presentation task, (RSVP for short), is used by vision researchers to assess reading ability. In that paradigm, one word at a time is presented in the center of the screen and is followed virtually immediately, (though timing is under the control of the experimenter), by another word, then another, and so on until an entire sentence or paragraph has been presented. Participants are asked to read these words aloud as presentation occurs, and their tracking abilities can then be used as a means of assessing comprehension of the stimulus material. The second task is called the auditory moving window task, and it is essentially the same sort of task but used by audition researchers. Participants here a word (or some sentence fragment comprised of words) and press a key on a keyboard to advance to the next sound stimulus. Interestingly, most people are quite good at this and, after some practice, are able to keypress their way through a stimulus in almost seamless fashion. Unbeknownst to the participant, each keypress provides a measure of reaction time in milliseconds, which can then be used to estimate ease of comprehension.