Contact Details:
Telephone: (+44)(1382) 384609
Email: Alan Kennedy
Postal Address:
School of Psychology
The University of Dundee
Dundee
DD1 4HN
Scotland, UK
I have worked for many years on the notion that spatial representation plays a role in the processing of text, the mediating mechanism being the control of eye movements. Initially, this hypothesis was tested by looking at the possibility that spatial extension allowed for the successful use of first-pass syntactic parsing strategies in reading. That early work was carried out in collaboration with Wayne Murray and was supported by several grants from ESRC. In 1995 I discovered that the behaviour of the eyes on a given word in text can be influenced by properties of un-fixated words present in parafoveal vision. “Parafoveal-on-foveal effects” in word recognition represent a challenge to models of eye movement control in reading that claim processing is essentially serial. Such models cannot accommodate to the possibility that adjacent words might be processed in parallel. Much of my published work since 1998 has been concerned with this controversy and has been carried out in collaboration with Dr J. Pynte, Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurosciences Cognitives, Boulogne-Billancourt, France. I was a Chercheur Associé in that laboratory from 2007 to 2010.
In 2003, in collaboration with Joel Pynte and with the support of ESRC, I developed what is probably the largest available corpus of eye movement data in English and French. Measurements were taken as participants read newspaper articles from The Independent or Le Monde. Publications listed below in collaboration with Joel Pynte and Boris New all make use of this corpus. A significant extension to the Dundee Corpus was one outcome of a European Collaborative Research Programme funded by ESF and ESRC. This derived a measure of word-by-word predictability for a sample of around 700 words of continuous text. The work was in collaboration with Wayne Murray and Martin Fischer in Dundee and Richard Shillcock in Edinburgh. (NB: The English version of the Dundee Corpus is freely available to researchers on request, although no technical support is offered).
More recently, I have been trying to understand how people represent temporal succession when they read. If reading involves some kind of speech-like representation, it is unclear how this achieved, given that the sequence in which words are inspected is rarely very orderly. Neither serial nor parallel models of eye movement control code spatial order in a satisfactory way. This work has been supported by on-going grants from ESRC.
In collaboration with Ben Tatler and Yoriko Hirose I am currently looking at spatial representation in film. This work has been supported by grants from The Leverhulme Trust and ESRC. The aim of our research is to determine how people maintain a stable representation of “imaged space” when looking at movies. We have examined viewer’s eye movements as they look at specially-prepared movies in which the properties of objects change between cuts (e.g. an object changes colour). More recently we have examined properties of the cut itself (e.g. whether a change in viewpoint is consistent or inconsistent with reference to the imaged space). Although they are not aware of the fact, viewers of movies are not very good at coding precisely where particular objects are located in the imaginary space represented in a movie.
Language, Cognition and Perception
Eye movement control; Psycholinguistics
| Grants |
|---|
| Kennedy, A. and Wilkes, A.L. Social Science Research Council Project HR 287: Latency Studies of Memory with Reference to Language. (1968 - 1971). |
| Kennedy, A. Social Science Research Council Project HR 1276: A Psycholinguistic Study of Aspects of Comprehension in Reading. (1971 - 1974). |
| Kennedy, A. Social Science Research Council Project: HR 6309: Eye Movements in Reading. (1979 - 1980). |
| Kennedy, A., Naatanen, R. and Loveless, N.L. Medical Research Council Project Event-related Slow Potentials of the Brain. (1979). |
| Kennedy, A. and Loveless, N.L. Medical Research Council Project G8103537N: Computer System for Psychological Research. 1981 - 1985. |
| Kennedy, A. Economic and Social Research Council Project HR 8746: Eye Movements and Cognitive Processes in Reading. (1982 - 1985). |
| Kennedy, A. and Wilkes, A.L. Economic and Social Research Council Project C00825006: Form and Content in Human-machine Dialogue. (1985 - 1987). |
| Kennedy, A. and Murray, W.S. Economic and Social Research Council Project HRC00230077: Eye Movements and the Development of Cognitive Strategies in Reading. (1986 - 1988). |
| Kennedy, A. and Murray, W.S. Medical Research Council Project G8805490N: The Effects of Flicker on Eye Movement Control during Reading. (1988-1989). |
| Kennedy, A. and Murray, W.S. Medical Research Council Project G9006692N. The Effect of Screen Refresh Rate on Eye Movement Control In VDU Operators. (1990-1994). |
| Kennedy, A., Swanston, M.T. and Pynte, J. Project funded under the British Council Alliance Scheme PN 92186. The Role of Spatial Representations in Multi-Frame Displays. (1991-1992). |
| Kennedy, A. European Commission (BIOMED Programme BMHI-CT94-1441 Project No PL931441). Adverse Effects of Visual Display Units (VDUs) with particular reference to Eye Movement Control in Text Processing. (1994-1997). |
| Kennedy, A. CRL MedLINK Project M12. Suspended Image Systems for Endoscopic Surgery (with Cuschieri, Frank, Chapman and Wade). (1997-1999). |
| Kennedy, A. Economic and Social Research Council Project R/000/22/3650. Development and testing of a Corpus of Eye Movement Data in English and French. (2001-2003) |
| Kennedy, A. and Tatler, B.W. The Leverhulme Trust (Project No F00143J). Eye Movement Control and Information Extraction while watching Moving Images. (2006–2007). |
| Kennedy, A. and Tatler, B. Eye Movement Control and Moving Images. ESRC Project no. RES-000-22-2585 (2007-2008). |
|
Kennedy, A. Shillcock, R., Murray, W.S. and Fischer, M.H. Economic and Social Research Council Project European Collaborative Research Programme. (Project R/000/22/3650.) Sources of Linguistic Control over Eye Movements. In collaboration with colleagues in Potsdam, Vienna and Aix-en-Provence. (2006-2009). |
| Tatler, B.W. and Kennedy, A. The Leverhulme Trust (Project No F00143O). Remembering where: exploring why position memory is poor for dynamic movie sequences. (2009-2012). |
| Links | Publications |
|---|---|
| Pynte, J., Kennedy, A. and Murray, W.S. (1991). Within-word inspection strategies in continuous reading: The time-course of perceptual, lexical and contextual processes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 17, 458 - 470. | |
| Kennedy, A. (1992). The Spatial Coding Hypothesis. In K. Rayner (Ed.) Eye Movements and Visual Cognition. New York: Springer-Verlag (pp 379 - 397). | |
| Pynte, J., Kennedy, A. and Murray, W.S. (1992). Comments on when and where. International Journal of Psychology, 27, 56. | |
| Kennedy, A. and Murray, W.S. (1993). 'Flicker' on VDU Screens. Nature, 365,213. | |
| Kennedy, A. and Murray, W.S. (1993). Display Properties and Eye Movement Control. In J. Van Rensbergen, M. Devijver and G. d'Ydewalle (Eds.). Perception and Cognition. North Holland: Amsterdam. | |
| Pynte, J. and Kennedy, A. (1993). Contextual influences on the probability of re-fixations.In J. Van Rensbergen, M. Devijver and G. d'Ydewalle (Eds.). Perception and Cognition. North Holland: Amsterdam. | |
| Kennedy, A. (1993). Eye movements and Visual Display Units. In D.M. Willows, R.S. Kruk and E. Corcos (Eds.) Visual Processes in Reading and Reading Disabilities. Hillsdale: Erlbaum. (pp 215 - 237). | |
| Kennedy, A. and Baccino, T. (1994). The effects of screen refresh rate on editing operations using a computer mouse pointing device. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 48A, 55-71. | |
| Baccino, T. & Kennedy, A. (1994). MICELAB: A Turbo-Pascal 6.0 unit for analysing spatial processing from a mouse movement. Behavioral Research, Methods, Instruments & Computers. 55, 1 - 7. | |
| Kennedy, A. and Murray, W.S. (1994). Effects of pulsating illumination on eye movements during fingerprint examination. Technical Report for Home Office Police Systems Research and Development Group. | |
| Kennedy A. and Murray, W.S. (1996) Eye movement control during the inspection of words under conditions of pulsating illumination. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology. 8, 381 - 403. | |
 |
Kennedy, A., Brysbaert, M. and Murray, W.S. (1997) Intermittent illumination, visual inspection and reading. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 51A, 135 - 151. |
|
Kennedy, A. (1997). Review of J.M. Findlay, R. Walker and R. W. Kentridge (Eds.). Eye Movement Research: Mechanisms, Processes and Applications. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 50A, 475 - 477. |
| Kennedy, A. (1997). Parafoveal-on-foveal effects in word recognition. Paper to 9th European Conference on Eye Movements, Ulm, September, 1997. | |
| Kennedy, A. (1998). Review of P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel and M. F. Garrett (Eds.). Language and Space. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 51A, 689 - 691. | |
| Kennedy, A. (1998). The influence of parafoveal words on foveal inspection time: evidence for a processing trade-off. In G. Underwood (Ed.). Eye Guidance in Reading and Scene Perception. Elsevier: Oxford. | |
| Kennedy, A. (1999). Parafoveal-on-Foveal effects in reading and word recognition. In W. Becker, H. Deubel and T. Mergner (Eds.). Current Oculomotor Research: Physiological and Psychological Aspects. New York: Plenum (pp. 359 –367). | |
| Kennedy, A., Radach, R., Heller, D. and Pynte, J. (2000). Reading as a Perceptual Process. Elsivier: Oxford. | |
|
Kennedy, A. (2000). Parafoveal processing in word recognition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 53A, 429 - 456. |
| Kennedy, A. (2000). Attention Allocation in Reading: Sequential or Parallel?. In A. Kennedy, R. Radach, D. Heller and J. Pynte (Eds.). Reading as a Perceptual Process. Elsevier: Oxford.(pp. 193 - 220) | |
| Kennedy, A. (2002). The reader's spatial code. In J. Hyönä, R. Radach and H. Deubel (Eds.). The Mind's Eye: Cognitive and Applied Aspects of Eye Movement Research. Elsevier: Oxford. | |
|
Kennedy, A., Pynte, J., & Ducrot, S. (2002). Parafoveal-on-foveal interactions in word recognition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55A, 1307-1337. |
|
Kennedy, A., Murray, W. S. & Boissiere. (2004). Parafoveal Pragmatics revisited. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology. v.16, 128-153. |
|
Pynte, J., Kennedy, A., & Ducrot, S. (2004). The influence of Parafoveal typographical errors on eye movements in reading. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology. v16, 178 - 202. |
|
Kennedy, A. (2003). On keeping word order straight. Commentary on E. D. Reichle, K. Rayner and A. Pollatsek "The E-Z Reader Model of Eye Movement Control in Reading: Comparisons to Other Models". Behavioral and Brain Sciences. |
| Kennedy, A. (2003). The Dundee Corpus [CD-ROM]. School of Psychology, The University of Dundee. | |
| Kennedy, A., Hill, R, Pynte, J.(2003). The Dundee Corpus (Conference Paper). Proceedings of the 12th European conference on eye movement. | |
|
Radach, R. and Kennedy, A. (2004). Theoretical perspectives on eye movements in reading: past controversies, current issues and an agenda for future research. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology. v16, 3-26. |
| Radach, R., Kennedy, A. & Rayner, K(2004). Eye movements and information processing during reading. Psychology Press. ISSN/ISBN:184169956x hbk | |
|
Radach, R., Kennedy, A.(2004). Preface (Special Issue). European Journal of Cognitive Psychology. v.16, p1-2 |
| Kennedy, A. & Pynte, J. (2004). Ango-Saxon Vision. Paper to 6th European Workshop on Language Comprehension, Oléron, France. | |
| Alan Kennedy, (2004). Spatial Coding in Reading. Invited paper to Workshop on Language, Space, Action, & Cognition. LIMSI-CNRS, Orsay, France. | |
| Kennedy, A. (2005). Review of Hyona, Y., Munoz, D. P., Heide, W. & Radach, R. (Eds.) The brain’s eye: Neurobiological aspects of oculomotor research. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 58A, 377-380. | |
| Kennedy, A. (2005). Skipping, jumping and standing still: Some unresolved issue in eye movement control in reading. Invited Lecture to ECEM13, Bern, Switzerland. In Groner, M., Groner, R., Muri, R., Koga, K., Raess, S. & Sury, P. Thirteenth European Conference on Eye Movements: Abstracts. ISBN 3-033-00529-2 | |
|
Kennedy, A. & Pynte, J. (2005). Parafoveal-on-Foveal effects in normal reading. Vision Research. v.45, p153 - 168 |
| Pynte, J. & Kennedy, A. (2005). Cross-linguistic differences in the Dundee Corpus (Conference Paper). Proceedings of the 13th European conference on eye movements. | |
| Kennedy, A. (2006). Lost in Space. Invited paper, Inaugural Meeting, CNRS Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurosciences Cognitives, Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris V. | |
|
Pynte, J & Kennedy, A. (2006). An influence over eye movements in reading exerted from beyond the level of the word: Evidence from English and French. Vision Research, v.46, 3786-3801. |
|
Pynte, J. & Kennedy, A. (2007). The influence of punctuation and word class on distributed processing in normal reading. Vision Research. 47, 1215-1227. |
| Kennedy, A., Murray, W.S., Fischer, M.H., Vladeanu, M.C & Pynte, J. (2007). Can mislocated fixations explain parafoveal-on-foveal effects? Paper to 14th European Conference on eye Movement, Potsdam, 2007. | |
| Paul, S-A, S., Kennedy, A. & Murray, W.S. (2007). Evidence for frequency and predictability interactions on word processing times. Poster to 14th European Conference on eye Movement, Potsdam, 2007. | |
| Pynte, J., New, B. & Kennedy, A. (2007). Backward contextual influences during normal reading revisited: A multiple-regression analysis. Poster to 14th European Conference on eye Movement, Potsdam, 2007. | |
| Pynte, J., New, B. & Kennedy, A. (2007). A mutiple regression analysis of syntactic influence in reading normal text. Paper to 14th European Conference on eye Movement, Potsdam, 2007. | |
| Vladeanu, M.C., Fischer, M.H., Murray, W.S. & Kennedy, A. (2007). Putting the spatial code on the line - an eye movement investigation of spatial coding in reading. Poster to 14th European Conference on eye Movement, Potsdam, 2007. | |
|
Pynte, J., New, B. and Kennedy A. (2008). On-line contextual influences during reading normal text: a multiple-regression analysis. Vision Research. 49, 2172-2183. |
|
Kennedy, A. (2008). Parafoveal-on-foveal effects are not an artifact of mis-located saccades. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 2(1):2, 1-10. |
|
Pynte, J., New, B. and Kennedy, A. (2008). A multiple regression analysis of syntactic and semantic influences in reading normal text. Journal of eye Movement Research, 2(1):4, 1-11. |
|
Kennedy, A. and Pynte, J. (2008) The consequences of violations to reading order: An eye movement analysis. Vision Research, 45, 153-168. |
| Hirose, Y., Tatler, B. & Kennedy. A. Eye movement control and object memory in moving images. Paper to Experimental Psychology Society. Cambridge, 2008. | |
|
Pynte, J., New, B. and Kennedy, A. (2009). On-line contextual influences during reading normal text: the role of nouns, verbs and adjectives. Vision Research, 49, 544-552. |
|
Pynte, J., New, B. and Kennedy, A. (2009). On-line syntactic and semantic influences revisited. . Journal of Eye Movement Research, 3(1):5, 1-12. |
|
Kennedy, A and Pynte, J. (2009). Non-canonical reading: Reply to Rayner, Pollatsek, Liversedge and Reichle (2008). Vision Research, 49, 2237-2239. |
|
Hirose, Y., Kennedy, A. & Tatler, B. (2010). Detecting changes to object features in moving images. Journal of Vision. 10. 1–19. |
| Kennedy, A. (2010), Parafoveal Predictability. Invited paper to CogWiz, 2010, Potsdam Cognitive Science Series 2, p, 244. ISSN 2190-4545. | |
| Kennedy, A. (2010). Parafoveal Predictability. Invited paper to EPS Workshop on "Serial and Parallel Processes in Reading", University of Dundee. | |
| Hirose, Y., Kennedy, A. & Tatler, B. (2010). Detecting changes to object features in moving images. Journal of Vision. 10. 1–19. | |
| Kennedy, A. (2010), Parafoveal Predictability. Invited paper to CogWiz, 2010, Potsdam Cognitive Science Series 2, p, 244. ISSN 2190-4545. | |
| Kennedy, A. (2010). Parafoveal Predictability. Invited paper to EPS Workshop on "Serial and Parallel Processes in Reading", University of Dundee. | |
| Hirose, Y., Kennedy, A. & Tatler, B. (2010). Detecting changes to object features in moving images. Journal of Vision, 10(4), 2, 1-20 | |
| Kennedy, A.(2010). The Boat in the Bay. Lasserrade Press. [Fiction]. | |
| Kennedy, A. (2011). The Broken Bell. Lasserrade Press. [Fiction] | |
| Paul, SA. S., Murray W. S. and Kennedy, A. Explorations of the word-predictability effect: Is it really predictability? In Vitu, F., Castet, E., & Goffart, L. (Eds.) (2011). Abstracts of the 16th European Conference on Eye Movements, Marseille, 21 - 25 August 2011. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 4(3). | |
| Tatler, B. W., Hirose, Y. & Kennedy, R. A. (2011). Perception of dynamic movie scenes and natural environments. In Vitu, F., Castet, E., & Goffart, L. (Eds.) (2011). Abstracts of the 16th European Conference on Eye Movements, Marseille, 21 - 25 August 2011. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 4(3). | |
| Paul, S-A.S, Murray, W.S., & Kennedy, A. (2011). Explorations of the word-predictability effect: Is it really predictability? In Vitu, F., Castet, E., & Goffart, L. (Eds.) (2011). Abstracts of the 16th European Conference on Eye Movements, Marseille, 21 - 25 August 2011. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 4(3). | |
| Paul, S-A.S, Murray, W.S., & Kennedy, A. (2011). Is the word-predictability effect an effect of predictability? Paper presented at Experimental Psychology Society meeting, July, University of Nottingham, Nottingham. | |
| Hirose, Y., Tatler, B. W. and Kennedy, A. (2011). Eye movement control in movies: The effect of visual and narrative continuity across a cut. Paper to the 34th European Conference on Visual Perception, Toulouse. |
Research Fellow, Psychological Laboratory, University of Paris, 1972.
Research Visitor (British Council Twinning Grant), Nijmegen University, 1979.
Visiting Research Professor (Royal Society/ Commonwealth Universities Exchange Scheme), Monash University, 1980.
Visiting Senior Research Fellow (Melbourne University Senior Research Visitors Scheme), Melbourne University, 1982.
Visiting Research Worker (Supported by British Council), Centre de Recherche en Psychologie Cognitive, CNRS and University of Aix-en-Provence, 1986.
Visiting Research Worker (Royal Society/CNRS Exchange Scheme), Centre de Recherche en Psychologie Cognitive, CNRS, University of Aix-en- Provence, 1990.
Visiting Research Worker (British Council and CNRS Alliance Scheme), Centre de Recherche en Psychologie Cognitive, CNRS, University of Aix-en-Provence, 1992.
Visiting Research Worker (British Council and CNRS Alliance Scheme), Centre de Recherche en Psychologie Cognitive, CNRS and University of Aix-en-Provence, 1993.
Visiting Research Worker (French Ministry of Higher Education), Centre de Recherche en Psychologie Cognitive, CNRS and University of Aix-en-Provence, 1997-2000.
“Poste Rouge”, Blaise Pascal University of Clermont-Ferrand, 2001.
Chercheur Associé, Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurosciences Cognitives, Université René Descartes, CNRS, 2007 – 2010.
University Court, University of Dundee, 1990 - 1999
Convener, University Research Committee, 1992 - 1996
Member of Council, Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1999 - 2001
Member Sectional Committee C7 (Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences), Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2000 - 2003
Editorial Board, Eurpean Journal of Eye Movements, 2005 - present
Editorial Board, Psychological Research, 1998 - present.
Honorary Member of The Experimental Psychology Society
BA (Bham), PhD (Bham), FBPsS, FRSE, FFCS
del.icio.us
digg
reddit
facebook
stumbleupon