Looking at Online Language Comprehension with the Visual World Paradigm: A Systematic and Cross-Linguistic Review of Three Decades

The Visual World Paradigm (VWP) is one of the most widely used experimental paradigms in psycholinguistic research for studying online word and sentence processing. Over the past three decades, a wealth of research has shown that eye movements can reveal much about the systematic and temporal relationship between fixations on visual information and online language processing. The present systematic review takes stock of the current state of the VWP as an experimental paradigm, outlining critical issues that should guide future research. In this paper, we provide a systematic overview of the role of language functions using the VWP in speech comprehension from a cross-linguistic perspective. Our findings contribute to the VWP literature by evaluating existing methodological approaches and outlining directions for future research. The review reveals that although methodological sophistication has increased, especially through the adoption of methods such as LMMs and GAMMs, a significant gap remains in linguistic diversity.