 Marc Grosjean

Marc Grosjean has investigated the time course of cognition through measurements of action. In a 2005 study with colleagues, he analysed mouse tracking data to test how spoken word recognition unfolds while a listener is already moving toward a possible answer.^[ref]

Participants saw two pictured objects and heard the name of one. A target such as “candle” could appear beside “candy”, whose name shares its beginning, or beside a phonologically unrelated object. The investigators sampled the cursor's coordinates during the movement, rather than recording only its endpoint. Movements toward the correct object were drawn farther toward the competing object in the similar-name condition.^[ref]

The example makes a measurement distinction concrete. Two trials can end with the same correct click yet follow different paths, revealing phonological competition that accuracy alone would miss. The cursor is an observable motor response, so conclusions about internal representations still require an explicit model connecting movement with language processing.