Abstract: Both eye movements (EM) and event-related potentials (ERPs) have excellent temporal resolution and are therefore ideal for capturing the millisecond-by-millisecond time course of language comprehension or production processes. Given that either of these two measures has its advantages as well as limitations over the other, it will be a promising way to study language cognition by using simultaneous ERPs and EM techniques. On basis of literature reviews in this filed, this paper made a comparison between these two methods and pointed out the necessities of using these two techniques simultaneously in language cognition, such as word recognition, parafoveal-on-foveal effects and syntactic agreement processing. Additionally, the authors introduced three ways of combing EM with ERPs: EM separately combined with ERPs, EM combined with EOG analysis and EM simultaneously combined with ERPs. Following these, the authors gave an introduction based on previous investigations on how to combine EM and ERPs in language cognition. Finally, the authors raised some questions and limitations about combination EM with ERPs, which should be paid more attention in future studies.

Key words: language cognition, eye movement, event-related potentials, eye-fixation-related potentials