Abstract: Visual world paradigm is an effective tool for research on spoken language comprehension, which integrates linguistic information with information derived from the visual environment. A great deal of visual world research has converged on lexical processing. Main areas of interests are activation of phonology, semantics and visual information. On the other hand, bilinguals and children also attract researchers attention. Research has found that childrens abilities to recognize phonology is similar to the level of adults. But childrens comprehension of semantics still drops behind adults. In bilingualism research, it is a critical question that whether lexical access in bilinguals is language-specific or alternatively both languages are active. Plenty of research has explored into the different bilinguals and find conflicting results. Importantly, the different visual stimuli, listening conditions and preview timing of visual world paradigm have a great impact on the results. Although many achievements of spoken word comprehension have been made in visual world paradigm, something in this area needs to be further investigated. Firstly, research on Chinese spoken word recognition can be strengthened. Secondly, special participants need more attention. Last but not least, future research ought to diversify visual scenes and listening conditions of visual world paradigm.

Key words: visual world paradigm, spoken word comprehension, lexical recognition