Bilinguals reading in their second language do not predict upcoming words as native readers do

Why the A/AN prediction effect may be hard to replicate: A rebuttal to DeLong, Urbach & Kutas (2017)

“…Based on the results reported in Ito, Martin, et al (2016a) and on the additional observations presented in this rebuttal, we conclude that our study is a failure of conceptual replication of Martin et al (2013), and, by extension, of DeLong et al Alternatively, this effect is so small it could not be reliably detected in our replication attempts. Even if a small effect were real, but difficult to detect because of its size, one could question whether such an effect should be regarded as stalwart evidence that people probabilistically pre-activate phonological information and that this activation plays a meaningful role in everyday language comprehension.…”

“…Failure to replicate article-elicited N400 effects" (Ito, Martin, & Nieuwland, 2016a), we report two experiments which failed to replicate existing ERP evidence for prediction as reported in C. D. Martin et al (2013), whose study resembled DeLong, Urbach, and from hereon DUK05). DeLong, Urbach, and Kutas (2017; from hereon, DUK17) recently published a commentary which depicts our publication as a case of poor scholarship that makes "no substantive contribution to the literature on what factors may matter for prediction and when."…”

Wait a second! delayed impact of argument roles on on-line verb prediction

“…For example, recent studies have reported that predictive processing effects are absent under certain circumstances (e.g., Chwilla, Virgillito, & Vissers, 2011) and in different speaker groups such as children with low vocabulary scores (e.g., Borovsky, Elman, & Fernald, 2012;Mani & Huettig, 2012), older adults (DeLong, Groppe, Urbach, & Federmeier & Kutas, 2005;Federmeier, McLennan, De Ochoa, & Kutas, 2002;Wlotko, Federmeier, & Kutas, 2012), second language learners (e.g., Grüter, Lew-Williams, & Fernald, 2012;Kaan, 2014;Martin et al, 2013), illiterate adults (Mishra, Singh, Pandey, & Huettig, 2012), and patients with schizophrenia (e.g., Ford & Mathalon, 2012;Kuperberg, 2010). While such findings may suggest that certain speaker groups cannot (or do not) engage predictive processing, it is also possible that these speakers do in fact anticipate upcoming inputs during comprehension, but that some of the computations involved are still incomplete when the relevant input arises.…”

Proficient beyond borders: assessing non-native speakers in a native speakers’ framework

“…Enright et al (2000) indicated three fundamental differences: Second or foreign language readers build on prior first language reading experience, their reading processes are cross-linguistic, involving two or more languages, and their reading instruction usually commences before adequate oral proficiency in the target language has developed. Thus, second or foreign language learners usually have not mastered the basic language structure prior to reading instruction and-compared to first language readers-they are not continuously exposed to written language in their cultural environment (De Zeeuw et al 2013;Martin et al 2013). These differences lead to qualitatively different comprehension processes in first, second or foreign language reading.…”