Is prediction necessary to understand language? Probably not

Huettig, Falk; Mani, Nivedita

doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1072223

Cited by 179 publications

(160 citation statements)

References 109 publications

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“…Based on these points, we conclude that such prediction effects are perhaps not in fact representative of how people comprehend language in natural settings. Thus, in concord with Huettig and Mani (2016), we conclude that prediction may not be a necessary computation for language processing to occur, and that, minimally, its role in mechanistic theories of language processing must be carefully evaluated. In some processing architectures (see Martin, 2016), prediction effects would fall out naturally when the right confluences of cues and internal priors were activated, giving rise to an architectural form of predictive coding that, while not necessary for comprehension to occur, may sometimes facilitate processing without the postulation of a separate, active prediction mechanism in the system.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As it's rainy, it's better to go out with a big umbrella). In our view, in natural language settings, articles may not be very reliable cues to upcoming nouns, which means that pre-activation of word form may not be a common phenomenon (for similar arguments, Huettig, 2015;Huettig & Mani, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dell & Chang, 2014;Pickering & Garrod, 2013). While it is certainly the case that prediction effects in highly constrained sentential contexts have been widely reported, and even replicated, it is not clear that the existence of such effects warrants the conclusion that prediction is a necessary computation in language processing (see Huettig & Mani, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How robust are prediction effects in language comprehension? Failure to replicate article-elicited N400 effects

Ito

Martin

Nieuwland

2016

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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Current psycholinguistic theory proffers prediction as a central, explanatory mechanism in language processing. However, widely-replicated prediction effects may not mean that prediction is necessary in language processing. As a case in point, C. D. Martin et al. [2013. Bilinguals reading in their second language do not predict upcoming words as native readers do. Journal of Memory and Language, 69(4), 574-588. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2013.08.001] reported ERP evidence for prediction in native-but not in non-native speakers. Articles mismatching an expected noun elicited larger negativity in the N400 time window compared to articles matching the expected noun in native speakers only. We attempted to replicate these findings, but found no evidence for prediction irrespective of language nativeness. We argue that pre-activation of phonological form of upcoming nouns, as evidenced in article-elicited effects, may not be a robust phenomenon. A view of prediction as a necessary computation in language comprehension must be re-evaluated. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How robust are prediction effects in language comprehension? Failure to replicate article-elicited N400 effects

Ito

Martin

Nieuwland

2016

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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“…2 For example, when hearing The boy will eat the…, listeners look more at edible than inedible objects in a visual array, and this preference emerges before they hear the noun (…cake) (Altmann & Kamide, 1999). There is good 2 While the extent of the role that prediction plays in language processing is under current debate (Huettig & Mani, 2016;Nieuwland et al, 2017), the contribution of a proactive component to human cognition is widely agreed upon (Bar, 2007).…”

Section: She…) Is Preferentially Interpreted As Referring To the Goalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intersentential coreference expectations reflect mental models of events

Grüter¹,

Takeda²,

Rohde³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Comprehenders’ perception of the world is mediated by the mental models they construct. During discourse processing, incoming information allows comprehenders to update their model of the events being described. At the same time, comprehenders use these models to generate expectations about who or what will be mentioned next. The temporal dynamics of this interdependence between language processing and mental event representation has been difficult to disentangle. The present visual world eye-tracking experiment measures listeners’ coreference expectations during an intersentential pause between a sentence about a transfer-of-possession event and a continuation mentioning either its Source or Goal. We found a temporally dispersed but sustained preference for fixating the Goal that was significantly greater when the event was described as completed rather than incomplete (passed versus was passing). This aligns with reported offline sensitivity to event structure, as conveyed via verb aspect, and provides new evidence that our mental model of an event leads to early and, crucially, proactive expectations about subsequent mention in the upcoming discourse.

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“…Although predictive effects triggered by gender information on articles and adjectives have been observed in many languages, e. g., French (Dahan et al 2000), Spanish (Grüter et al 2012;LewWilliams and Fernald 2007), Russian (Sekerina and Trueswell 2011), German (Hopp 2016), and Dutch (Loerts et al 2013), this effect can be modulated by the population tested, the morpho-syntactic system of the language, and the experimental set-up. Children and older adults, speakers with low working memory capacity, and L2 learners show smaller or no signs of anticipation of upcoming language compared to monolingual young controls (Huettig and Mani 2016). Furthermore, morpho-syntactic properties of the language also determine whether an anticipation effect is found.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Change in Norwegian Dialects: Comprehension is affected before Production

Lundquist

Rodina

Sekerina

et al. 2016

Linguistics Vanguard

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This article investigates language variation and change in the grammatical gender system of Norwegian, where feminine gender agreement is in the process of disappearing in some Northern Norwegian dialects. Speakers of the Tromsø (N = 46) and Sortland (N = 54) dialects participated in a Visual Word experiment. The task examined whether they used indefinite articles (en, ei, et) predictively to identify nouns during spoken-word recognition, and whether they produced feminine articles in an elicited production task. Results show that all speakers used the neuter indefinite article et as a predictive cue, but no speakers used the feminine ei predictively, regardless of whether they produced it or not. The masculine article en was used predictively only by the speakers who did not produce feminine gender forms. We hypothesize that in dialects where the feminine gender is disappearing, this change in the gender system affects comprehension first, even before speakers stop producing the feminine indefinite article.

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Is prediction necessary to understand language? Probably not

Cited by 179 publications

References 109 publications

How robust are prediction effects in language comprehension? Failure to replicate article-elicited N400 effects

How robust are prediction effects in language comprehension? Failure to replicate article-elicited N400 effects

Intersentential coreference expectations reflect mental models of events

Gender Change in Norwegian Dialects: Comprehension is affected before Production

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