Semantic prediction in monolingual and bilingual children

Brouwer, Susanne; Özkan, Deniz; Küntay, Ayli̇n C.

doi:10.1075/sibil.52.04bro

Cited by 12 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Our Dutch data demonstrated a semantic prediction effect over time for all our age groups (see also Brouwer et al, 2017). This replicates previous work with children and adults with different native languages such as English (e.g., Altmann & Kamide, 1999) and German (Mani & Huettig, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Verb-based prediction during language processing: the case of Dutch and Turkish

2018

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This study investigated whether cross-linguistic differences affect semantic prediction. We assessed this by looking at two languages, Dutch and Turkish, that differ in word order and thus vary in how words come together to create sentence meaning. In an eyetracking task, Dutch and Turkish four-year-olds (N = 40), five-year-olds (N = 58), and adults (N = 40) were presented with a visual display containing two familiar objects (e.g., a cake and a tree). Participants heard semantically constraining (e.g., "The boy eats the big cake") or neutral sentences (e.g., "The boy sees the big cake") in their native language. The Dutch data revealed a prediction effect for children and adults; however, it was larger for the adults. The Turkish data revealed no prediction effect for the children but only for the adults. These findings reveal that experience with word order structures and/or automatization of language processing routines may lead to timecourse differences in semantic prediction. Dutch Turkish Het meisje leest/brengt het mooie boek (raam) The girl reads/brings the nice book (window) Kız okuyor/getiriyor bu güzel kitabı (dolap) The girl reads/brings this nice book (wardrobe) Het meisje gooit/ziet de rode bal (schoen) The girl throws/sees the red ball (shoe) Kız atıyor/görüyor bu beyaz topu (diz) The girl throws/sees this white ball (knee) Het meisje draagt/koopt de blauwe jurk (kaars) The girl wears/buys the blue dress (candle) Kız giyiyor/ kaldırıyor bu mavi ceket (dosya) The girl wears/puts away this blue jacket (folder) Het meisje eet/geeft de koude peer (doos) The girls eats/gives the cold pear (box) Kız yiyor/veriyor bu soğuk eti (dağ) The girls eats/gives this cold meat (mountain) Het meisje opent/ziet de groene deur (lamp) The girl opens/sees the green door (light) Kız açıyor/görüyor bu yeşil kapıyı (lamba) The girl opens/sees this green door (lamp) Het meisje aait/hoort de bruine poes (vis) The girl strokes/hears the brown cat (fish) Kız okşuyor/duyuyor bu siyah kediyi (balık) The girl strokes/hears this black cat (fish) Het meisje melkt/helpt de grote koe (hond) The girl milks/helps the big cow (dog) Kız sağıyor/bakıyor bu büyük ineği/ineğe (köpek) The girl milks/looks at this big cow (dog) De jongen eet/draait de grote kers (hoed) The boy eats/turns the big cherry (hat) Çocuk yiyor/seviyor bu büyük tostu (yay) The boy eats/loves this big toast (bow) De jongen knipt/tekent het bruine haar (dak) The boy cuts/draws the brown hair (roof) Çocuk kesiyor/tutuyor bu siyah saçı (ok) The boy cuts/holds this black hair (arrow) De jongen draagt/krijgt de rode bril (kop) The boy wears/gets the red glasses (cup) Çocuk giyiyor/taşıyor bu beyaz bereyi (kupa) The boy wears/carries this white beret (mug) De jongen draagt/brengt het groene hemd (glas) The boy wears/brings the green shirt (glass) Çocuk giyiyor/getiriyor bu yeşil gömleği (bardak) The boy wears/brings this green shirt (glass) Het meisje drinkt/krijgt de koude thee (muts) The girl drinks/gets the cold tea (woollen hat) Çocuk içiyor/taşıyor bu soğuk çayı (zil)...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Verb-based prediction during language processing: the case of Dutch and Turkish

2018

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“…In fact, some evidence in support of this prediction has been reported in previous studies. Although the studies of which we are aware have relied on group comparisons, rather than individual-level measures, a body of work has demonstrated that bilinguals and L2 learners use morphosyntactic cues during processing to a reduced degree compared to monolingual counterparts [66][67][68][69][70], while at least one previous study has demonstrated evidence that bilinguals exhibit increased semantic prediction relative to monolingual counterparts [71]. Of course, more research is needed to understand the relationship between semantic and syntactic processing in later-learned languages, particularly regarding how this relationship is modulated by continuous factors at the level of the individual.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntactic and Semantic Influences on the Time Course of Relative Clause Processing: The Role of Language Dominance

et al. 2021

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We conducted a visual world eye-tracking experiment with highly proficient Spanish-English bilingual adults to investigate the effects of relative language dominance, operationalized as a continuous, multidimensional variable, on the time course of relative clause processing in the first-learned language, Spanish. We found that participants exhibited two distinct processing preferences: a semantically driven preference to assign agency to referents of lexically animate noun phrases and a syntactically driven preference to interpret relative clauses as subject-extracted. Spanish dominance was found to exert a distinct influence on each of these preferences, gradiently attenuating the semantic preference while gradiently exaggerating the syntactic preference. While these results might be attributable to particular properties of Spanish and English, they also suggest a possible generalization that greater dominance in a language increases reliance on language-specific syntactic processing strategies while correspondingly decreasing reliance on more domain-general semantic processing strategies.

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“…The children heard sentences such as The boy eats/sees the big cake while being presented with visual stimuli depicting two objects, where only one was edible. Brouwer et al (2017) found that all the children (4- and 5-year-old monolinguals and bilinguals) predicted upcoming noun arguments based on the semantics of verbs. The researchers also found that the 4-year-old bilinguals predicted faster than their monolingual peers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Hence, investigation of language prediction in children who acquire more than one language could potentially shed more light on the factors contributing to its development. Studies investigating prediction in language comprehension in bilingual children are few ( Brouwer et al, 2017 ; Lemmerth and Hopp, 2019 ; Meir et al, 2020 ), and to the best of our knowledge, no studies have focused on this ability in bilingual toddlers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the same time, the bilinguals used the case markers to predict also in Hebrew, whereas monolingual Hebrew children did not—as case-marking cues are assumed to be weighted lower than word order in Hebrew. Brouwer et al (2017) tested the predictive ability based on semantic cues, employing the VWP, in Dutch monolingual and bilingual 4- and 5-year-old. The bilinguals spoke a variety of languages in addition to Dutch, but were only tested in Dutch.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Verb-Mediated Prediction in Bilingual Toddlers

2021

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Prediction is an important mechanism for efficient language processing. It has been shown that as a part of sentence processing, both children and adults predict nouns based on semantically constraining verbs. Language proficiency is said to modulate prediction: the higher proficiency, the better the predictive skill. Children growing up acquiring two languages are often more proficient in one of them, and as such, investigation of the predictive ability in young bilingual children can shed light on the role of language proficiency. Furthermore, according to production-based models, the language production system drives the predictive ability. The present study investigates whether bilingual toddlers predict upcoming nouns based on verb meanings in both their languages, and whether this ability is associated with expressive vocabulary. Seventeen Norwegian-English bilingual toddlers (aged 2;5–3;3), dominant in Norwegian, participated in the study. Verb-mediated predictive ability was measured via a visual world paradigm (VWP) experiment, including sentences with semantically constraining and neutral verbs. Expressive vocabulary was measured by MacArthur-Bates CDI II. The results suggested that the toddler group predicted upcoming noun arguments in both their dominant and non-dominant languages, but were faster in their dominant language. This finding highlights the importance of language dominance for predictive processing. There was no significant relationship between predictive ability and expressive vocabulary in either language.

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Semantic prediction in monolingual and bilingual children

Cited by 12 publications

References 40 publications

Verb-based prediction during language processing: the case of Dutch and Turkish

Verb-based prediction during language processing: the case of Dutch and Turkish

Syntactic and Semantic Influences on the Time Course of Relative Clause Processing: The Role of Language Dominance

Verb-Mediated Prediction in Bilingual Toddlers

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