The development of linguistic prediction: Predictions of sound and meaning in 2- to 5-year-olds

Abstract

Language processing in adults is facilitated by an expert ability to generate detailed predictions about upcoming words. This may seem like an acquired skill, but some models of language acquisition assume that the ability to predict is a prerequisite for learning. This raises a question: Do children learn to predict, or do they predict to learn? We tested whether children, like adults, can generate expectations about not just the meanings of upcoming words but also their sounds, which would be critical for using prediction to learn about language. In two looking-while-listening experiments, we show that 2-year-olds can generate expectations about meaning based on a determiner (Can you see one…ball/two…ice creams?) but that even children as old as 5 years do not show an adult-like ability to predict the phonology of upcoming words based on a determiner (Can you see a…ball/an…ice cream?). Our results, therefore, suggest that the ability to generate detailed predictions is a late-acquired skill. We argue that prediction might not be the key mechanism driving children's learning, but that the ability to generate accurate semantic predictions may nevertheless have facilitative effects on language development.

18‐month‐olds fail to use recent experience to infer the syntactic category of novel words

“…With that said, recent years have seen multiple publications describing weaker prediction or prediction adaptation the younger the participants (Barrault, Havron, Dautriche, Babineau, de Carvalho, Christophe, in preparation ; Beretti et al, 2020; Gambi, Gorrie, Pickering, & Rabagliati, 2018; Havron et al, 2019). Furthermore, recent studies have failed to replicate high‐profile adult studies showing fine‐grained syntactic adaptation (Harrington Stack et al, 2018; Liu, Burchill, Tanenhaus, & Jaeger, 2017).…”

Using strategic pauses during shared reading with preschoolers: Time for prediction is better than time for reflection when learning new words

“…We see in this study and others (e.g., Moerk, 1972; Read et al, 2014) that children take the pause as an opportunity to guess aloud, but future work will test if children use pre-target pauses within story reading to make silent predictions as well by tracking their anticipatory looking patterns. We already know that even without pauses children in this age range are able to rapidly anticipate words at the ends of sentences using many available types of constraining cues such as semantics (e.g., Borovsky, Elman, & Fernald, 2012) and prosody (e.g., Gambi, Gorrie, Pickering, & Rabagliati, 2018), and so given extra time and a consistent pattern of introducing attention-getting novel monster names at the end of each stanza in this book, why wouldn’t children be in a state of anticipation during a pre-target pause in this study?…”

Limits on expectation-based processing: Use of grammatical aspect for co-reference in L2

“…For recent reviews, including critical discussion of proposed mechanisms and limitations of prediction in L1 processing, the reader is referred to Huettig (2015) and Pickering and Gambi (2018). Prediction of upcoming words based on lexical-semantic and morphosyntactic cues has also been shown in children as young as two years old (e.g., Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2007;Mani & Huettig, 2012; but see Gambi et al, 2018, for later emergence of form-related prediction), with evidence for increasing engagement in predictive processing with increasing age and vocabulary knowledge (Fernald et al, 2008;Borovsky et al, 2012). This evidence suggests that prediction is part of human language behavior from early on in development, and that 'language prediction skills' are honed in tandem with language development more generally.…”