Poetry

Poetry

The present research explored the development of prediction systems in 24- and 30-month-old toddlers in a visual-world-paradigm. Participants heard a sentence that included a correction (“no”) or a conjunction (“and”) while seeing an array of pictures with an associatively related noun (“cat”) and the erroneous noun (“dog”). The young group showed signs of early prediction of the associative picture on both types of sentences while the older group showed signs of an early prediction of the coordination condition, but a later prediction in the correction sentences. Our results suggest that older toddlers deployed different predictive systems, while the younger group used the same system.

There is strong evidence about the preactivation of semantic information but controversial results about phonological preactivation. This research explored the individual differences in phono-semantic preactivation using the visual world paradigm. Participants looked at four competitors (semantic, phonological, and two unrelated) while hearing highly constraining sentences. Moreover, they were evaluated in verbal and nonverbal speed processing and working memory. Our results showed a strong semantic prediction but an inhibition of the phonological effect. The semantic prediction was related to verbal and nonverbal working memory but not processing speed. The results were discussed in terms of lexical selection and inhibitory top-down influences.

Adults anticipate semantically related information when a disfluency is presented using the syntactic and semantic information of the sentence context (Lowder & Ferreira, 2016). Anticipation skills depend on experience and language development, whether children present similar anticipation skills is unknown. This research aimed to explore the anticipation skills based on disfluencies in school children (8-9 years old) and adults. Participants heard disfluency (In the yard, I saw a dog, no, a rabbit) and coordination (In the yard, I saw a dog and a rabbit) sentences and observed four pictures: the first noun (dog), the second noun (rabbit), a critical distractor (cat), and an unrelated distractor (tiger). Results demonstrated that children and adults looked more at the critical distractor than at the unrelated image only in disfluency condition; however, children were slower than adults in predicting the next noun. Therefore, our results revealed that language prediction becomes more efficient with development.

The theory of language prediction posits a competitive preactivation of semantic (meaning) and form (sound/grapheme) information, aiding in the selection of the most likely lexical candidate. Hypothetically, multiple semantic and form cohorts are preactivated before the actual lexical candidate is activated. This study explores this by examining young adults reading constrained sentences (discretely), with simultaneous electroencephalographic recording. Representational similarity analysis was conducted to assess word-specific, semantic-related, and form-related pair of sentences (focusing on the word preceding the expected word). To examine the temporality, cluster permutation and divergence point analyses were performed. The results indicated a semantic coactivation effect occurring before the phonological one and the recovery of the specific words. However, despite the phonological information being recovered before the word specific information, there were no significant differences in temporality. These findings indicate a semantic coactivation process for meaning selection during prediction, with form coactivation dependent on the expected word's selection.

Unveiling the Path to Phonological Anticipation: Insights from Infants' Eye Movements Phonological anticipation, predicting upcoming words based on phonological cues, is crucial in language processing (Brunellière et al., 2018; Ito et al., 2018). While infants show predictive abilities in language domains, mechanisms and developmental trajectories in native Spanish-speaking populations are less explored. This study investigates phonological anticipation in Mexican Spanish-speaking infants using eye-tracking. It examines if infants of different ages can anticipate phonologically related words in semantically restrictive sentences. Auditory sentences with restrictive contexts were presented, and visual stimuli included phonologically related and unrelated competitors. Participants were 18, 24, and 30-month-old infants. Results show 18- and 24-month-olds didn't anticipate based on semantics alone, requiring auditory presentation. However, 30-month-olds demonstrated phonological anticipation, signaling developmental changes. Understanding this trajectory is vital for comprehending language processing. This study contributes insights into the emergence and maturation of phonological anticipation, impacting language acquisition theories.