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ERIC Number: EJ993404
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Aug
Pages: 5
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0096-1523
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Prediction during Language Processing Is a Piece of Cake--But Only for Skilled Producers
Mani, Nivedita; Huettig, Falk
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, v38 n4 p843-847 Aug 2012
Are there individual differences in children's prediction of upcoming linguistic input and what do these differences reflect? Using a variant of the preferential looking paradigm (Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Cauley, & Gordon, 1987), we found that, upon hearing a sentence like, "The boy eats a big cake," 2-year-olds fixate edible objects in a visual scene (a cake) soon after they hear the semantically constraining verb "eats" and prior to hearing the word "cake". Importantly, children's prediction skills were significantly correlated with their productive vocabulary size--skilled producers (i.e., children with large production vocabularies) showed evidence of predicting upcoming linguistic input, while low producers did not. Furthermore, we found that children's prediction ability is tied specifically to their production skills and not to their comprehension skills. Prediction is really a piece of cake, but only for skilled producers. (Contains 1 table, 3 figures and 2 footnotes.)
American Psychological Association. Journals Department, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002-4242. Tel: 800-374-2721; Tel: 202-336-5510; Fax: 202-336-5502; e-mail: order@apa.org; Web site: http://www.apa.org/publications
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Germany
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A