Prediction during language processing is a piece of cake—But only for skilled producers.
Open accessAbstract
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.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In children with DLD, predictive performance/error correlates with vocabulary size.
“which corre lates with vocabulary size (Friederici, 2006; Mani and Huettig, 2012)”
From Predictive coding in neuropsychiatric disorders: a systematic transdiagnostic review. (2025) · cites this paper as Mani and Huettig, 2012
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Four central questions about prediction in language processing
Huettig, F. (2015) · Brain Research · doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2015.02.014 · Cited by 405 · see citing works
Self-citationfMRI reveals language-specific predictive coding during naturalistic sentence comprehension
Shain, C., Blank, I. A., van Schijndel, M., Schuler, W., & Fedorenko, E. (2020) · Neuropsychologia · doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.107307 · Cited by 215 · see citing works
The role of language processing in language acquisition
Phillips, C., & Ehrenhofer, L. (2015) · Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism · doi:10.1075/lab.5.4.01phi · Cited by 123 · see citing works
Predictive coding in neuropsychiatric disorders: a systematic transdiagnostic review.
Qela, B., Damiani, S., De Santis, S., Groppi, F., Pichiecchio, A., Asteggiano, C., Brondino, N., Monteleone, A. M., Grassi, L., Politi, P., et al. (2025) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106020 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
“Finally, children with DLD reduced linguistic predictive performance compared to HC and reduced predictive error (i.e., represented by pre-emptive eye movements and reduced lateralized MMN), which correlates with vocabulary size (Friederici, 2006; Mani and Huettig, 2012).”
Predictive processing and developmental language disorder
Jones, S. D., & Westermann, G. (2021) · Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research · doi:10.1044/2020_jslhr-20-00409 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
- Authors
- Mani, N., & Huettig, F.
- Affiliations
- Radboud University Nijmegen (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Mani, Nivedita
- Venue
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
- Published
- 2012
- Volume
- 38
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 843-847
- ISSN
- 0096-1523 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1277
- OpenAlex
- W2156620867
- Cited by
- 310
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 32 · 2023: 22 · 2022: 33 · 2021: 34 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 23 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 27 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 10
- FWCI
- 29.63
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- GoeScholar The Publication Server of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Keywords
- language prediction, language comprehension, language production, vocabulary size, individual differences, toddlers, preferential looking, semantic bootstrapping
- MeSH terms
- Child, Preschool, Eye Movements, Forecasting, Humans, Infant, Language, Language Development, Male, Neuropsychological Tests, Psycholinguistics, Speech Perception, Vocabulary, Anticipation, Psychological
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
