Verb-Mediated Prediction in Bilingual Toddlers.

Ane Theimann,Ekaterina Kuzmina,Pernille Hansen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.719447

Ane Theimann, Ekaterina Kuzmina + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.719447

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Abstract

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.

Highlights

One of the reasons why auditory language processing is so efficient is linguistic prediction, which implies pre-activation of linguistic input before it has been uttered (Huettig, 2015; Karaca et al, 2021)
This descriptive plot already suggests that the toddler group predicted upcoming nouns based on verb meanings in both their dominant and non-dominant language
The first question was whether bilingual toddlers predict upcoming nouns based on verb meanings in both their dominant and non-dominant languages—namely Norwegian and English, respectively—and, if they do so, whether there is a difference in speed of predictive processing between the two languages

Summary

Introduction

One of the reasons why auditory language processing is so efficient is linguistic prediction, which implies pre-activation of linguistic input before it has been uttered (Huettig, 2015; Karaca et al, 2021). A growing body of research has shown that both children (Borovsky et al, 2012; Mani and Huettig, 2012; Mani et al, 2016) and adults predict upcoming linguistic input during auditory language comprehension (Altmann and Kamide, 1999; Hintz et al, 2017; Ito et al, 2017). Children growing up acquiring two languages can possibly have a substantial variance in proficiency between these languages. 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

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