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Large-scale replication study reveals a limit on probabilistic prediction in language comprehension

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Date
03/04/2018
Author
Nieuwland, Mante S
Politzer-Ahles, Stephen
Heyselaar, Evelien
Segaert, Katrien
Darley, Emily
Kazanina, Nina
Von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn, Sarah
Bartolozzi, Federica
Kogan, Vita
Ito, Aine
Mézière, Diane
Barr, Dale J
Rousselet, Guillaume A
Ferguson, Heather J
Busch-Moreno, Simon
Fu, Xiao
Tuomainen, Jyrki
Kulakova, Eugenia
Husband, E Matthew
Donaldson, David I
Kohút, Zdenko
Rueschemeyer, Shirley-Ann
Huettig, Falk
Keywords
Language comprehension
Prediction
N400
BF Psychology
DAS
BDC
R2C
~DC~
Metadata
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Abstract
Do people routinely pre-activate the meaning and even the phonological form of upcoming words? The most acclaimed evidence for phonological prediction comes from a 2005 Nature Neuroscience publication by DeLong, Urbach and Kutas, who observed a graded modulation of electrical brain potentials (N400) to nouns and preceding articles by the probability that people use a word to continue the sentence fragment (‘cloze’). In our direct replication study spanning 9 laboratories (N=334), pre-registered replication-analyses and exploratory Bayes factor analyses successfully replicated the noun-results but, crucially, not the article-results. Pre-registered single-trial analyses also yielded a statistically significant effect for the nouns but not the articles. Exploratory Bayesian single-trial analyses showed that the article-effect may be non-zero but is likely far smaller than originally reported and too small to observe without very large sample sizes. Our results do not support the view that readers routinely pre-activate the phonological form of predictable words.
Citation
Nieuwland , M S , Politzer-Ahles , S , Heyselaar , E , Segaert , K , Darley , E , Kazanina , N , Von Grebmer Zu Wolfsthurn , S , Bartolozzi , F , Kogan , V , Ito , A , Mézière , D , Barr , D J , Rousselet , G A , Ferguson , H J , Busch-Moreno , S , Fu , X , Tuomainen , J , Kulakova , E , Husband , E M , Donaldson , D I , Kohút , Z , Rueschemeyer , S-A , Huettig , F & Shinn-Cunningham , B G (ed.) 2018 , ' Large-scale replication study reveals a limit on probabilistic prediction in language comprehension ' , eLife , vol. 7 , e33468 . https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.33468
Publication
eLife
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.33468
ISSN
2050-084X
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2018, Nieuwland et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Description
Funding: European Research Council ERC Starting grant 636458.
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/18874

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