Prediction in bilingual children

Abstract

A wealth of studies has shown that more proficient monolingual speakers are better at predicting upcoming information during language comprehension. Similarly, prediction skills of adult second language (L2) speakers in their L2 have also been argued to be modulated by their L2 proficiency. How exactly language proficiency and prediction are linked, however, is yet to be systematically investigated. One group of language users which has the potential to provide invaluable insights into this link is bilingual children. In this paper, we compare bilingual children’s prediction skills with those of monolingual children and adult L2 speakers, and show how investigating bilingual children’s prediction skills may contribute to our understanding of how predictive processing works.

The predictive processing of number information in subregular verb morphology in a first and second language

“…In addition to this strict definition, prediction is sometimes operationalized in a less strict sense as "facilitation," meaning that certain information allows for subsequent words to be processed faster and more easily, an effect which may become visible only after target onset. Following Karaca et al (2021), we see such facilitation as a part of the prediction process and therefore do not differentiate between facilitation and prediction in its strict sense in this study.…”

Language processing in bilingual children

“…Indeed, cross-linguistic influence is not only observed in children's production or linguistic interpretations, but also in the underlying processes. Although it is still unclear to what extent individual differences in children's bilingual profiles may influence their language processing (RQ4), it seems likely that online processing is influenced by the same individual differences that affect bilingual children's language outcomes in offline tasks, such as the quantity and quality of their language exposure, language use, their relative language proficiency, age of onset and general cognitive abilities (see Karaca et al, 2021).…”

Turkish-German heritage speakers' predictive use of case: webcam-based vs. in-lab eye-tracking

“…Prediction in spoken language comprehension by monolingual adults has been firmly established in the sentence processing research. However, whether children acquiring two L1s and second language (L2) learners can anticipate the thematic roles of NPs based on their grammatical case from the context of the sentence remains open (Pickering and Gambi, 2018 ; Felser and Arslan, 2019 ; Karaca et al, 2021b ; Kunduz and Montrul, 2022 ). The inspiration for this line of research comes from the seminal eye-tracking study of Kamide et al ( 2003 ) in which German-speaking adults rapidly used the accusative case on the NP1 (patient den Hasen , the ACC rabbit) to predict the NP2 (agent der Fuchs , the NOM fox) in the OVS sentences (1) before the latter appeared in spoken input:…”

“…The findings so far range from no evidence of the prediction (Hopp, 2015 ; Mitsugi and Macwhinney, 2016 ) to native-like prediction (Dijkgraaf et al, 2017 ; Ito et al, 2018b ). Moreover, the type of bilingualism, i.e., L2 vs. HSs, that is reflected in differences in proficiency, manner, and timing of acquisition, affects their predictive ability (Karaca et al, 2021b ). The influence of demographic and language background factors, such as literacy, age of onset, and language exposure that can affect a speaker's ability to process grammatical cues predictively, is also largely unknown.…”