Buchumschlag

Preschoolers’ word prediction in active and passive sentences

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Veröffentlicht in:Nota Bene vol. 2, no. 2 (2025), p. 491-508
1. Verfasser: Floria Tosca van Rooy
Weitere Verfasser: Schouwenaars, Atty
Veröffentlicht:
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Schlagworte:
Dutch language
Language acquisition
Food
Young adults
Syntactic processing
Language disorders
Brain research
Preschool children
Vocabulary
Complexity
Vocabulary size
Age
Adults
Predictions
Eye movements
Linguistics
Syntactic complexity
Tracking
Eye tracking
Semantics
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Abstract:Predicting upcoming words in a sentence is important in sentence processing. Previous research has shown that children’s vocabulary size and language production skills influence prediction speed. This study investigates whether syntactic complexity affects predictive processing using eye-tracking in a picture-selection task. Three conditions were tested: baseline (object recognition), active (syntactically simple) and passive sentences (syntactically complex). Data was collected for 29 four- and five-year-old Dutch children and 10 Dutch young adults. Results show that adults predict sentence endings quickly and accurately, regardless of complexity. Children predicted in both conditions, but less strongly in passive sentences. These findings suggest that while both adults and children engage in predictive processing, syntactic complexity weakens prediction in children.
ISSN:2950-189X
2950-1881
DOI:10.1075/nb.00045.roo
Quelle:Publicly Available Content Database