Verb-Mediated Prediction in Bilingual Toddlers.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Computational Linguistics

Background:

• Language processing relies on prediction, with proficiency influencing this skill.
• Bilingual children offer insights into language proficiency's role in prediction.
• Production-based models suggest language production drives predictive ability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate predictive ability in bilingual toddlers based on verb meanings in both languages.
• To explore the association between predictive ability and expressive vocabulary in bilingual toddlers.
• To examine the influence of language dominance on predictive processing.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a visual world paradigm (VWP) experiment with 17 Norwegian-English bilingual toddlers (aged 2;5-3;3).
• Measured verb-mediated predictive ability using sentences with constraining and neutral verbs.
• Assessed expressive vocabulary using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI II).

Main Results:

• Bilingual toddlers demonstrated predictive ability for upcoming nouns in both dominant and non-dominant languages.
• Predictive processing was significantly faster in the toddlers' dominant language.
• No significant correlation was found between predictive ability and expressive vocabulary.

Conclusions:

• Language dominance plays a crucial role in the speed of predictive processing for bilingual toddlers.
• Bilingual toddlers possess predictive skills across both languages, irrespective of vocabulary size.
• Findings contribute to understanding the interplay of language proficiency, dominance, and prediction in early language acquisition.