Look at that: Spatial deixis reveals experience-related differences in prediction.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Prediction-based theories suggest efficient language processing and dialogue coordination rely on interlocutor predictions.
• Spatial deixis (this, that, these, those) may signal upcoming referent properties like plurality and proximity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if listeners utilize spatial deixis to predict the plurality and proximity of a speaker's upcoming referent.
• To examine how varied linguistic experience (native adults, child learners, adult learners) influences predictive processing of deixis.

Main Methods:

• Two eye-tracking experiments involving 168 participants (native English adults, 5-year-old native learners, non-native adult learners).
• Participants viewed images while listening to sentences with or without informative deictic determiners (e.g., 'this', 'these').
• Referential complexity was manipulated to assess prediction accuracy for plurality and proximity.

Main Results:

• All participant groups successfully used deictic information to predict referent plurality.
• Prediction of referent proximity varied significantly across groups; native adults demonstrated more robust prediction than non-native adults.
• Native English-learning 5-year-olds did not show evidence of using deixis to predict referent proximity.

Conclusions:

• Linguistic experience is crucial for developing the ability to use spatial deixis for predicting referent proximity.
• Findings refine theories of predictive language processing, highlighting the role of experience in acquiring sophisticated predictive mechanisms.
• The study underscores developmental and learning trajectories in the use of spatial deixis for predictive language comprehension.