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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Aug 25, 2025

Using Eye Movements Recorded in the Visual World Paradigm to Explore the Online Processing of Spoken Language

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Is the Mind Inherently Predicting? Exploring Forward and Backward Looking in Language Processing.

Luca Onnis^1,2, Alfred Lim³, Shirley Cheung⁴

¹Centre for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan, University of Oslo.

Cognitive Science

|October 14, 2022

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

The human mind uses both forward prediction and backward integration for language processing. Sensitivity to word probabilities in both directions significantly impacts reading times, suggesting the mind is also an "integration machine".

Keywords:

Integration Language model Prediction Reading Sentence processing Surprisal

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Science
Psycholinguistics
Neuroscience

Background:

The human mind is often described as a
prediction machine
focusing on forward-looking processes.
Natural language presents challenges to purely predictive processing, as meaning often depends on subsequent or preceding words.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the role of both forward and backward-looking processes in language comprehension.
To determine if sensitivity to word conditional probabilities influences reading times beyond established psycholinguistic factors.

Main Methods:

Utilized two self-paced reading tasks and one eye-tracking reading task with adult English native speakers.
Analyzed the impact of forward and backward conditional probabilities on reading latencies.

Main Results:

Sensitivity to both forward and backward word probabilities significantly predicted reading times.
These predictive and integrative sensitivities accounted for variance in reading latencies beyond other psycholinguistic predictors.

Conclusions:

Language processing involves crucial backward-looking integration alongside forward-looking prediction.
The mind can be characterized as an "integration machine" due to the significant role of backward-looking processes in understanding language.