Prediction During Within- and Cross-Language Phrase Comprehension: Evidence from Eye-Tracking

Language comprehension involves actively predicting upcoming words, but it remains unclear how the brain responds when predictions are disconfirmed. In the present study, we examined the effect of prediction disconfirmation by measuring eye movements in two visual-world eye-tracking experiments. Additionally, we explored such processing within one language as well as across a bilingual's two languages to explore the question of whether the effect of prediction disconfirmation is language-specific or language-independent. In a within-language and a cross-language experiment, Chinese-English bilinguals heard a classifier-noun phrase (e.g., "a grain of rice") in which the classifier was always presented in Mandarin Chinese, their L1, and selected a picture corresponding to the presented noun from a set of three pictures displayed on the screen. Across trials, the congruency of the classifier-noun phrase was manipulated: the noun could be congruent (e.g., "a grain of rice") or incongruent (e.g., "a grain of furniture") with the classifier. Experiment 1 (N = 40) used the same language (participant's L1, Chinese) for classifier and noun, whereas Experiment 2 (N = 40) used different languages (Chinese for the classifier; but participants' L2, English, for the noun). The results revealed temporal patterns of eye movements that may reflect residual activation of representations referring to disconfirmed predictions shortly after disconfirmation, followed by a reduction in their influence that may be related to inhibitory processing. Together, these findings suggest similar temporal patterns of eye movements following prediction disconfirmation in within-language and cross-language contexts, pointing to a dynamic and language-independent trajectory in the processing of lexical representations affected by prediction disconfirmation.