Not that cloze: Sentence constraint is influenced by language and language dominance

In the fields of language processing and prediction, cloze tests are used to establish sentence constraint norms. The validity of cloze test results depends heavily on how closely the pre-test population matches the main study population, and yet there is limited evidence on how sociolinguistic variables may influence sentence constraint. Here, we investigate how language and language dominance influence sentence constraint at the lexical level by conducting a cloze test across different language groups and comparing response entropy. In Analysis 1, sentence constraint was similarly high for Spanish- and French-dominant speakers tested on the same translated sentences. However, their item-by-item alignment was moderate. In Analysis 2, non-dominant French speakers showed lower sentence constraint than dominant speakers overall. Dominant and non-dominant French speakers showed only moderate alignment, whereas the strongest alignment was observed between the two groups of non-dominant French speakers with different dominant languages. Our findings suggest that sentence expectations are shaped by language and language dominance. These findings are discussed considering theoretical proposals on the cloze test procedure, and offer informed practices for designing future language prediction studies across diverse speaker populations.