Explore the vast range of titles available.

Currently, production and comprehension are regarded as quite distinct in accounts of language processing. In rejecting this dichotomy, we instead assert that producing and understanding are interwoven, and that this interweaving is what enables people to predict themselves and each other. We start by noting that production and comprehension are forms of action and action perception. We then consider the evidence for interweaving in action, action perception, and joint action, and explain such evidence in terms of prediction. Specifically, we assume that actors construct forward models of their actions before they execute those actions, and that perceivers of others' actions covertly imitate those actions, then construct forward models of those actions. We use these accounts of action, action perception, and joint action to develop accounts of production, comprehension, and interactive language. Importantly, they incorporate well-defined levels of linguistic representation (such as semantics, syntax, and phonology). We show (a) how speakers and comprehenders use covert imitation and forward modeling to make predictions at these levels of representation, (b) how they interweave production and comprehension processes, and (c) how they use these predictions to monitor the upcoming utterances. We show how these accounts explain a range of behavioral and neuroscientific data on language processing and discuss some of the implications of our proposal.

Within the cognitive sciences, most researchers assume that it is the job of linguists to investigate how language is represented, and that they do so largely by building theories based on explicit judgments about patterns of acceptability – whereas it is the task of psychologists to determine how language is processed, and that in doing so, they do not typically question the linguists' representational assumptions. We challenge this division of labor by arguing that structural priming provides an implicit method of investigating linguistic representations that should end the current reliance on acceptability judgments. Moreover, structural priming has now reached sufficient methodological maturity to provide substantial evidence about such representations. We argue that evidence from speakers' tendency to repeat their own and others' structural choices supports a linguistic architecture involving a single shallow level of syntax connected to a semantic level containing information about quantification, thematic relations, and information structure, as well as to a phonological level. Many of the linguistic distinctions often used to support complex (or multilevel) syntactic structure are instead captured by semantics; however, the syntactic level includes some specification of “missing” elements that are not realized at the phonological level. We also show that structural priming provides evidence about the consistency of representations across languages and about language development. In sum, we propose that structural priming provides a new basis for understanding the nature of language.

Research suggests that interlocutors manage the timing demands of conversation by preparing what they want to say early. In three experiments, we used a verbal question-answering task to investigate what aspects of their response speakers prepare early. In all three experiments, participants answered more quickly when the critical content (here, barks ) necessary for answer preparation occurred early (e.g., Which animal barks and is also a common household pet ?) rather than late (e.g., Which animal is a common household pet and also barks ?). In the individual experiments, we found no convincing evidence that participants were slower to produce longer answers, consisting of multiple words, than shorter answers, consisting of a single word. There was also no interaction between these two factors. A combined analysis of the first two experiments confirmed this lack of interaction, and demonstrated that participants were faster to answer questions when the critical content was available early rather than late and when the answer was short rather than long. These findings provide tentative evidence for an account in which interlocutors prepare the content of their answer as soon as they can, but sometimes do not prepare its length (and thus form) until they are ready to speak.

We used the visual world eye-tracking paradigm to investigate the effects of cognitive load on predictive eye movements in L1 (Experiment 1) and L2 (Experiment 2) speakers. Participants listened to sentences whose verb was predictive or non-predictive towards one of four objects they were viewing. They then clicked on a mentioned object. Half the participants additionally performed a working memory task of remembering words. Both L1 and L2 speakers looked more at the target object predictively in predictable- than in non-predictable sentences when they performed the listen-and-click task only. However, this predictability effect was delayed in those who performed the concurrent memory task. This pattern of results was similar in L1 and L2 speakers. L1 and L2 speakers make predictions, but cognitive resources are required for making predictive eye movements. The findings are compatible with the claim that L2 speakers use the same mechanisms as L1 speakers to make predictions.

•Used RSA to test where discourse-related activity is predicted by semantic content.•We compared effects in comprehension and production discourse processing tasks.•Semantics predicted neural pattern similarity within and between tasks.•Effects were bilateral with no apparent left-hemisphere bias. How does the brain code the meanings conveyed by language? Neuroimaging studies have investigated this by linking neural activity patterns during discourse comprehension to semantic models of language content. Here, we applied this approach to the production of discourse for the first time. Participants underwent fMRI while producing and listening to discourse on a range of topics. We used a distributional semantic model to quantify the similarity between different speech passages and identified where similarity in neural activity was predicted by semantic similarity. When people produced discourse, speech on similar topics elicited similar activation patterns in a widely distributed and bilateral brain network. This network was overlapping with, but more extensive than, the regions that showed similarity effects during comprehension. Critically, cross-task neural similarities between comprehension and production were also predicted by similarities in semantic content. This result suggests that discourse semantics engages a common neural code that is shared between comprehension and production. Effects of semantic similarity were bilateral in all three RSA analyses, even while univariate activation contrasts in the same data indicated left-lateralised BOLD responses. This indicates that right-hemisphere regions encode semantic properties even when they are not activated above baseline. We suggest that right-hemisphere regions play a supporting role in processing the meaning of discourse during both comprehension and production.

Prediction is often used during language comprehension. However, studies of prediction have tended to focus on L1 listeners in quiet conditions. Thus, it is unclear how listeners predict outside the laboratory and in specific communicative settings. Here, we report two eye-tracking studies which used a visual-world paradigm to investigate whether prediction during a consecutive interpreting task differs from prediction during a listening task in L2 listeners, and whether L2 listeners are able to predict in the noisy conditions that might be associated with this communicative setting. In a first study, thirty-six Dutch-English bilinguals either just listened to, or else listened to and then consecutively interpreted, predictable sentences presented on speech-shaped sound. In a second study, another thirty-six Dutch-English bilinguals carried out the same tasks in clear speech. Our results suggest that L2 listeners predict the meaning of upcoming words in noisy conditions. However, we did not find that predictive eye movements depended on task, nor that L2 listeners predicted upcoming word form. We also did not find a difference in predictive patterns when we compared our two studies. Thus, L2 listeners predict in noisy circumstances, supporting theories which posit that prediction regularly takes place in comprehension, but we did not find evidence that a subsequent production task or noise affects semantic prediction.

When people communicate, they come to see the world in a similar way to each other by aligning their mental representations at such levels as syntax. Syntax is an essential feature of human language that distinguishes humans from other non-human animals. However, whether and how communicators share neural representations of syntax is not well understood. Here we addressed this issue by measuring the brain activity of both communicators in a series of dyadic communication contexts, by using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning. Two communicators alternatively spoke sentences either with the same or with different syntactic structures. Results showed a significantly higher-level increase of interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) at right posterior superior temporal cortex when communicators produced the same syntactic structures as each other compared to when they produced different syntactic structures. These increases of INS correlated significantly with communication quality. Our findings provide initial evidence for shared neural representations of syntax between communicators. •Shared neural representations of syntax were found during dyadic communication.•Neural synchronization underlay the shared representations of syntax.•Neural synchronization occurred bilaterally rather than on left hemisphere only.•Neural synchronization reflected effect of the prior syntactic context.•Neural synchronization significantly correlated with communication quality.

While studies have shown the importance of listener feedback in dialogue, we still know little about the factors that impact its quality. Feedback can indicate either that the addressee is aligning with the speaker (i.e. ‘positive’ feedback) or that there is some communicative trouble (i.e. ‘negative’ feedback). This study provides an in-depth account of listener feedback in task-oriented dialogue (a director–matcher game), where positive and negative feedback is produced, thus expressing both alignment and misalignment. By manipulating the listener’s cognitive load through a secondary mental task, we measure the effect of divided attention on the quantity and quality of feedback. Our quantitative analysis shows that performance and feedback quantity remain stable across cognitive load conditions, but that the timing and novelty of feedback vary: turns are produced after longer pauses when attention is divided between two speech-focused tasks, and they are more economical (i.e. include more other-repetitions) when unrelated words need to be retained in memory. These findings confirm that cognitive load impacts the quality of listener feedback. Finally, we found that positive feedback is more often generic and shorter than negative feedback and that its proportion increases over time.

The ability to selectively access two languages characterises the bilingual everyday experience. Previous studies showed the role of second language (L2) proficiency, as a proxy for dominance, on language control. However, the role of other aspects of the bilingual experience – such as age of acquisition and daily exposure – are relatively unexplored. In this study, we used a cued language switching task to examine language switching and mixing in two groups of highly proficient bilinguals with different linguistic backgrounds, to understand how the ability to control languages is shaped by linguistic experience. Our analysis shows that the ability to switch between languages is not only modulated by L2 proficiency, but also by daily L2 exposure. Daily L2 exposure also affects language mixing. Finally, L2 age of acquisition predicts naming latencies in the L2. Together, these findings show that language dominance is characterised by multiple aspects of the bilingual experience, which modulate language control.