Three online mouse cursor-tracking experiments investigated predictive sentence processing at speed. Participants viewed visual arrays with objects like a bike and kite while hearing predictive sentences like, “What the man will ride, which is shown on this page, is the bike,” or non-predictive sentences like, “What the man will spot, which is shown on this page, is the bike.” Based on the selectional restrictions of “ride” (i.e., vs. “spot”), participants made mouse cursor movements to the bike before hearing the noun (...) “bike.” Compellingly, this effect was observed at speech rates of ∼3 (Experiment 1), ∼6 (Experiment 2), and ∼9 (Experiment 3) syllables/s. While prior research suggests striking limits on prediction, these results highlight temporal dynamics that may impact comprehenders’ ability to preactivate information when hearing impressively rapid speech. Implications for theories of sentence processing are discussed. (shrink)

Recent evidence increasingly suggests that comprehenders are capable of generating probabilistic predictions about forthcoming linguistic inputs during language comprehension. However, it remains debated whether language comprehenders predict low‐level word forms and whether they always make predictions. In this study, we investigated semantic and phonological prediction in high‐ and low‐constraining sentence contexts, utilizing the mouse‐tracking paradigm to trace mouse movement trajectories. Mandarin Chinese speakers listened to high‐ and low‐constraining sentences which resulted in high and low predictability for the critical target words. (...) While listening, participants viewed a visual display featuring two objects: one corresponding to the critical target word (the target object) and the other being either semantically related, phonologically related, or unrelated to the target word. Participants were instructed to click on the target object. The analysis of mouse movement trajectories revealed two key findings: (1) In both high‐ and low‐constraining contexts, there was a spatial attraction of the cursor toward semantic competitors, notably occurring before the target word was heard; (2) there are indications that phonological pretarget attraction effects were observed primarily in high‐constraining contexts. These findings suggest that the constraints of sentences have the potential to modulate the representational contents of linguistic prediction during language comprehension. Methodologically, the mouse‐tracking paradigm presents a promising tool for further exploration of linguistic prediction. (shrink)