Learning by predicting: How predictive processing informs language development
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Martin Zettersten
Abstract
An increasingly influential attempt to provide a unified theory of the mind is grounded in the notion of prediction. On this account, our minds are prediction engines, continuously matching incoming input to top-down expectations. Higher-level predictions or expectations are generated by internal cognitive models at multiple hierarchical levels that jointly serve to minimize prediction error at lower levels in the information processing hierarchy. In language research, prediction has become an increasingly influential approach to understanding how language comprehension unfolds in real time. But how can predictive processing inform our understanding of how we come to learn language in the first place? In this review, I consider how prediction-based theories of the mind can aid in explaining how language development unfolds. First, I review research in perception and language on predictive processes and assess the degree to which they are found in infancy. Next, I consider how predictionbased mechanisms contribute to our understanding of learning, as well as the kinds of patterns that models grounded in prediction can learn. I review research on infants’ prodigious ability to track novel patterns and relate these statistical learning abilities to prediction-based explanations. Finally, I sketch how prediction- based accounts fit within current theoretical positions and debates in the field of language development and suggest directions for future research into how predictive processes support language learning.
Abstract
An increasingly influential attempt to provide a unified theory of the mind is grounded in the notion of prediction. On this account, our minds are prediction engines, continuously matching incoming input to top-down expectations. Higher-level predictions or expectations are generated by internal cognitive models at multiple hierarchical levels that jointly serve to minimize prediction error at lower levels in the information processing hierarchy. In language research, prediction has become an increasingly influential approach to understanding how language comprehension unfolds in real time. But how can predictive processing inform our understanding of how we come to learn language in the first place? In this review, I consider how prediction-based theories of the mind can aid in explaining how language development unfolds. First, I review research in perception and language on predictive processes and assess the degree to which they are found in infancy. Next, I consider how predictionbased mechanisms contribute to our understanding of learning, as well as the kinds of patterns that models grounded in prediction can learn. I review research on infants’ prodigious ability to track novel patterns and relate these statistical learning abilities to prediction-based explanations. Finally, I sketch how prediction- based accounts fit within current theoretical positions and debates in the field of language development and suggest directions for future research into how predictive processes support language learning.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- List of tables and figures VII
- List of contributors IX
- Patterns in linguistics: This volume, its aims and its contributions 1
- From term to concept and vice versa: Pattern(s) in language and linguistics 11
- How to do things with intertextual patterns: On Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose 47
- Word-entry patterns in Early Modern English dictionaries 69
- Collocations and colligations: Visualizing lexicogrammar 97
- Constructional pattern-development in language change 125
- How constructions are born. The role of patterns in the constructionalization of be going to INF 157
- Constructions are patterns and so are fixed expressions 193
- A dynamic equational approach to sound patterns in language change and secondlanguage acquisition: The (un)stability of English dental fricatives illustrated 221
- Learning by predicting: How predictive processing informs language development 255
- Index 289
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- List of tables and figures VII
- List of contributors IX
- Patterns in linguistics: This volume, its aims and its contributions 1
- From term to concept and vice versa: Pattern(s) in language and linguistics 11
- How to do things with intertextual patterns: On Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose 47
- Word-entry patterns in Early Modern English dictionaries 69
- Collocations and colligations: Visualizing lexicogrammar 97
- Constructional pattern-development in language change 125
- How constructions are born. The role of patterns in the constructionalization of be going to INF 157
- Constructions are patterns and so are fixed expressions 193
- A dynamic equational approach to sound patterns in language change and secondlanguage acquisition: The (un)stability of English dental fricatives illustrated 221
- Learning by predicting: How predictive processing informs language development 255
- Index 289
