Different but similar: the association between linguistic and visuospatial prediction
Creators: name: Fernandez Arroyo, Laura
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2022

description: Prediction is ubiquitous, and yet, much of its nature remains unknown. Humans generate predictions in a myriad of domains ranging from language to vision/space. Previous studies show that general language abilities are associated with visuospatial processing (e.g., Crawford et al., 2000; Estes &amp; Barsalou, 2018; Levinson, 2002) and prediction (Reuter et al., 2020, 2021). Yet, no study has investigated whether prediction abilities are directly associated with each other. Likewise, the role of language experience in language prediction abilities is still unclear. This dissertation investigates whether language and visuospatial prediction abilities are associated (Study 3), and whether experience using a speaker’s second language (L2 proficiency and L2 use) (Study 1) and native language (Study 2) modulates language prediction. Study 1 examined L2 experience effects on prediction of a verbal suffix based on its initial syllable stress. Spanish monolinguals and adult English learners of Spanish varying in L2 proficiency and L2 use completed an L2 proficiency test, an active L2 use questionnaire, and an eye-tracking task in which participants saw two disyllabic Spanish verbs on the screen (one in the present tense with stress on the first syllable/paroxytone: CANta “sings”, another one in the preterit tense with stress on the second syllable/oxytone: canTÓ “sang”), heard a sentence containing one of the two verbs, and chose the verb they had heard. Study 2 added the mediation of L1 cross-linguistic transfer. To that end, a group of adult Mandarin learners of Spanish matched for age, L2 proficiency and L2 use with the English learners completed the same set of tasks. Mandarin was chosen given its larger degree of discrepancy with the Spanish phonological system in comparison to English.The results of Studies 1 and 2 showed that all groups were generating correct predictions, but the monolinguals did so earlier and at a higher likelihood than the learners. L2 proficiency and L2 use facilitated prediction, but their influence varied according to what other experience measures (i.e., L1 transfer) were considered. The discrepancy between the effects indicates that L2 proficiency and L2 use have distinct roles in L2 morphophonological facilitation and that they depend on other mediating factors, like L1 transfer, and should therefore be considered independently.Study 3 analyzed the association between language prediction and visuospatial prediction (prediction of an object’s position based on its moving speed) in Spanish monolinguals. In addition to the tasks in Studies 1 and 2, participants completed a visuospatial prediction task in which a car on the screen moved from side to side at different speeds. The car disappeared behind a mountain, and participants were asked to press a key when they estimated that the car would reappear on the other side of the mountain. The results indicated that participants predicted at or above chance in all conditions of both prediction tasks. Participants making better visuospatial predictions (less deviation time from target response) made more correct language predictions. This finding indicates that better abilities for visuospatial prediction of trajectories is associated with better morphophonological prediction, suggesting that some underlying predictive mechanisms may be common.The findings of Studies 1 and 2 support L1 processing models claiming that suprasegmental integration is part of spoken word recognition (e.g., Roll, 2015), usage-based models positing that language is a learned skill developed and honed through experience (e.g., Competition Model, see MacWhinney, 2015, for a review), and cognitive models claiming that different bilingual experiences have distinct consequences on the brain (e.g., Del Maschio et al., 2020). They also inform phonological models of L2 acquisition in how L2 suprasegmental categories may be created (e.g., Flege &amp; Bohn, 2021). The findings of Study 3 contribute to the domain-general vs. domain-specific model debate by supporting domain-general models of cognition, neural reuse theories (Asano et al., 2021) and neuroemergentist approaches (Hernández et al., 2019).