TY - JOUR

T1 - Predictive processing and developmental language disorder

AU - Jones, Sam

AU - Westermann, Gert

PY - 2021/1

Y1 - 2021/1

N2 - Purpose Research in the cognitive and neural sciences has situated predictive processing—the anticipation of upcoming percepts—as a dominant function of the brain. The purpose of this article is to argue that prediction should feature more prominently in explanatory accounts of sentence processing and comprehension deficits in developmental language disorder (DLD).Method We evaluate behavioral and neurophysiological data relevant to the theme of prediction in early typical and atypical language acquisition and processing.Results Poor syntactic awareness—attributable, in part, to an underlying statistical learning deficit—is likely to impede syntax-based predictive processing in children with DLD, conferring deficits in spoken sentence comprehension. Furthermore, there may be a feedback cycle in which poor syntactic awareness impedes children's ability to anticipate upcoming percepts, and this, in turn, makes children unable to improve their syntactic awareness on the basis of prediction error signals.Conclusion This article offers a refocusing of theory on sentence processing and comprehension deficits in DLD, from a difficulty in processing and integrating perceived syntactic features to a difficulty in anticipating what is coming next.

AB - Purpose Research in the cognitive and neural sciences has situated predictive processing—the anticipation of upcoming percepts—as a dominant function of the brain. The purpose of this article is to argue that prediction should feature more prominently in explanatory accounts of sentence processing and comprehension deficits in developmental language disorder (DLD).Method We evaluate behavioral and neurophysiological data relevant to the theme of prediction in early typical and atypical language acquisition and processing.Results Poor syntactic awareness—attributable, in part, to an underlying statistical learning deficit—is likely to impede syntax-based predictive processing in children with DLD, conferring deficits in spoken sentence comprehension. Furthermore, there may be a feedback cycle in which poor syntactic awareness impedes children's ability to anticipate upcoming percepts, and this, in turn, makes children unable to improve their syntactic awareness on the basis of prediction error signals.Conclusion This article offers a refocusing of theory on sentence processing and comprehension deficits in DLD, from a difficulty in processing and integrating perceived syntactic features to a difficulty in anticipating what is coming next.

U2 - 10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00409

DO - 10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00409

M3 - Article

VL - 64

SP - 181

EP - 185

JO - Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research

JF - Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research

SN - 1092-4388

IS - 1

ER -