Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Journal Club
  • Published:

Language comprehension

Neural evidence of word prediction

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 3, page 71 (2024)Cite this article

Subjects

In a conversation, speakers can comprehend their conversation partner seamlessly and even respond before the other person has finished a sentence. This fast comprehension process is enabled by language prediction mechanisms. Prediction stems from a notion that brains are not passive, but instead actively use stored information to predict possible upcoming input.

Numerous electroencephalography (EEG) studies have shown that language prediction relies on the sentence context. To study this, researchers show participants sentences with expected words and compare to unexpected ones. Prediction violation is reflected through the increase of electrical brain activity when the prediction does not match with the incoming language input. This increase is normally observed in the N400 ERP component, which is related to language prediction.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

Original article

  • DeLong, K. A., Urbach, T. P. & Kutas, M. Probabilistic word pre-activation during language comprehension inferred from electrical brain activity. Nat. Neurosci. 8, 1117–1121 (2005)

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CICPSI, Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Jane Aristia

Authors
  1. Jane Aristia
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jane Aristia.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Aristia, J. Neural evidence of word prediction. Nat Rev Psychol 3, 71 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00279-z

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00279-z

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing