The use of adjectives in prediction during spoken language comprehension in older adults-evidence from the visual world paradigm

ABSTRACT Language comprehension involves the prediction of upcoming information, making it remarkably rapid and efficient. Prediction involves different mechanisms, namely, prediction-by-association and prediction-by-production, which may be differentially affected by age-related cognitive decline. In two experiments, we examined the extent to which prediction-by-association, driven by low-level lexical associations, is impacted by ageing. Young and older adults listened to Hindi sentences containing adjectives highly associated with an upcoming noun. The visual display included the target object associated with the adjective and three unrelated distractors. Anticipatory gaze towards the target object before the noun onset was measured as an index of prediction based on the adjective. Older adults exhibited anticipatory gaze towards the target noun soon after hearing the adjective, with performance comparable to that of young adults. This pattern was replicated in Experiment 2, which introduced time constraints by reducing preview duration. Overall, the findings demonstrate that prediction-by-association remains stable across the lifespan.