The relationship between language prediction and action prediction in toddlers and adults

Abstract

Prediction plays a key role in both action processing and language comprehension, yet it remains unclear whether individual differences in action prediction are related to individual differences in language prediction. Using eye-tracking, we examined predictive looking behaviour in 2-year-old Norwegian-speaking toddlers (Experiment 1) and Norwegian-speaking adults (Experiment 2) across parallel action and semantic prediction tasks. Both groups showed robust predictive looking in each task. No relationship between action and semantic prediction tasks was observed in toddlers. In contrast, a significant positive relationship between the two tasks was found in adults. These findings indicate that while abilities to predict actions and linguistic information are already present by age two, cross-domain alignment in predictive performance emerges later in development. The results are consistent with the possibility that predictive processes across domains become increasingly coordinated with experience and maturation.