ArticleCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)2021
Representational Pattern Similarity of Electrical Brain Activity Reveals Rapid and Specific Prediction during Language Comprehension.
Article in Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Shared Neural Computations for Syntactic and Morphological Structures: Evidence From Mandarin Chinese.Cognitive science · 2026Article
- Evaluating the compatibility of predictive coding as a model of linguistic predictability effects in reading.Frontiers in cognition · 2026Review
- Neural representation of mixed feelings during real-time processing of negative words in pun-humor.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Fast hierarchical processing of orthographic and semantic parafoveal information during natural reading.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- Dissociating the pre-activation of word meaning and form during sentence comprehension: Evidence from EEG representational similarity analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Article
- Altered Oscillatory Neural Dynamics Related to Word Prediction in Older Adult Readers.Language, cognition and neuroscience · 2024Article
- The Impact of Linguistic Prediction Violations on Downstream Recognition Memory and Sentence Recall.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2024Article
- Seeking the neural representation of statistical properties in print during implicit processing of visual words.NPJ science of learning · 2023Article
- Prediction during language comprehension: what is next?Trends in cognitive sciences · 2023Review
- Predicting phonological information in language comprehension: evidence from ERP representational similarity analysis and Chinese idioms.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- Predicting coarse-grained semantic features in language comprehension: evidence from ERP representational similarity analysis and Chinese classifier.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- Connecting and considering: Electrophysiology provides insights into comprehension.Psychophysiology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Predicting upcoming events is a critical function of the brain, and language provides a fertile testing ground for studying prediction, as comprehenders use context to predict features of upcoming words. Many aspects of the mechanisms of prediction remain elusive, partly due to a lack of methodological tools to probe prediction formation in the moment. To elucidate what features are neurally preactivated and when, we used representational similarity analysis on previously collected sentence reading data. We compared EEG activity patterns elicited by expected and unexpected sentence final words to patterns from the preceding words of the sentence, in both strongly and weakly constraining sentences. Pattern similarity with the final word was increased in an early time window following the presentation of the pre-final word, and this increase was modulated by both expectancy and constraint. This was not seen at earlier words, suggesting that predictions were precisely timed. Additionally, pre-final word activity-the predicted representation-had negative similarity with later final word activity, but only for strongly expected words. These findings shed light on the mechanisms of prediction in the brain: rapid preactivation occurs following certain cues, but the predicted features may receive reduced processing upon confirmation.
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