Case Clozed: Young Children Can Explicitly Predict Upcoming Words in a Naturalistic, Story-based Cloze Task.

Briony Waite, Anthony Yacovone, Jesse Snedeker

Abstract read

In one paragraph

Article in Journal of child language, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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0citing papers in PubMed

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0 citing papers in PubMed.

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Briony WaiteDepartment of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.ORCID https://orcid.org/0009-0001-2730-2522

Anthony YacovoneDepartment of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Jesse SnedekerDepartment of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Funding

Diversity Supplement for the Development of children's language comprehension using ERPs during natural listeningR03HD097629 · NICHD · HARVARD UNIVERSITY · PI SNEDEKER, JESSE · 2019 to 2020

$248k

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development R03HD097629NICHD NIH HHS R03 HD097629

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Prediction is a central feature of mature language comprehension, but little is known about how and when it develops. This study investigates whether lexical prediction emerges before seven using a novel, naturalistic cloze task. Five and six-year-old children listened to a storybook and occasionally guessed which word might come next. We selected 180 words from the story that were shown to be more or less predictable in a prior cloze norming task with adults. We found that children frequently guessed the correct word or provided an alternative that was semantically related to the target, demonstrating an ability to use the context to explicitly predict upcoming words. Six-year-olds were more accurate than 5-year-olds. These findings show prediction is present (but still improving) in early childhood, motivating future work on the role of prediction in children's comprehension and learning. Finally, we demonstrate that it is feasible to collect cloze values from children.

Indexed as

Child LanguageComprehensionLanguage DevelopmentSemanticsChildChild, PreschoolFemaleHumansMalePsycholinguisticsdevelopmental psycholinguisticsdiscourseprediction

Identifiers

PMID41030085

DOI10.1017/S0305000925100251

PMCPMC12825941

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.