Comprehenders’ Expectations During Discourse Processing: Disentangling Relation, Content, and Form Predictions From Connective Facilitation
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Comprehenders have been shown to make predictions about upcoming information at multiple levels, but the role of prediction in the processing of discourse relations remains unclear. This study investigated the role of prediction in discourse relation processing by disentangling three levels of predictability which are typically confounded: relation type, semantic content, and lexical-syntactic form. Furthermore, connectives are known to facilitate reading of subsequent material; here we examine whether this effect can be explained by connectives enhancing predictability at multiple levels, or whether they exert processing benefits beyond their effects on prediction. We derive measures of relation type, content predictability, and form predictability from a continuation task (Exp. 1) and show that the presence of a connective increases the predictability of the relation type and, in turn, of the semantic content. In a self-paced reading (Exp. 2) and an eye-tracking experiment (Exp. 3), we find that relation type predictability is indirectly associated with reading times through content predictability. However, relation type predictability did not directly facilitate processing and was associated with longer initial reading times in Exp. 3, suggesting that its effects on processing may be more complex than straightforward facilitation. The connective showed direct effects on reading times even after controlling for all three levels of predictability, suggesting that connective facilitation operates through mechanisms beyond enhanced prediction. These findings support accounts in which predictions at different linguistic levels constrain one another and show that both predictive and integrative mechanisms contribute to discourse comprehension.
Source: Open Mind
DOI: 10.1162/opmi.a.403
Institutions: Saarland University, Utrecht University
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $950
OpenAlex ID: W7224250503