Abstract
<p>Prediction is a core mechanism in language comprehension, and evidence suggests it involves separate stages. The associative stage involves fast, automatic predictions driven by semantic associations (e.g., a verb cueing likely referents), while the strategic stage involves slower, deliberate predictions incorporating broader contextual cues (e.g., agent gender). Although faster speech has been shown to decrease prediction, no research has investigated how these stages are individually impacted. We conducted a preregistered visual-world eye-tracking experiment in which English speakers listened to non-speeded (4 syllables/second) or speeded (5.5 syllables/second) sentences while viewing four-object arrays. Stimuli included a female or male agent (Kate or James) and a verb (e.g., wear) that primed two target images (e.g., dress and tie) alongside two unrelated distractor images (e.g., hairdryer and drill). Verb-related targets included one stereotypically compatible with the agent’s gender and one incompatible. One distractor was gender-compatible and one gender-incompatible. Participants showed associative predictions (more fixations to verb-related targets than distractors) and strategic predictions (more fixations to agent-compatible targets than incompatible targets). In non-speeded speech, the stages were temporally distinct, with associative prediction occurring before strategic prediction. In speeded speech, however, these stages overlapped. These results suggest that changes in speech rate can influence predictive timing.</p>