FASS Brown Bag Seminar by Dr Aine Ito | Prediction as a helping hand for real-time comprehension in a non-native language

Dear all,

You are cordially invited to the second session of the FASS Brown Bag Seminar Series in Semester 2 of AY24/25. Dr Aine Ito (NUS English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies) will be presenting on “Prediction as a helping hand for real-time comprehension in a non-native language”.

Date: 14 Feb, 12pm – 1pm
Register: Zoom

Prediction as a helping hand for real-time comprehension in a non-native language
During language comprehension, a listener must decode the meaning of each word and integrate the meaning into the context quickly. Native speakers can do this efficiently, and one way they achieve this efficiency is by predicting upcoming language. In contrast, comprehension in a non-native language tends to be less efficient, and a possible reason is that people tend to predict upcoming language to a lesser extent when comprehending in their non-native language. In this talk, I will present studies exploring the possibility of using prediction as a helping hand for facilitating real-time comprehension in a non-native language.

Aine Ito is an Assistant Professor in Psycholinguistics at NUS. She is interested in what makes non-native language processing more difficult than native language processing. Her research explores ways to make real-time non-native language processing more native-like with a focus on predictive processing using eye-tracking and EEG.