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When people process language, they can use context to predict upcoming information, influencing processing and comprehension as seen in both behavioral and neural measures. Although numerous studies have shown immediate facilitative effects of confirmed predictions, the downstream consequences of prediction have been less explored. In the current study, we examined those consequences by probing participants' recognition memory for words after they read sets of sentences. Participants read strongly and weakly constraining sentences with expected or unexpected endings ("I added my name to the list/basket"), and later were tested on their memory for the sentence endings while EEG was recorded. Critically, the memory test contained words that were predictable ("list") but were never read (participants saw "basket"). Behaviorally, participants showed successful discrimination between old and new items, but false alarmed to the expected-item lures more often than to new items, showing that predicted words or concepts can linger, even when predictions are disconfirmed. Although false alarm rates did not differ by constraint, event-related potentials (ERPs) differed between false alarms to strongly and weakly predictable words. Additionally, previously unexpected (compared to previously expected) endings that appeared on the memory test elicited larger N1 and LPC amplitudes, suggesting greater attention and episodic recollection. In contrast, highly predictable sentence endings that had been read elicited reduced LPC amplitudes during the memory test. Thus, prediction can facilitate processing in the moment, but can also lead to false memory and reduced recollection for predictable information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three experiments examined the effects of word and phrase frequency on free recall. Word frequency did not affect word recall, but when participants studied and recalled lists of compositional adjective-noun phrases (e.g. alcoholic beverages ), phrase frequency had a consistently beneficial effect: both words from frequent phrases were more likely to be recalled than for infrequent phrases, providing evidence that long-term memory for phrases can aid in pattern completion, or redintegration. We explain these results and those of a previous study of phrase frequency effects in recognition memory (Jacobs, Dell, Benjamin, & Bannard , 2016) by assuming that the language processing system provides features that are linked to episodic contexts. Recall tasks map from these contexts to linguistic elements, and recognition maps from linguistic elements to contexts. Word and phrase frequency effects in both memory tasks emerge both within the language processing system and from multiple stored episodes, and the fact that the representations of phrases are tied to knowledge of their component words, rather than being representational islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acoustic reduction for repeated words could be the result of articulation and motor practice (Lam & Watson, 2014), facilitated production (Gahl, Yao, & Johnson, 2012; Kahn & Arnold, 2015), or audience design and shared common ground (Galati & Brennan, 2010). We sought to narrow down what kind of facilitation leads to repetition reduction. Repetition could, in principle, facilitate production on a conceptual, lexical, phonological, articulatory, or acoustic level (Kahn & Arnold, 2015). We compared the durations of the second utterance of a target word when the initial production was aloud or silent. The silent presentation either involved unmouthed or mouthed inner speech. Overt production, unmouthed and mouthed inner speech all led to reduction in target word onsets, but target word durations were only shortened when a word was initially said aloud. In an additional experiment, we found that prior naming of a homophone of the target word also led to duration reduction. The results suggest that repetition reduction occurs when there is a recently experienced auditory memory of the item. We propose that duration may be controlled in part by auditory feedback during production, the use of which can be primed by recent auditory experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Speakers slow down when producing similar-sounding words. • Speakers lengthen words when related words are heard or said. • The presence of potential competitors does not affect duration. • The absence of a competitor does not eliminate or reduce lengthening. Speakers tend to lengthen the durations of words when a phonologically overlapping word has recently been produced. Although there are multiple accounts of why lengthening occurs, all of these accounts generally assume that competition at some point in the production-comprehension process leads to lengthening. We investigated the contexts that lead to competition and consequent lengthening of target word duration. In three experiments, we manipulated the contexts in which a target word was produced. Speakers produced simple descriptions of animations involving referents that shared initial phonology with another potential referent (e.g., hat and hand). In Experiments 1 and 2, we manipulated whether the related referent (i.e. hat) was named by the speaker themselves, by another person, or was unmentioned. Experiment 2 additionally made speakers aware of competitors in the environment. In both experiments, we found that lengthening does not occur whenever there are two referents in the display that could be confused, even when it is clear that they are confusable. Instead, speakers only lengthened target words when the speaker or another person had named the phonologically related word out loud. Experiment 3 tested whether the task relevance of a phonological competitor influenced naming and found that speakers lengthen words that overlap with previously produced words, even when they were no longer competitors in the display. We propose that an auditory memory account best explains these results and discuss the implications of these findings for other accounts of lengthening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]