Executive resources shape the impact of language predictability across the adult lifespan.

ABSTRACT: Humans routinely anticipate upcoming language, but whether such predictions come at a cognitive cost remains debated. In this study, we demonstrate the resource-dependent nature of predictive mechanisms in language comprehension across the lifespan: Experimentally limiting executive resources through a concurrent task reduces the effect of language predictability on reading time. Participants (N = 175, replication N = 96) read short articles presented word-by-word while completing a secondary font colour n-back task, thus varying cognitive demand. Language predictability was indexed by word surprisal as derived from a pre-trained large language model (GPT-2). Across two independent samples, our findings reveal that language predictions are not cost-free: They draw on e

SUBMITTER: Schuckart MM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12851580 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature