Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, 06269-1020, USA.
Connecticut Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Storrs, CT, USA.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2021 Aug;28(4):1381-1389. doi: 10.3758/s13423-021-01924-x. Epub 2021 Apr 14.
Pervasive behavioral and neural evidence for predictive processing has led to claims that language processing depends upon predictive coding. Formally, predictive coding is a computational mechanism where only deviations from top-down expectations are passed between levels of representation. In many cognitive neuroscience studies, a reduction of signal for expected inputs is taken as being diagnostic of predictive coding. In the present work, we show that despite not explicitly implementing prediction, the TRACE model of speech perception exhibits this putative hallmark of predictive coding, with reductions in total lexical activation, total lexical feedback, and total phoneme activation when the input conforms to expectations. These findings may indicate that interactive activation is functionally equivalent or approximant to predictive coding or that caution is warranted in interpreting neural signal reduction as diagnostic of predictive coding.
普遍存在的行为和神经预测处理的证据表明，语言处理取决于预测编码。形式上，预测编码是一种计算机制，只有从上到下的期望偏差才会在表示的层次之间传递。在许多认知神经科学研究中，对预期输入的信号减少被认为是预测编码的诊断。在本工作中，我们表明，尽管TRACE 语音感知模型没有明确地实现预测，但当输入符合预期时，它表现出了这种预测编码的假定特征，总词汇激活、总词汇反馈和总音素激活减少。这些发现可能表明，交互激活在功能上等同于或近似于预测编码，或者在将神经信号减少解释为预测编码的诊断时需要谨慎。
