Previous demonstrations of false memories for predicted but not presented words used slow encoding and immediate retrieval conditions, potentially exacerbating false memory effects. We present two experiments that investigated whether false memories also occur under self-paced encoding and delayed retrieval conditions, and whether false memories are reduced when the initial prediction was disconfirmed by an implausible word, thought to elicit false memory suppression. Results showed that previous demonstrations of false memories were not contingent on the task conditions: False memories also occur when language processing is self-paced, and they affect longer-term memory structures. Crucially, false memories emerged regardless of whether the prediction-disconfirming word was plausible or not. Results are evaluated against a recent psycho-linguistic account that makes diverging predictions regarding the processing consequences of mild and severe violations of plausibility.

Top-down predictive processes and bottom-up auditory processes interact in speech comprehension. In background noise, the acoustic signal is degraded. This study investigated the interaction of these processes in a word recognition paradigm using high and low predictability sentences in two types of background noise and using phonetically controlled contrasts. Previous studies have reported false hearing, but have not provided insight into what phonetic features are most prone to false hearing. We here systematically explore this issue and find that plosives lead to increased false hearing compared to vowels. Furthermore, this study on German for the first time replicates the overall false hearing effect in young adults for a language other than English.

Language processing is predictive in nature. But how do people balance multiple competing options as they predict upcoming meanings? Here, we investigated whether readers generate graded predictions about grammatical gender of nouns. Sentence contexts were manipulated so that they strongly biased people's expectations towards two or more nouns that had the same grammatical gender (single bias condition), or they biased multiple genders from different grammatical classes (multiple bias condition). Our expectation was that unexpected articles should lead to elevated reading times (RTs) in the single-bias condition when probabilistic expectations towards a particular gender are violated. Indeed, the results showed greater sensitivity among language users towards unexpected articles in the single-bias condition, however, RTs on unexpected gender- marked articles were facilitated, and not slowed. Our data confirm that difficulty in sentence processing is modulated by uncertainty about predicted information, and suggest that readers make graded predictions about grammatical gender.

Prior research yielded conflicting findings regarding whether older adults show a greater processing cost than younger adults when encountering unpredicted semantic material during language processing. Here, we investigated whether age-related differences in recovery from prediction error are influenced by increased demands on working memory. We used a dual task design: a primary sentence comprehension task in which semantic predictions were fulfilled or violated, and a concurrent driving task, thought to limit working memory resources in resolving prediction errors. In the dual task, older participants showed an increase in comprehension accuracy for sentences with semantic violations, while demonstrating a decrease in driving accuracy. Thus, when working memory resources were limited, older adults focused exclusively on the language task and neglected the driving task. This could be related to an age-related increase in generating semantic predictions, or to a general inability among older adults to divide attention between two cognitively demanding tasks.