The construction of predictive inferences in children and adults during the cognitive processing of audiovisual and auditory texts

The aim of the two present studies was to investigate in 192 participants aged 6, 8, 10, 13, and 22 years if they are able to build predictive inferences about, what will happen next" while seeing a film or listening to an auditory text. In the experiments, short narrative texts were presented in an audiovisual or auditory form. The texts were interrupted by a freeze image of an object, in some cases linked to a predictive inference. The participants had to name the object as fast as possible. The naming latencies were measured. The results show that only the youngest participants generate predictive inferences in the audiovisual condition.