Figure 2:

Looking-time plots for Experiment 1. Proportion of looks to the target referent during neutral sentences (grey) and predictive sentences (blue) are shown for adults (n = 24) and for children (n = 24). The onset of the target noun (e.g., cards) is at 0 ms. Vertical dashed lines indicate the average onset of the informative verb in predictive sentences (e.g., dealt). Line shading indicates one standard error from the mean for each condition, averaged by subjects. Area shading indicates significant clusters (ps < 0.05) from permutation analyses (Maris & Oostenveld, 2007). Results indicate that both adults and children generated anticipatory eye movements to the target referent during predictive sentences, and further suggest that listeners can use informative verbs to pre-activate upcoming representations during language processing.