Language comprehension depends heavily upon prediction, but how predictions are generated remains poorly understood. Several recent theories propose that these predictions are in fact generated by the language production system. Here, we directly test this claim. Participants read sentence contexts that either were or were not highly predictive of a final word, and we measured how quickly participants recognized that final word (Experiment 1), named that final word (Experiment 2), or used that word to name a picture (Experiment 3). We manipulated engagement of the production system by asking participants to read the sentence contexts either aloud or silently. Across the experiments, participants responded more quickly following highly predictive contexts. Importantly, the effect of contextual predictability was greater when participants had read the sentence contexts aloud rather than silently, a finding that was significant in Experiment 3, marginally significant in Experiment 2, and again significant in combined analyses of Experiments 1-3. These results indicate that language production (as used in reading aloud) can be used to facilitate prediction. We consider whether prediction benefits from production only in particular contexts, and discuss the theoretical implications of our evidence.

语言理解在很大程度上依赖于预测，但预测是如何产生的仍然知之甚少。最近的一些理论提出，这些预测实际上是由语言产生系统产生的。在这里，我们直接测试这个说法。参与者阅读的句子上下文要么高度预测最终单词，要么不高度预测，我们测量了参与者识别最终单词（实验 1）、命名该最终单词（实验 2）或使用该单词命名图片的速度（实验3）。我们通过要求参与者大声或默读句子上下文来操纵生产系统的参与。在整个实验中，参与者在高度预测的背景下反应更快。重要的，当参与者大声而不是默读句子上下文时，上下文可预测性的影响更大，这一发现在实验 3 中显着，在实验 2 中略显着，在实验 1-3 的组合分析中再次显着。这些结果表明语言生成（如在朗读中使用的）可用于促进预测。我们考虑预测是否仅在特定情况下从生产中受益，并讨论我们证据的理论含义。