Literacy Advantages Beyond Reading: Prediction of Spoken Language

Proficient readers predict spoken language faster than less-proficient readers and illiterate adults. This reflects in part secondary correlates of reading acquisition, such as having larger vocabulary knowledge and working memory capacity. However, we also argue that there are primary influences of reading behavior on speech prediction. We discuss several properties of the reading environment that support prediction and transfer from reading to spoken language processing. Reading acquisition boosts prediction of upcoming speech because it trains shared processes (e.g., formation of predictive dependencies) and sharpens shared representations (e.g., lexical, syntactic)