Scientists asked whether the human brain predicts words in the same simple way as phones and LLMs. They ran experiments with Mandarin speakers and recorded brain activity with magnetoencephalography (MEG). Participants also did Cloze tests, where words are removed and people fill the blanks. The team analyzed additional brain data from patients listening to English sentences to check if results hold across languages.
The researchers used LLMs to measure how predictable a word is, using two ideas called entropy and surprisal. High entropy means many possible next words and high surprisal means a word is unexpected. The brain reacted differently depending on a word’s place in grammatical groups. The authors conclude the brain predicts by grouping words into phrases, not only by next-word probability, and LLMs do not show the same sensitivity.
Difficult words
- magnetoencephalography — a brain measurement method using magnetic signals
- cloze test — a task with missing words to fillCloze tests
- entropy — a measure of how many choices exist
- surprisal — a measure of how unexpected a word is
- predict — to say or expect something before it happenspredicts
- phrase — a small group of words that go togetherphrases
- grammatical — related to the rules of sentence structure
Tip: hover, focus or tap highlighted words in the article to see quick definitions while you read or listen.
Discussion questions
- Have you ever tried a Cloze test? How did you find it?
- Do you think your brain predicts words when you listen? Why or why not?
- Why did the researchers use both Mandarin speakers and English data?
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