Language Processing Cost: Linear or Logarithmic?
coryshain · x · 2026-07-13
Explores the relationship between contextual predictability and processing costs during human sentence comprehension, highlighting two main perspectives:
- Facilitation view: Processing cost decreases linearly as contextual predictability increases.
- Cost view: Processing cost increases logarithmically as predictability decreases (proportional to Shannon information/surprisal).
This debate is crucial for determining whether "predictability effects" can reveal the underlying mechanics of the brain's sentence comprehension algorithms. If the cost view holds, this effect is merely a mathematical inevitability of the brain performing optimal information processing.
Related event: Study Reveals Linear and Logarithmic Patterns in Word Predictability(3 posts)→
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