Our big human brains have evolved to become very efficient predicting machines (Hawkins, 2004). They are constantly accessing multiple data sources in order to give us a sense of what will happen next. Most of this is done at levels below our conscious awareness. For example, baseball players are able to run to the right spot to catch balls in the outfield because they can predict where it’s going to come down. Their big human brains instantly process a variety of information related to the sound of the bat hitting the ball as well as the height, speed, and angle of trajectory.

The same prediction process is used in language comprehension and reading (Gavard & Ziegler, 2022; Lupyan & Clark). Here, our prediction machine uses semantic, syntactic, and phonological information to make micro-predictions about words and meaning during the process of reading (Goodman, 1967; Laroche & Decon, 2019). Very much like baseball players catching pop flies, this enables us to efficiently and effectively create meaning with the print before us.