Does the linguistic identity of the speaker modulate speech prediction?

Introduction: It is a matter of debate if linguistic prediction involves only (pre-)activation of lexical-semantic representations or also phonological and phonetic ones. We will capitalize on the fact that foreign speakers usually make phonological errors to investigate if speaker identity (native-vs-foreign) is used to tune specific phonological predictions. Methods: Participants (N=48) will be recruited to read sentence fragments in which the last word will be produced by a native or a foreign speaker. They will have to perform a lexical decision task on the word presented auditorily, which could be predictable or not. Speaker identity (native-vs-foreign) may or may not be anticipated by the face of the speaker. Expected Results: The effect of predictability on lexical decision times should be larger when the speaker identity is cued. Conclusions: If linguistic prediction takes into account phonological variability across groups we can conclude that it involves not only lexical-semantic processes. Take home messages: We care about the speaker identity and linguistic prediction can be instantiated at a phonological level.