Colloquium: Integrating production with comprehension in dialogue

Psycholinguistics typically separates production and comprehension as two subtasks and two different questions to investigate. By contrast I present an account in which production and comprehension processes are integrated during acts of production and comprehension. The account uses principles from motor control theory as applied more generally to action and social perception. Central to the account is the claim that both production and comprehension involve extensive use of prediction – determining what you yourself or your interlocutor is likely to say next. And, predicting your own utterance involves comprehension processes as well as production processes, and predicting your interlocutor’s utterance involves production processes as well as comprehension processes.