Prediction is the preactivation of likely upcoming stored mental representations. Pattern completion is the related theory that prediction involves the multiscale completion of patterns of the future. Prediction in pattern completion ignores the presence of gaps and incomplete structures by ‘jumping to conclusions’ about the complete pattern. Preactivation and the completion or continuation of encountered patterns in a forward direction are explicit descriptions of how predictive processing arises in the mind.

The myriad of ways prediction has been considered in the scientific literature in the past highlights the need for a clear and inclusive definition. It is essential to be conceptually clear about what predictions are, one simple reason being that this is needed to establish what experimental evidence can be considered relevant and what not. First, prediction must be defined in such a way that what is called prediction is clearly about the future; environmental input which is likely to be upcoming or encountered soon.

This means that phenomena and processes that are retrospective or retrodictive, that is, utilize information to explain the past, should not more or less arbitrarily be called prediction. Second, prediction must be defined in an inclusive way such that phenomena and approaches that are clearly about the future are not more or less arbitrarily excluded from the discussion. In consideration of these requirements, prediction in the present book is defined as the conscious or subconscious use of information from previous experiences for the conscious or subconscious processing of information about future states of the body and environment.

The predictive mind makes use of two broadly distinct collections of cognitive systems, types of processing, or families of cognitive operations: an implicit (priming) system and an explicit and active ‘smart route’ to prediction. Though theorists differ greatly in what they mean by two systems and dual processing accounts, there is considerable agreement among most behavioral scientists about the general distinctions. System 1 is assumed to be unconscious, fast, implicit, automatic, and reflexive whereas System 2 is conscious, slow, explicit, controlled, and reflective.

This chapter provides an overview of empirical support for Construction Grammar in the form of behavioral evidence, that is, information derived from the behavior of language users on certain tasks, typically through controlled experiments. Three types of evidence are discussed in particular: (i) evidence from language comprehension tasks that syntactic patternsconvey meaning independently of individual lexical items, (ii) evidence that constructions prime each other both in form and in meaning, and (iii) evidence that grammar consists of a network of related constructions of varying degrees of generality. Many of the cited studies come from the psycholinguistic literature, and even though they were originally not necessarily framed in terms of constructions, their findings are largely in line with the constructional approach. Throughout the discussion, it will be shown how these findings provide evidence for some of the core tenets of Construction Grammar.

This chapter discusses the role of frequency for Construction Grammar, especially concerning usage-based models of language, and offers definitions of different aspects of frequency, namely token frequency, type frequency, relative frequency, frequency of co-occurrence, and dispersion. It discusses how these aspects can be measured on the basis of corpus data, and how these measurements allow the observation of frequency effects that relate to phenomena such as entrenchment, ease of processing, productivity, phonological reduction, and resistance to regularization. These effects are illustrated by experimental and corpus-based analyses of lexical, morphological, and syntactic constructions. The chapter also addresses open questions regarding the role of frequency in constructionist research. Not only is the relation between corpus frequencies and theoretical notions such as entrenchment far from trivial, it is also important not to attribute effects to token frequency that can be explained by other, correlating variables. The chapter will also examine strategies that can reach beyond the use of frequency values in the future development of Construction Grammar.

What is memory? Scientists have proposed a wide variety of spatial metaphors to understand it. These range from the 2D wax tablets proposed by Plato and Aristotle and subsequently Freud, with his magic writing pad, to the 3D physical spaces that one can walk around inside, such as the subway of Collins and Quillian. If memory has such a spatial structure, then it suggests a simple rule: items in memory can be near or far from one another. Anything with a near-and-far structure lends itself to a network representation. Such spatial structure also lends itself to being in the wrong place at the wrong time: remembering things that never happened and forgetting things that did. This chapter explores how structure facilitates memories and also looks at a specific case of false memory to highlight how modeling the process of spreading activation on networks can enrich our understanding of structure beyond degree.

Sequential effects are among the most robust phenomena observed in psychological experiments; judgments that may be made independently are influenced by prior judgments when made in a sequence, even when doing so is suboptimal. Over the years, models of sequential effects that are observed in categorization, recognition, absolute identification, and short-term priming experiments were developed by different researchers at different times, each apparently unaware of the others. Nevertheless, all models of sequential effects developed within the framework of the General Theory converged on the same assumption: information used to make one judgment carries over to influence the judgment made on a subsequent trial. These models and relevant data are presented.

Coherence is such an essential aspect of writing that 100% of judges agreed an essay was well written, based exclusively on it including a thesis sentence. However, coherence also holds the key to ensuring readers interpret your evidence precisely as you want them to. Moreover, coherence relies on essential features of our memories, specifically priming, primacy, and recency effects. Writers can harness the power of priming and primacy by introducing overviews of a paragraph’s main point in the first three sentences. And they can leverage the power of titles to provide readers with the context they so desperately need, regardless of what they read.

This chapter covers the media, race, and politics. It begins by introducing the key concepts of priming, framing, and agenda-setting. It then offers a history of the use of race in electoral campaigns highlighting the difference between racially explicit and racially implicit frames on crime, welfare, and other policy areas. That history includes the progression from a Republican ‘Southern Strategy” focused primarily on race and African Americans to one increasingly focused on immigration and religion in recent years. The chapter then turns to different assessments of the impact of these campaigns. Excerpts cover media conglomeration and the debate over whether the media has a liberal bias and/or an anti-minority bias.

In this chapter, we discuss both the structural and the packaging perspectives in conceptual terms. It is worth noting that the communications literature is diffuse and poorly integrated. Some of it reads more like self-help books. To be fair, it does draw on many different disciplines – some more rigorous; others less so. As such, our purpose here is to provide a clear framework for the pollster and practitioner. There is considerable art and creativity to effective communications. Look at Cannes Lion every year- the Oscars of the PR and Marketing world. There is incredible creativity in the crafting of impactful messages. But public opinion is public opinion – with a few basic compositional truths. By nailing them down, the pollster is able to provide structure to the communications process.

The 2020 presidential campaign occurred in the midst of the first worldwide pandemic in 100 years. The pandemic engulfed the United States for the entire length of the campaign and the incumbent president was hospitalized with the virus at the height of the fall campaign. In this chapter, we show that people’s concern about the coronavirus pandemic increased significantly after Trump contracted COVID-19. Furthermore, and consistent with the citizen-centered theory of campaigns, we find that psychological predispositions, along with political and demographic characteristics, substantively and significantly predict changes in worry about the coronavirus from September to October. For instance, people high in authoritarianism and conflict avoidance become significantly more worried about the coronavirus pandemic from September to October. Finally, we show that people are more likely to consider assessments of the candidates’ competence for dealing with the coronavirus when developing overall evaluations of the candidates in October – after Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis – compared to September.