Less is more: Probabilistic reduction is best explained by small-scale predictability measures
Computation and Language
2026-01-07 v2
Abstract
The primary research questions of this paper center on defining the amount of context that is necessary and/or appropriate when investigating the relationship between language model probabilities and cognitive phenomena. We investigate whether whole utterances are necessary to observe probabilistic reduction and demonstrate that n-gram representations suffice as cognitive units of planning.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.23659,
title = {Less is more: Probabilistic reduction is best explained by small-scale predictability measures},
author = {Cassandra L. Jacobs and Andrés Buxó-Lugo and Anna K. Taylor and Marie Leopold-Hooke},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.23659},
year = {2026}
}