Across the Levels of Analysis: Explaining Predictive Processing in Humans Requires More Than Machine-Estimated Probabilities

Sathvik Nair; Colin Phillips

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arXiv · 2604.09466

Across the Levels of Analysis: Explaining Predictive Processing in Humans Requires More Than Machine-Estimated Probabilities

Sathvik Nair·Colin Phillips

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Abstract

Under the lens of Marr's levels of analysis, we critique and extend two claims about language models (LMs) and language processing: first, that predicting upcoming linguistic information based on context is central to language processing, and second, that many advances in psycholinguistics would be impossible without large language models (LLMs). We further outline future directions that combine the strengths of LLMs with psycholinguistic models.

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Sathvik Nair, Colin Phillips. 2026-04-10. Across the Levels of Analysis: Explaining Predictive Processing in Humans Requires More Than Machine-Estimated Probabilities. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09466

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