It's pretty much self-evident when you worked with 3-6 that this isn't how it work. The idea come before the vocalization.

Or even when you talk in a foreign language you're semi-competent with.

I’ve spent many years with infants and learned 3 languages aside from my mother tongue. I don’t find it self-evident at all.

You’re gonna need to elaborate why you think so if you’re willing to convince someone.

That the idea form before it's vocalized?

A three year old reaching toward any toy, then saying 'mine!'.

Stumbling on a specific word, stopping your sentence, then proceed to replace it with a combination of words.

Or any time you paraphrase basically.

Not true in my experience. To me, words come first, the idea is a consequence I realize after a few of them have been stringed together.

Knowing where the words come from, how “the brain” knows the next one before my conscious self does has always been a mystery to me. I’ve heard Sam Harris describing a similar feeling in his podcast.

You never paraphrased something despite knowing the exact word?

[edit] Or explained high level CS concepts to an undergrad at your school?

Sure, but how's that indicative that prediction isn't taking place?

I have the idea before i have thought of the word i would use to express it. Sometimes, i don't even have word to express it, "you know what i mean?".

And like i said. Children will often act, then talk. Or seek their words for long period of time, and when you propose a word to help them vocalize, they can accept it or reject it.

I have another example. Do you ever have slip of the tongue? You're talking about "yoga", tell yourself while speaking "i really shouldn't say 'yoda' here", and say the word "yoda" anyway? This happened to me a lot when i was younger (my speed of thought is lower those days, i don't think i slipped this way in two or three years). I still think a bit faster than i speak tbh.

All of that happens to me as well. I just don’t see how it couldn’t be explained by prediction from probability distribution.

The fact that you can’t find a word could be that you’re stuck in a Markov chain wall or loop:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34688673

The thing is, we just don’t know how any of that work. Our speculation is as good as any.