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Comparing the Frequency Effect Between the Lexical Decision and Naming Tasks in Chinese
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Antecedent frequency effects during the processing of pronouns
Roger P G van Gompel1, Asifa Majid
1Department of Psychology, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN, Scotland, UK. r.p.g.vangompel@dundee.ac.uk
Cognition
|December 12, 2003
Summary
Pronoun processing speed is influenced by antecedent frequency. Infrequent antecedents lead to faster reading times, supporting a saliency account of pronoun resolution in reading.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Psychology
- Computational Linguistics
Background:
- Understanding pronoun resolution is key to cognitive science.
- Lexical frequency of antecedents may impact pronoun processing ease.
- Existing models offer differing predictions for this effect.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of antecedent lexical frequency on pronoun processing.
- To test the predictions of saliency accounts versus lexical access accounts.
Main Methods:
- An eye-movement reading experiment was conducted.
- Participants read sentences where pronoun antecedents varied in lexical frequency.
- Reading times were measured to assess processing ease.
Main Results:
- Reading times following pronouns with infrequent antecedents were significantly faster.
- This finding contrasts with predictions from models emphasizing full lexical access.
Conclusions:
- Infrequent antecedents are more salient, facilitating faster pronoun resolution.
- Results support saliency-based accounts of pronoun processing.
- Findings challenge models that require extensive lexical property retrieval for pronoun resolution.
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