Coreference and lexical repetition: mechanisms of discourse integration

The use of repeated expressions to establish coreference allows an investigation of the relationship between basic processes of word recognition and higher level language processes that involve the integration of information into a discourse model. In two experiments on reading, we used eye tracking and event-related potentials to examine whether repeated expressions that are coreferential within a local discourse context show the kind of repetition priming that is shown in lists of words. In both experiments, the effects of lexical repetition were modulated by the effects of local discourse context that arose from manipulations of the linguistic prominence of the antecedent of a coreferentially repeated name. These results are interpreted within the context of discourse prominence theory, which suggests that processes of coreferential interpretation interact with basic mechanisms of memory integration during the construction of a model of discourse.