Processing pronouns without antecedents: evidence from event-related brain potentials

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Computational Linguistics

Background:

• Pronouns lacking explicit antecedents typically pose processing challenges.
• The pronoun 'they' can be easily processed even without a clear antecedent, unlike singular pronouns 'he' or 'she'.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the processing differences between plural 'they' and singular 'he/she' when antecedents are absent.
• To explore the cognitive mechanisms underlying pronoun resolution using event-related brain potentials (ERPs).

Main Methods:

• Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read sentences.
• Sentences featured pronouns ('they' vs. 'he/she') in contexts with or without explicit antecedents.
• Analysis focused on ERP components like fronto-central positivity and N400 deflection.

Main Results:

• A larger fronto-central positivity (750 ms post-pronoun onset) for 'he/she' compared to 'they' when no antecedent was present, suggesting greater difficulty in referent establishment for singular pronouns.
• A larger N400-like deflection for 'he/she' than 'they', irrespective of antecedent presence, indicating higher integration effort for singular pronouns.

Conclusions:

• Singular pronouns ('he/she') necessitate greater cognitive resources for referent identification and integration compared to the plural pronoun ('they').
• These findings highlight fundamental differences in the language processor's handling of singular versus plural pronouns.