A fan effect in anaphor processing: effects of multiple distractors.
Kevin S Autry1, William H Levine1
1Department of Psychological Science, University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR, USA.
Frontiers in Psychology
|August 15, 2014
Summary
Multiple non-referents create a cumulative interference effect, impacting anaphor resolution accuracy and speed. However, increased referent numbers surprisingly decreased anaphor reading times, warranting further investigation.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Computational Linguistics
Background:
- Anaphor resolution is crucial for language comprehension.
- Non-referents sharing a category with the intended referent can impede this process.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the cumulative interference effect (fan effect) of multiple non-referents on anaphor resolution.
- To examine how the number of potential referents influences recognition accuracy and reading times.
Main Methods:
- Five experiments were conducted, employing probe-recognition tasks and reading time measures.
- Participants encountered varying numbers of potential referents (two to five) in different experimental conditions.
- Within-subjects designs were utilized in later experiments to confirm initial findings.
Main Results:
- A cumulative interference effect was observed: increased non-referents led to decreased accuracy and slower recognition.
- Contrary to predictions, increased potential referents resulted in decreased anaphor reading times.
- Results ruled out speeded-reading strategies and confirmed that participants were actively resolving anaphors.
Conclusions:
- Multiple non-referents demonstrably produce a cumulative interference effect on anaphor resolution.
- The observed decrease in anaphor reading times requires further research to fully understand its implications.
- Findings contribute to models of language comprehension and memory retrieval during discourse processing.
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