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Accessing singular antecedents in conjoined phrases

J E Albrecht1, C Clifton

  • 1Texas Tech University, Lubbock, USA.

Memory & Cognition
|June 4, 1998
PubMed
Summary

Processing singular pronouns linked to conjoined noun phrases (NPs) requires extra time. This processing cost for NPs is similar, whether or not a distracting antecedent is present, impacting reading speed.

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Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Computational Linguistics

Background:

  • Understanding pronoun resolution is key to text comprehension.
  • Conjoined noun phrases (NPs) present unique challenges for antecedent identification.
  • Previous research has explored pronoun processing with simple antecedents.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the cognitive load of processing singular pronouns with conjoined noun phrase antecedents.
  • To determine how the structure of conjoined NPs affects pronoun resolution.
  • To examine the influence of potential distractors on pronoun-antecedent binding.

Main Methods:

  • Two experiments utilizing whole-sentence reading times and eyetracking.
  • Analysis of processing times when antecedents were split from conjoined NPs.
  • Comparison of processing costs with and without gender-appropriate distractors.

Main Results:

  • Reading times increased when splitting conjoined NPs to access a single antecedent.
  • Processing costs were comparable regardless of the presence of a distracting antecedent.
  • Eyetracking revealed delayed processing difficulty when distractors were present, compared to immediate difficulty without distractors.

Conclusions:

  • Splitting conjoined noun phrases (NPs) for pronoun resolution incurs a measurable processing cost.
  • The presence of a plausible distractor delays the recognition of this processing difficulty.
  • Findings support scenario-based models of text comprehension, highlighting the role of context in antecedent selection.

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