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

Filik, R., Sanford, A. J. and Leuthold, H. (2008) Processing pronouns without antecedents: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience(20), pp. 1315-1326.

Abstract

Pronouns that do not have explicit antecedents typically cause processing problems. We investigate a specific example in which this may not be the case, as in 'At the interview, they asked really difficult questions', where the plural pronoun 'they' has no explicit antecedent, yet is intuitively easy to process. Some unspecified but constrained set of individuals (the interview panel, or the company) can be inferred as the referent, but it is not crucial to determine specifically which entities are being referred to. We propose that this contrasts with the processing of singular pronouns ('he' or 'she'), for which it is necessary to determine a specific referent. We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate how readers process the pronoun ('they' vs. 'he/she') in these cases. Sentences were placed in a context that either did or did not contain an explicit antecedent for the pronoun. There were two key findings. Firstly, when there was no explicit antecedent, a larger frontocentral positivity was observed 750ms after pronoun onset for 'he/she' than 'they', possibly reflecting the additional difficulty involved in establishing a referent for 'he/she' than for 'they' when no explicit referent is available. Secondly, there was a larger N400-like deflection evoked by 'he/she' than 'they', regardless of whether or not there was an explicit antecedent for the pronoun. We suggest that this is due to the singular pronouns bringing about a greater integration effort than the plural pronoun. This observation adds to a growing body of research revealing fundamental differences in the way these pronouns are handled by the language processor.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Leuthold, Prof Hartmut
• Authors: Filik, R., Sanford, A. J., and Leuthold, H.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Psychology
• Journal Name: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience