Active memory processes in visual sentence comprehension: Clause effects and pronominal reference

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to investigate active memory processes during reading. Subjects read two-clause sentences one word at a time at a self-paced rate. Following each sentence a probe word was presented; subjects were to decide if this word occurred in the sentence they had just read. The first experiment examined clausal effects during reading. Reaction times to items from the final clause were shorter than those to items from a previous clause even when the same number of words intervened. The second experiment used the clause effect to address the issue of proniminal reference. Results indicated that a pronoun in the final clause activated the meaning of its antecedent, thus demonstrating that the method is sensitive to both surface and meaning codes in active memory.The complex process through which readers turn printed symbols on a page into meanings has been the subject of much experimentation in both psychology and education. The present study investigates the role of active memory as one aspect of this comprehension process. The usage of the term "active memory" should be viewed as similar to that of "working memory" (cf. Baddeley & Hitch, 1974) or "operational memory" (cf. Posner, 1973) in the sense that it represents a control system with limits on both storage and processing capabilities. The aim of the present research is essentially twofold: To investigate the function of active memory during reading, and to develop a method through which the process can reliably be studied. Two experiments are reported here. The first investigated how active memory might be influenced by clausal boundaries in sentences, and it served to test and validate the method used. The second experiment employed this method to examine the issue of pronominal reference.Most of the research looking at active memory processes for linguistic materials has investigated the processing of auditorily presented stimuli. One of the major theories of sentence processing involving a conThis paper is based on a thesis submitted to the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree. Portions of this research were presented at the meeting of the Western Psychological Association in San Diego, California, on April 6, 1979. I would like to express my appreciation to Michael Posner for his support and guidance throughout this project. I am also grateful to Albert Corbett, Wayne Wickelgren, and Douglas Hintzman for their advice and comments on this research. This work was supported by There has been some experimental evidence supporting this contention. Jarvella (1971) presented listeners with short stories with instructions for comprehension. He interrupted the subjects at various points in the stories, and their task was to write down as much as they could remember verbatim. The results were that subjects' rote recall was best for the material in the clause immediately preceding the interruption and fell off markedly for material that occurred prior to that clause. He found a simila...

Surface information loss in comprehension

“…The strongest languagebased demonstrations of greater surface information loss after crossing constituent boundaries have been those where crossing boundaries was not confounded with other measures of the test interval. The stimuli in these studies were constructed so that the same number of items (words, clauses, or sentences) intervened between a target's original occurrence and its subsequent test whether or not a boundary was crossed (Caplan, 1972, Experiment 4;Chang, 1980, Experiment 1). To provide an equally strong nonverbal demonstration, the present stimuli were also constructed this way.…”

“…For example, a series of studies by Jarvella demonstrated that words in the most recently processed constituent had the highest probability of being remembered verbatim; such exact memory declined dramatically for words prior to the last constituent boundary (Jarvella, 1970(Jarvella, , 1971(Jarvella, , 1973(Jarvella, , 1979Jarvella & Herman, 1972;Jarvella, Snodgrass, & Adler, 1978; see also Marslen-Wilson & Tyler, 1976). Caplan (1972) and Chang (1980) demonstrated that a previously seen or heard word was verified more rapidly when the constituent structure of its sentence placed it in its final, as opposed to next-to-final clause. Clark and Sengul (1979) demonstrated that identifying the referent of a pronoun (she) or definite noun phrase (the woman) occurred more smoothly when the implied referent was explicitly mentioned in the previous clause; if mentioned even two clauses earlier, momentary processing difficulties were experienced.…”

“…In addition, the first sentence of a story's subepisode (or constituent) took longer to read than other sentences in the constituent (Haberlandt, 1980(Haberlandt, , 1984Haberlandt et al, 1980;Mandler & Goodman, 1982). Similarly, in experiments measuring the reading time for each word within a sentence, initial words took longer to read than subsequent words (Aaronson & Ferres, 1983;Aaronson & Scarborough, 1976;Chang, 1980). Moreover, the same word was read more slowly when it occurred at the beginning of a phrase than at the end (Aaronson & Scarborough, 1976).…”

The representation and processing of coreference in discourse

“…This view is in stark contrast to one emerging from probe-word tasks, a method in which subjects are asked to judge as quickly as possible whether a word has occurred in the preceding text (sentence or discourse). Studies using that technique have shown that repeated-name coreference speeds responses to probes consisting of the repeated name and slows responses to probes consisting of a name from the text that was not repeated; pronominal coreference does not immediately have such effects (Chang;Corbett & Chang, 1983; Gemsbacher, 1989;MacDonald & MacWhinney, 1990). In fact, one series of studies showed that pronouns have no effect on reponses to probe words leading to the conclusion that pronouns are not interpreted at all by the automatic processes responsible for basic understanding in reading (Greene, McKoon, & Ratcliff, 1992).…”

The Time Course of Anaphor Resolution: Effects of Implicit Verb Causality and Gender

“…The occurrence of an anaphoric pronoun appears to activate several candidate antecedents immediately at or after the pronoun (Corbett & Chang, 1983;1989;MacDonald & MacWhinney, 1990;Smyth, 1986;Tyler & Marslen-Wilson, 1982). However, several studies have found that at various time lags after the pronoun, the correct antecedent has become more available than the incorrect one (Chang, 1980;Gernsbacher, 1989;MacDonald & MacWhinney, 1990;Stevenson, 1986). Gernsbacher (1989) has proposed that the change in activation level of candidate antecedents over time can be explained by the enhancement of the correct antecedent and the active suppression of incorrect candidates.…”