Individual Differences in Print Exposure Predict Use of Implicit Causality in Pronoun Comprehension and Referential Prediction

Abstract

In three experiments, we measured individual patterns of pronoun comprehension (Experiments 1 and 2) and referential prediction (Experiment 3) in implicit causality (IC) contexts and compared these with a measure of participants’ print exposure (Author Recognition Task; ART). Across all three experiments, we found that ART interacted with verb bias, such that participants with higher scores demonstrated a stronger semantic bias, i.e., they tended to select the pronoun or predict the re-mention of the character that was congruent with an implicit cause interpretation. This suggests that print exposure changes the way language is processed at the discourse level, and in particular, that it is related to implicit cause sensitivity.

Discourse‐level adaptation in pronoun comprehension

“…Johnson & Arnold, 2021;Rohde & Kehler, 2014;Stevenson et al, 1994). Moreover, the pronoun 'she' in these examples occurs in subject position.…”

“…For example, participants are guided by the semantic roles of potential antecedents. In ‘Ana received a text from Liz and then she…’, Ana is the goal of the transfer event, which further increases the chance that comprehenders will assign the pronoun to Ana (in contrast with ‘Ana sent a text to Liz and then she…’; Langlois & Arnold, 2020; for a description of this and other semantic biases see Kehler et al., 2008; Hartshorne et al., 2015; Johnson & Arnold, 2021; Rohde & Kehler, 2014; Stevenson et al., 1994). Moreover, the pronoun ‘she’ in these examples occurs in subject position.…”

Prediction of successful reanalysis based on eye-blink rate and reading times in sentences with local ambiguity

“…However, such group analyses, even when supplemented with random effects of participants, very likely obscure differences between comprehenders, making it impossible to discover individual effects and processing strategies (e.g., Staub, 2021; Vasishth et al, 2019). Given this, in recent years there is a growing interest in the nature of individual differences in sentence processing (e.g., Cunnings & Fujita, 2021; Freed et al, 2017; James et al, 2018; Johnson & Arnold, 2021; Kim et al, 2018; Novick et al, 2009; Payne & Federmeier, 2019; among others). These studies have shown that language processing is modulated by individual differences in cognitive abilities such as verbal working memory (WM) and cognitive control, as well as by differences in intelligence, language experience, and speed of processing.…”

The frequency of referential patterns guides pronoun comprehension.

“…One way to explore whether exposure matters is by examining how people’s lifetime experience with language relates to their ambiguous pronoun interpretations. Several studies (Arnold et al, 2018; Johnson & Arnold, 2021; Langlois & Arnold, 2020) have done so by using the author recognition task (ART; Acheson et al, 2008; Stanovich & West, 1989; Moore & Gordon, 2015) as a proxy measure for how much print exposure someone has had over their lifetime. In the ART, participants identify author names from a selection of both real and fake author names.…”

“…., Liz is judged to be the more probable referent because she is the likely cause of Ana's admiration. This is an example of implicit causality, which has been shown to influence the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns (e.g., Garvey & Caramazza, 1974;Johnson & Arnold, 2021;Kehler et al, 2008;Stevenson et al, 1994).…”