Coreference and lexical repetition: Mechanisms of discourse integration

Abstract

The use of repeated expressions to establish coreference allows an investigation of the relationship between basic processes of word recognition and higher level language processes that involve the integration of information into a discourse model. In two experiments on reading, we used eye tracking and event-related potentials to examine whether repeated expressions that are coreferential within a local discourse context show the kind of repetition priming that is shown in lists of words. In both experiments, the effects of lexical repetition were modulated by the effects of local discourse context that arose from manipulations of the linguistic prominence of the antecedent of a coreferentially repeated name. These results are interpreted within the context of discourse prominence theory, which suggests that processes of coreferential interpretation interact with basic mechanisms of memory integration during the construction of a model of discourse.

A Direct Comparison of N400 Effects of Predictability and Incongruity in Adjective-Noun Combination

“…However, a number of previous studies using sentence contexts have reported N400 effects of semantic integration difficulty when cloze probability was relatively well-matched [23,24,25,26,67,68,69]. Although in each individual case one might argue that predictability or association was not perfectly controlled, taken together the results lend support to the idea that integration difficulty does modulate the N400 to some extent.…”

“…None of these results provided clear evidence that semantic integration processes do not also modulate the N400 independent of memory access processes, and in fact several studies have argued that they do [13,23,24,25,26]. These have motivated multiple generator accounts in which both access and integration processes contribute to the amplitude of the N400 response.…”

Processing anaphoric constructions: Insights from electrophysiological studies

“…an N400), a repeated NP elicits a smaller amplitude similar negativity (Anderson & Holcomb, 2005;Camblin, Ledoux, Boudewyn, Gordon, & Swaab, 2006, for Experiment 2 using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), but c.f. Experiment 1 using auditory presentation; Ledoux, Gordon, Camblin, & Swaab, 2007), and a synonym or a bridged NP (i.e. a new but related referent inferentially licensed by the discourse context) elicits a similar negativity with an amplitude somewhere in between (Anderson & Holcomb, 2005;Burkhardt, 2006).…”

Comment les jeunes élèves apprennent-ils à jongler avec les occurrences de références en production narrative : une étude en temps réel

“…La première, généralement désignée sous le terme d'antécédent, introduit l'entité dans le texte et la deuxième, l'anaphore, renvoie à l'antécédent ou première mention du référent 2 (Ledoux, Gordon, Camblin, & Swaab, 2007). Exemple 1 : a) Jean joue au ballon dans la cour de récréation et [Jean/il/le jeune homme] marque un joli but ; b) Jean joue au ballon dans la cour de récréation.…”