Levels of representation in the interpretation of anaphoric reference and instrument inference

Abstract

The level of representation accessed when inferences are made during sentence comprehension was examined. The inferences investigated included antecedent assignment for both definite noun phrase anaphors and pronouns and also instrument inferences. In making these inferences, a listener must access the inferred element, whether an antecedent or an instrument, in either a linguistic form representation or a discourse model. The level of representation involved in these inferences was determined by exploiting differences in the lexical decision and naming tasks, which were argued to exhibit differential sensitivity to representationallevels. In three experiments, the priming of antecedent and instrument targets in the lexical decision task was compared with priming of the same targets in the naming task. Differences in the patterns of activation across the two tasks indicated that all three types of inferences required accessing elements in a discourse model. Three control experiments ruled out simple context or congruity checking as an explanation for our results. The following conclusions were also supported by these studies:(1) Antecedent assignment occurs immediately after processing an anaphor; (2) antecedent assignment involves inhibition for the inappropriate antecedent rather than facilitation for the appropriate antecedent; (3) although subjects do not make instrument inferences when they hear isolated sentences containing verbs that strongly imply certain instruments, the inferences are made when sentences are preceded by a context that mentions the instrument. 611Understanding sentences in discourse involves integrating information in the sentence currently processed with information in a memory representation of the previous discourse. Sometimes the need for integration is explicitly marked, as when a sentence contains an anaphoric expression. Often it is less explicit (and necessary for maintaining coherence), as when actions mentioned in the sentence imply agents or instruments that were mentioned earlier in the discourse. A great deal of psycholinguistic research has been devoted to investigating how often, at what point in the sentence, and under what circumstances integrative processes occur. A basic question that has received relatively little attention, though, is that of the form of the representation involved in integrative processes. Although a common assumption is that integrating an element in the currently processed sentence requires changing the activation of an element in a memory representaThe research presented here was supporte<! by National Science Foundation Grants BNS-8217378 and BNS-8617738 to Michael Tanenhaus and Greg Carlson and by a Wellesley College Faculty Award to Margery Lucas. We are grateful to Robert Peterson and several anonymous reviewers for their many helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. We also thankCindy Nichols and Marlon Housman for their help in conducting the research and Sharon Utakis for her help in analyzing the data. Special thanks to Roby...

Comprehending conceptual anaphors in Spanish

“…Some empirical research has indicated that the comprehension of deep anaphors involves accessing elements in a discourse model (e.g. Lucas, Tanenhaus, & Carlson, 1990;Tanenhaus, Carlson, & Seidenberg, 1985). However, other experiments have shown that mental models have a role in the interpretation of ellipses (Garnham & Oakhill, 1987;1989), and that a surface representation is involved in the interpretation of pronouns or deep anaphors (Carreiras et al, in press).…”

The effect of foregrounding on readers’ use of predictive inferences

“…Because of the presumed susceptibility of lexical decision to context checking, Potts et al argued that the naming data yielded the more valid results. However, Lucas et al (1990) found that lexical decision times, as used in research to study on-line inference generation, are not affected by context checks. Because the materials used by Potts et al, foregrounded the concept relevant to the inference only 30% of the time, it seems likely that only the lexical decision task was sensitive enough to detect the predictive inferences in their study.…”

“…Forster (1979) suggested that because the lexical decision task requires a binary decision it is more subject than naming to a postaccess context-checking procedure (however, cf. Lucas et al, 1990). Briefly, the notion is that a check for semantic congruity with a preceding context can serve as a source of evidence for the "yes" or "no" response.…”

“…Data obtained by Lucas, Tanenhaus, and Carlson (1990) shed light on why the naming tasks may be insensitive to elaborative inferences. Lucas et al compared the lexical decision task and the naming task in terms of how well they detected activation of instrumental inferences and the antecedents of anaphors.…”

“…Only when the results of the two experiments were combined did priming in the coherence condition reach significance for both subjects and items. Therefore, even when the context was such that subjects were expected to consistently make the appropriate bridging inference, it was difficult to detect the inferences with the naming task.Data obtained by Lucas, Tanenhaus, and Carlson (1990) shed light on why the naming tasks may be insensitive to elaborative inferences. Lucas et al compared the lexical decision task and the naming task in terms of how well they detected activation of instrumental inferences and the antecedents of anaphors.…”