Processing anomalous anaphors

Previous researchers have demonstrated that readers may engage in shallow, or incomplete, processing when the semantic overlap between current information and previously encountered information is high. The present study investigated whether these effects would occur during processing of unambiguous noun phrase anaphors, for which there was only a single possible antecedent. Participants read passages containing anaphors that were correct, incorrect but highly related, or incorrect and low-related, with respect to previously encountered information. The time required to process the anaphor was a function of the goodness of fit between the anaphor and the antecedent; anaphors that were incorrect but highly related to the antecedent were processed more quickly than those that were incorrect and low-related. This occurred regardless of the distance between the anaphor and the antecedent. However, reading times results from a spillover sentence indicated that readers subsequently validated the anaphor against the information in memory, resulting in continued processing difficulty for both the incorrect-high- and –low-related anaphor conditions. The results are consistent with a three-stage comprehension model in which information is activated, integrated on the basis of its goodness of fit with the contents of working memory, and then validated against information in long-term memory.

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