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2015 ; 6
(ä): 1746
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Backward- and Forward-Looking Potential of Anaphors
#MMPMID26635660
Schumacher PB
; Backhaus J
; Dangl M
Front Psychol
2015[]; 6
(ä): 1746
PMID26635660
show ga
Personal pronouns and demonstratives contribute differently to the encoding of
information in the mental model and they serve distinct backward- and
forward-looking functions. While (unstressed) personal pronouns are the default
means to indicate coreference with the most prominent discourse entity
(backward-looking function) and typically mark the maintenance of the current
topic, demonstratives are used to refer to a less prominent entity and serve the
additional forward-looking function of signaling a possible topic shift. In
Experiment 1, we present an ERP study that examines the time course of processing
personal and d-pronouns in German (er vs. der) and assesses the impact of two
prominence features of the antecedent, thematic role and sentential position, as
well as neurophysiological correlates of backward- and forward-looking functions
of referential expressions. We tested the comprehension of personal and
d-pronouns following context sentences containing two potential antecedents. In
addition to the factor pronoun type (er vs. der), we varied the verb type (active
accusative verbs vs. dative experiencer verbs) and the thematic role order
(canonical vs. non-canonical) in the context sentences to vary the antecedent's
prominence. Time-locked to pronoun-onset, the ERPs revealed a general biphasic
N400-Late Positivity for d-pronouns over personal pronouns with further subtle
interactions of the prominence-lending cues in the early time window. The
findings indicate that the calculation of the referential candidates' prominence
(backward-looking function) is guided by thematic role and positional
information. Thematic role information, in combination with initial position,
thus represents a central predictor during referential processing. Coreference
with a less prominent entity (assumed for d-pronouns) results in processing costs
(N400). The additional topic shift signaled by d-pronouns (forward-looking
function) results in attentional reorienting (Late Positivity). This is further
supported by Experiment 2, a story continuation study, which showed that personal
pronouns trigger topic maintenance, while d-pronouns yield topic shifts.