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. 2007 May;56(4):521-536.
doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2006.09.007.

The effect of additional characters on choice of referring expression: Everyone counts

Jennifer Arnold  1 , Zenzi M Griffin
Affiliations

The effect of additional characters on choice of referring expression: Everyone counts

Jennifer Arnold et al. J Mem Lang. 2007 May.

Abstract

Two story-telling experiments examine the process of choosing between pronouns and proper names in speaking. Such choices are traditionally attributed to speakers striving to make referring expressions maximally interpretable to addressees. The experiments revealed a novel effect: even when a pronoun would not be ambiguous, the presence of another character in the discourse decreased pronoun use and increased latencies to refer to the most prominent character in the discourse. In other words, speakers were more likely to call Minnie Minnie than shewhen Donald was also present. Even when the referent character appeared alone in the stimulus picture, the presence of another character in the preceding discourse reduced pronouns. Furthermore, pronoun use varied with features associated with the speaker's degree of focus on the preceding discourse (e.g., narrative style and disfluency). We attribute this effect to competition for attentional resources in the speaker's representation of the discourse.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Examples of visual stimuli for the pilot experiment. Left: Two-character, different-gender context; middle: Two-character, same-gender context; right: Single-character filler.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Examples of visual stimuli for Experiments 1 and 2. Left: Two-character, different-gender context; middle: Single-character context, right: Two/one context for Experiment 2.
Figure 3
Figure 3
For Experiment 1, mean percentage of pronouns and mean latencies for references collapsing over expression. Bars represent 95% confidence intervals around the differences between the means, calculated from the participants’ analysis.
Figure 4
Figure 4
For Experiment 2, mean percentage of pronouns and mean latencies for references collapsing over expression. Bars represent 95% confidence intervals around the differences between the means, calculated from the participants’ analysis.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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