Anaphoric inference during reading.

Abstract

Three experiments provide evidence that an anaphoric noun phrase reinstates its antecedent in the course of comprehension. Subjects read a series of texts each containing a target item. Immediately after the last line of each text, the item was probed using a recognition task in Experiment 1 and a naming task in Experiment 2. Subjects were faster to respond to the item when the last line contained an anaphoric reference to it than when the last line referred to a different item from the text. Additional control conditions ensured that the effect was not due to semantic priming and that the probed item was not in working memory when the last line was encountered. A third experiment suggested that previous evidence for reinstatement reflected interference from a change of topic in the last line rather than facilitation due to reinstatement of the probed item.