Abstract
Most theories of coreference specify linguistic factors that modulate antecedent accessibility in memory; however, whether nonlinguistic factors also affect coreferential access is unknown. Here we examined the impact of a nonlinguistic generation task (letter-transposition) on the repeated-name penalty, a processing difficulty observed when coreferential repeated names refer to syntactically prominent (and thus more accessible) antecedents. In Experiment 1, generation improved online (event-related potentials) and offline (recognition memory) accessibility of names in word lists. In Experiment 2, we manipulated generation and syntactic prominence of antecedent names in sentences; both improved online and offline accessibility, but only syntactic prominence elicited a repeated-name penalty. Our results have three important implications: (1) the form of a referential expression interacts with an antecedent's status in the discourse model during coreference; (2) availability in memory and referential accessibility are separable; and (3) theories of coreference must better integrate known properties of the human memory system.
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