Prenominal adjectives and the disambiguation of anaphoric nouns

Abstract

Two experiments are described in which subjects read short passages containing an adjective-category noun reference (e.g., wooden toy) to an antecedent in the text (wooden block). In half the passages a nonantecedent example of the category also appeared in the text (rubber ball). The presence of this nonantecedent distractor generally slowed reading time for the anaphoric reference, but this interference effect interacted with the typicality of the examples. No interference effect was obtained when the antecedent was a typical example of the adjective-category phrase and the nonantecedent distractor was not typical. The results suggest that, while prenominal adjectives can be used to select the intended antecedent quickly, the adjectives do not actually prevent the nonantecedent distractors from being accessed.