The Role of Global and Local Contexts in Pronoun Comprehension

Abstract

In discourse comprehension, the global and local contexts may influence the processing of words. Kintsch (1988) and Garrod et al. (2000) proposed two-stage models. They assumed that the local context influenced the processing of words at an early stage, whereas the global context played its role at the later stage of integration. Cook (2004) assumed that in the first stage of processing, a link could occur between the focal concept and the local or global contexts, depending on which one was reactivated more quickly. In the second stage, the link formed in the first stage was verified. Hess et al. (1995) suggested that the global and not the local context influenced the processing of words. When a pronoun appears in a discourse in which there are more than two antecedents, its comprehension may be influenced by the local and global contexts. Some studies (Garvey et al., 1974; Grober et al., 1978; Hirst et al., 1980; Miao Xiaochun et al., 1995, 1996a, 1996b) demonstrated that both the local and global contexts influenced pronoun comprehension. This paper explored the effects of the local and global contexts on pronoun comprehension and their relationship. Forty-six paid subjects participated in the study (18 and 24 in experiments 1 and 2 respectively). Twenty-four complex sentences were compiled, each of which contained a noun and a verbal phrase. The relationship between the noun and verbal phrases was typical or atypical. Twenty-four corresponding discourses, in which the 24 complex sentences were embedded, were then compiled, and the nouns were replaced by pronouns. Each discourse had a phrase as the local context. The global and local contexts were consistent or inconsistent with the verbal phrases. The materials were presented visually to the subjects, and they were requested to read the materials. Eye movements were recorded using a video-based eye tracker. A typicality effect was obtained in experiment 1. The results of the reading time for the interest areas suggested that the nouns were integrated with their typical actions more quickly than those were integrated with their atypical actions. In experiment 2, the results of the first-run dwell time for the interest areas suggested that the global and not the local contexts produced major effects. The results of the second-run dwell time for the interest areas suggested that both the global and local contexts produced marginal major effects. The results suggested that the global contexts and not the local contexts influenced pronoun comprehension at the early stage, while the local contexts influenced it at the later stage.