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SUMMARY:Anaphora resolution in young and not-so-young adults: the role of 
 language experience and cognitive skills - Ianthi Maria Tsimpli\, Universi
 ty of Cambridge
DTSTART:20151029T163000Z
DTEND:20151029T183000Z
UID:TALK60904@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Jamie Douglas
DESCRIPTION:Anaphora resolution (AR) is a phenomenon relevant to the inter
 face between language and cognition. As such\, issues of cognitive control
 \, processing resources and language experience\, such as print exposure\,
  may be relevant. Furthermore\, the effects of aging and individual differ
 ences in language or cognitive abilities may be more or less prominent dep
 ending on the pronominal form examined. I will present evidence from gaze 
 data and pronominal resolution for two overt anaphoric expressions in Gree
 k\, a typical null subject language: the overt pronoun ‘aftos’ (he) an
 d ‘o idios’ (lit. the same) in subject position. Previous self-paced r
 eading and listening studies have revealed an object antecedent preference
  for ‘aftos’\, while ‘idios’ has not been experimentally tested as
  yet. \n\n64 adults participated in an eyetracking experiment and were ask
 ed to express a preference for the referent of each pronoun in a sentence 
 embedded in a short story context. The sentences with the pronoun in subje
 ct position were preceded by a sentence where the potential subject and ob
 ject antecedents were presented in either SVO or OclVS word-order. We moni
 tored participants’ eye-movements\, referent attributes and response lat
 encies.\n\nParticipants were also tested on a series of non-verbal cogniti
 ve tasks as well as measures of language experience. Results indicate that
  younger participants are faster in response latencies and quicker to proc
 ess and integrate visual world and auditory information. \n\nNevertheless\
 , preferences are similar among participants in most of the conditions wit
 h subject antecedents being preferred. Further analyses reveal that langua
 ge experience boosts cognitive skills in older age and reduces the number 
 of ‘odd’ responses in the elderly. \n
LOCATION:GR06-7\, English Faculty\, 9 West Road (Sidgwick Site)
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