COMPREHENSION AND USE OF ANAPHORIC DEVICES IN YOUNG AND OLDER ADULTS

In telling and retelling stories older adults produce more instances o f ambiguous reference than young adults. The four experiments reported here suggest that this increase in ambiguous reference is not caused by age- or cohort-related differences in (a) knowledge structures need ed to determine coreference based on plausibility, (b) availability or weighting of strategies for using anaphoric devices, or (c) assumptio ns about the degree of specificity needed by discourse partners to est ablish clarity of reference.