Cl. Leonard et al., THE INFLUENCE OF CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION ON THE RESOLUTION OF AMBIGUOUS PRONOUNS BY YOUNGER AND OLDER ADULTS, Applied psycholinguistics, 18(3), 1997, pp. 293-317
Two experiments were conducted with the purpose of investigating possi
ble age effects on the abilities of older and younger adults to use co
ntextual information to resolve ambiguous pronouns. In both experiment
s, subjects were presented with pairs of sentences (a leading sentence
followed by a pronominal sentence) and were required to indicate the
referent of the ambiguous pronoun. In both experiments, the older adul
ts responded more slowly and were less accurate than the younger adult
s. However, both groups of subjects were equally influenced by the con
textual information available, which was located in the leading senten
ce to aid in the resolution of the pronouns. Older adults did not demo
nstrate a specific impairment in the ability to use contextual informa
tion to resolve ambiguous pronouns. Nevertheless, age-related difficul
ties in resolving pronouns may emerge, possibly as a function of an un
derspecified discourse model.