Implicit causality and discourse focus: The interaction of text and readercharacteristics in pronoun resolution

We conducted this study to examine how pronoun resolution is affected by th e implicit causality inherent in certain verbs. In three probe-recognition experiments, we found that the implicit causality effect depended on import ant characteristics of the reader and of the stimuli. First, only skilled r eaders showed an early effect of implicit causality on pronoun resolution, responding faster to names that matched the causal bias of the verb than to names that did not match. implicit causality influenced less skilled rende rs' performance at the end of the sentence, when they integrated informatio n from the two clauses. Second, the implicit causality effect exhibited by skilled readers was limited to NP2 verbs, those verbs in which the implied cause of the event was the grammatical object of the sentence. In order to explore why the effect was limited to NP2 verbs, we examined a small corpus of natural texts. We found that NP2 verbs were better predictors of the su bsequent mention of the implied cause than were NP1 verbs. (C) 2000 Academi c Press.