On the interaction of age, cognitive abilities, print exposure and pronoun type in pronoun resolution

Abstract

Our study examines the impact of age differences in the interpretation of null and overt subject pronouns in referentially ambiguous sentences, while investigating at the same time the extent to which ambiguous anaphora resolution is affected by cognitive and print exposure measures. Older adults (n = 46) and younger adults (n = 62) were administered an online self-paced listening referent-choice task and a battery of cognitive measures including digit span, visual attention switching, as well as a print exposure. Pronoun resolution was found to be subject to age differences, however, the two pronouns were not equally affected. Referent preference radically changed with age for the null pronoun contexts only, while overt pronoun resolution patterns were similar across the two age groups. The groups’ performance is accounted for in terms of both age-related cognitive decline and the pronouns’ degree of morphophonological specification.