National Taiwan Normal University
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454 publication date:Jun, 2014
The development of pronoun resolution for Chinese young readers: The effects of order of mention and gender semantic features
    Author:Chiu-Hua Huang, Wei-Ming Luh, Yuh-Tsuen Tzeng
Research Article

 Pronoun resolution is important for readers to build a coherent mental representation. However, earlier studies were limited to European languages. Not much is known about the process in Chinese language and even little about the developmental trajectories among Chinese readers. We investigate how the order of mention and gender semantic features may affect Chinese readers’ pronoun resolution and explore their development through a 3-way ANOVA mixed design. The effects of order of mention (first/second-mention) and gender semantic features (he/she) on pronoun resolution for 2nd to 5th graders were examined. A total of 206 participants participated. The results indicate that children in higher grades have higher rate of correct answer in pronoun resolution. Moreover, the higher the childrens grades, the less time they need to read sentence with pronouns. This pattern only appears, however, when the grade-groups are two or more years apart. In addition, the reading times of the first-mentioned were shorter than those of the second-mentioned when “he” referred to the first-mentioned protagonist for the 3rd graders; hence, first mention advantage is observed. Furthermore, for 2nd and 3rd graders, a recency effect appeared when children tried to resolve “she”. For 4th and 5th graders, their accuracy rates were usually above 90%, indicating that they have mastered the use of gender semantic features for this age, and there were no significant effects on order of mention or gender semantic features.



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關鍵詞: gender semantic features, order-of-mention, pronoun resolution, the advantage of first mention

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