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Abstract:
The present study investigated event-related potential (ERP)
effects of pronoun and proper name anaphora in both parallel and
non-parallel discourse structures. Thirty-seven students processed
400 passages comprising two sentences. The first sentence
introduced a protagonist which was refered to by an anaphora in the
second sentence. The anaphora could either be a pronoun or a
repetition of the proper name of the protagonist and had either the
same or a different syntactic role as the antecedent. The sentences
were presented word by word as rapid serial visual display. ERPs
were recorded from 61 scalp electrodes. In agreement with the
parallel function strategy non-parallel discourse structures
required longer decision times and higher error rates than parallel
structures. The ERPs revealed two effects: First, pronoun anaphora
evoked a more pronounced negativity than proper name anaphora
between 270 and 420 ms over the frontal cortex and another relative
negativity between 500 and 600 ms over the parietal cortex. Second,
anaphora in non-parallel positions were accompanied by a more
pronounced negativity over the parietal cortex. These data support
the idea that anaphora in a non-parallel position trigger extra
processing steps to integrate currently encountered information
with previously activated representations. Supported by the German
Research Foundation (DFG, grant Ro529/12-1).
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