{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/95428"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/95428","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"\"What does \"\"it\"\" mean anyway? Examining the time course of semantic activation in reference resolution\"","abstract":"Pronouns (e.g. ‘it’) are commonly studied in research on anaphoric reference, because they appear to carry out the linguistic function of referring back to an entity, while providing little or no new information about the referent. However, differing viewpoints have emerged in the psycholinguistic literature on what cognitive processes are engaged when reading or hearing a pronoun. One view is that encountering a pronoun leads the comprehender to reactivate the semantics of its antecedent. We examined this hypothesis by manipulating the concreteness of a noun antecedent and assessing whether an Event Related Potential (ERP) concreteness effect was elicited at a downstream pronoun. We observed a robust concreteness effect at the noun, but no evidence of a concreteness effect at the pronoun. In a secondary analysis, we examined whether N400 semantic priming from the antecedent would increase on content words shortly following the pronoun, relative to those preceding it. Again, although we observed robust semantic priming from the noun antecedent at positions following it, we did not observe an increase in the size of this effect following the pronoun. Taken together with the broader literature, our data suggest that pronouns do not induce the activation of (much) new semantic information in long-term memory, perhaps instead triggering an attentional shift towards their antecedents’ active semantic representations within working memory. This, in turn, suggests that the process of linking an anaphor to its antecedent is attentionally mediated and does not entail long-term memory access, in contrast with ACT-R inspired models (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005).","abstract_html":"Pronouns (e.g. ‘it’) are commonly studied in research on anaphoric reference, because they appear to carry out the linguistic function of referring back to an entity, while providing little or no new information about the referent. However, differing viewpoints have emerged in the psycholinguistic literature on what cognitive processes are engaged when reading or hearing a pronoun. One view is that encountering a pronoun leads the comprehender to reactivate the semantics of its antecedent. We examined this hypothesis by manipulating the concreteness of a noun antecedent and assessing whether an Event Related Potential (ERP) concreteness effect was elicited at a downstream pronoun. We observed a robust concreteness effect at the noun, but no evidence of a concreteness effect at the pronoun. In a secondary analysis, we examined whether N400 semantic priming from the antecedent would increase on content words shortly following the pronoun, relative to those preceding it. Again, although we observed robust semantic priming from the noun antecedent at positions following it, we did not observe an increase in the size of this effect following the pronoun. Taken together with the broader literature, our data suggest that pronouns do not induce the activation of (much) new semantic information in long-term memory, perhaps instead triggering an attentional shift towards their antecedents’ active semantic representations within working memory. This, in turn, suggests that the process of linking an anaphor to its antecedent is attentionally mediated and does not entail long-term memory access, in contrast with ACT-R inspired models (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005).","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Smith, Cybelle M"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"M.A.","degree_level":"Thesis","degree_discipline":"Psychology","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Federmeier, Kara D.","Fisher, Cynthia L.","Dell, Gary S."],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2017,"date_issued":"2017-03-01T15:49:37Z","date_published":"2017-03-01T15:49:37Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:26:37Z","subjects":["Reference","Pronoun","Concreteness","N400","Semantic Memory"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright 2016 Cybelle Smith"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/95428","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Federmeier, Kara D.","Fisher, Cynthia L.","Dell, Gary S."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Smith, Cybelle M"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2017-03-01T15:49:37Z","2016-12-09","2016-12"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Psychology"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["M.A."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Reference","Pronoun","Concreteness","N400","Semantic Memory"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2016 Cybelle Smith"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/95428"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Pronouns (e.g. ‘it’) are commonly studied in research on anaphoric reference, because they appear to carry out the linguistic function of referring back to an entity, while providing little or no new information about the referent. However, differing viewpoints have emerged in the psycholinguistic literature on what cognitive processes are engaged when reading or hearing a pronoun. One view is that encountering a pronoun leads the comprehender to reactivate the semantics of its antecedent. We examined this hypothesis by manipulating the concreteness of a noun antecedent and assessing whether an Event Related Potential (ERP) concreteness effect was elicited at a downstream pronoun. We observed a robust concreteness effect at the noun, but no evidence of a concreteness effect at the pronoun. In a secondary analysis, we examined whether N400 semantic priming from the antecedent would increase on content words shortly following the pronoun, relative to those preceding it. Again, although we observed robust semantic priming from the noun antecedent at positions following it, we did not observe an increase in the size of this effect following the pronoun. Taken together with the broader literature, our data suggest that pronouns do not induce the activation of (much) new semantic information in long-term memory, perhaps instead triggering an attentional shift towards their antecedents’ active semantic representations within working memory. This, in turn, suggests that the process of linking an anaphor to its antecedent is attentionally mediated and does not entail long-term memory access, in contrast with ACT-R inspired models (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005).","Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2017-02-28 without embargo terms","The student, Cybelle Smith, accepted the attached license on 2016-12-09 at 10:57.","The student, Cybelle Smith, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2016-12-09 at 11:07.","This Thesis was approved for publication on 2016-12-09 at 15:07.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #10502 on 2017-02-28 at 15:04:21","Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-01T15:49:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 SMITH-THESIS-2016.pdf: 1524067 bytes, checksum: 270d8e07f2b607e3acb7d858172603ea (MD5) LICENSE.txt: 4210 bytes, checksum: acbeb8e5dfd7097492a1875104d4e851 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-12-09"]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["\"What does \"\"it\"\" mean anyway? Examining the time course of semantic activation in reference resolution\""]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Federmeier, Kara D.","Fisher, Cynthia L.","Dell, Gary S."],"dc:creator":["Smith, Cybelle M"],"dc:date":["2017-03-01T15:49:37Z","2016-12-09","2016-12"],"dc:description":["Pronouns (e.g. ‘it’) are commonly studied in research on anaphoric reference, because they appear to carry out the linguistic function of referring back to an entity, while providing little or no new information about the referent. However, differing viewpoints have emerged in the psycholinguistic literature on what cognitive processes are engaged when reading or hearing a pronoun. One view is that encountering a pronoun leads the comprehender to reactivate the semantics of its antecedent. We examined this hypothesis by manipulating the concreteness of a noun antecedent and assessing whether an Event Related Potential (ERP) concreteness effect was elicited at a downstream pronoun. We observed a robust concreteness effect at the noun, but no evidence of a concreteness effect at the pronoun. In a secondary analysis, we examined whether N400 semantic priming from the antecedent would increase on content words shortly following the pronoun, relative to those preceding it. Again, although we observed robust semantic priming from the noun antecedent at positions following it, we did not observe an increase in the size of this effect following the pronoun. Taken together with the broader literature, our data suggest that pronouns do not induce the activation of (much) new semantic information in long-term memory, perhaps instead triggering an attentional shift towards their antecedents’ active semantic representations within working memory. This, in turn, suggests that the process of linking an anaphor to its antecedent is attentionally mediated and does not entail long-term memory access, in contrast with ACT-R inspired models (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005).","Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2017-02-28 without embargo terms","The student, Cybelle Smith, accepted the attached license on 2016-12-09 at 10:57.","The student, Cybelle Smith, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2016-12-09 at 11:07.","This Thesis was approved for publication on 2016-12-09 at 15:07.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #10502 on 2017-02-28 at 15:04:21","Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-01T15:49:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 SMITH-THESIS-2016.pdf: 1524067 bytes, checksum: 270d8e07f2b607e3acb7d858172603ea (MD5) LICENSE.txt: 4210 bytes, checksum: acbeb8e5dfd7097492a1875104d4e851 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-12-09"],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/95428"],"dc:language":["en"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 2016 Cybelle Smith"],"dc:subject":["Reference","Pronoun","Concreteness","N400","Semantic Memory"],"dc:title":["\"What does \"\"it\"\" mean anyway? Examining the time course of semantic activation in reference resolution\""],"dc:type":["text"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Psychology"],"thesis:degree_level":["Thesis"],"thesis:degree_name":["M.A."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:26:37Z"}