The Time Course of the Effects of Implicit Causality Bias on Anaphora Resolution by Japanese Learners of English

Abstract

　　One of the factors that influences anaphora resolution is implicit causality (IC) information from a verb. Although this verb bias has been extensively examined in first language (L1) sentence processing, it has received little attention in second language (L2) studies. Therefore, this study investigated the time course of IC information on anaphora resolution by Japanese learners of English through a self-paced reading experiment. Every sentence included a main clause and a because clause (e.g., Minami surprised Kaori because she suddenly quit the company), and the experimental sentences included a subject-biasing verb (an NP1-biasing verb) or an object-biasing verb (an NP2-biasing verb). The major findings are that (a) the causality congruency effect was found for sentence reading times regardless of types of anaphora (nouns or pronouns), and (b) the question response accuracy was affected by verb bias, indicating the importance of measuring the effects of IC information from both response times and accuracy on L2 anaphora resolution.