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1. Reference frequency: what do speakers tend to talk about?

   Arnold, J. E.; Strangmann, I.; Hwang, H.; Zerkle, S (January 2018, UNC Language Processing Lab Technical Reports)

   he pronoun “they” can refer to an individual who identifies as nonbinary, but it also is commonly used as a plural pronoun. How do listeners identify whether “they” is being used in a singular or plural sense? Arnold, Mayo, & Dong (in press) report three experiments in that test the role of explicitly introducing gender identity via pronouns, e.g. “This is Alex, and they use they/them pronouns.” Participants read short stories like “Alex went running with Liz and they fell down.” Answers to “Who fell down” indicated whether participants interpreted they as Alex or Alex-and-Liz. Singular interpretations of they were more likely when participants hear an explicit statement that Alex uses they/them pronouns, and in supporting discourse contexts. This paper is a companion to the main article, and reports analyses of individual difference measures. Participants self-reported familiarity with individuals who identify as nonbinary, which was expected to increase singular interpretations, but mostly it did not. In experiment 2 we also measured print exposure, but we found that it did not affect interpretation of singular they. In short, we saw virtually no effects of individual difference predictors. 

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2. My pronouns are they/them: Talking about pronouns changes how pronouns are understood

   https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-021-01905-0  

   Arnold, Jennifer E.; Mayo, Heather C.; Dong, Lisa (April 2021, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review)

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   The pronoun “they” can be either plural or singular, perhaps referring to an individual who identifies as nonbinary. How do listeners identifywhether “they” has a singular or plural sense? We test the role of explicitly discussing pronouns (e.g., “Alex uses they/them pronouns”). In three experiments, participants read short stories, like “Alex went running with Liz. They fell down.” Answers to “Who fell down” indicated whether participants interpreted they as Alex or Alex-and-Liz. We found more singular responses in discourse contexts that make Alex more available: when Alex was either the only person in the context or mentioned first. Critically, the singular interpretation was stronger when participants heard explicit instructions that Alex uses they/them pronouns, even though participants in all conditions had ample opportunity to learn this fact through observation. Results show that the social trend to talk about pronouns has a direct impact on how language is understood. 

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3. Does SES affect pronoun comprehension and prediction in implicit causality scenarios?

   Johnson, E.; Arnold, J.E. (January 2021, UNC Processing Lab Technical Report #4)

   Johnson, E. & Arnold, J. E. (2021). Does SES affect pronoun comprehension and prediction in implicit causality scenarios? Technical Report #4. UNC Language Processing Lab, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This paper examines whether individuals’ pronoun resolution varies with respect to their socioeconomic status (SES). It uses the data from the Johnson and Arnold (2021) paper to determine whether the author recognition task (ART) effect that was found could instead be explained by participants’ SES. Both socioeconomic status and the author recognition task have been shown to correlate with measures of reading skill, so as a secondary analysis, SES was included as a possible predictor of individual differences. 

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4. Gender Competition in the Production of Nonbinary ‘They’

   https://doi.org/10.5070/G60111306  

   Arnold, Jennifer E; Venkatesh, Ranjani; Vig, Zachary (February 2024, Glossa Psycholinguistics)

   Two experiments test how college students use nonbinary they to refer to a single and specific person whose pronouns are they/them, e.g., “Alex played basketball on the neighborhood court. At one point they made a basket,” compared to matched stories about characters with binary (she/her or he/him) pronouns. Experiment 1 shows that for both types of pronouns, people use pronouns more in a one-person than a two-person context. In both experiments, people produce nonbinary they at least as frequently as binary pronouns, suggesting that any difficulty does not result in pronoun avoidance in spoken language, even though it does in written language (Arnold et al., 2022). Nevertheless, there is evidence that nonbinary they is somewhat difficult, in that people made gender errors on about 9% of trials, and they used a more acoustically prominent and disfluent-sounding pronunciation for nonbinary pronouns than binary pronouns. However, exposure  to  they  in  the  context  of  the  experiment  had  no  effect  on  frequency,  accuracy,  or  pronunciation of pronouns. This provides the first evidence of how nonbinary they is used in a naturalistic storytelling context and shows that while it poses some minor difficulties, it can be used successfully in a supportive context.  

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5. Additional Methods and Analyses for “Who gets mentioned next? The answer depends on the experimental task

   Arnold, J. E.; Zerkle, S.A. (January 2021, UNC Language Processing Lab Technical Report #5)

   Arnold, J. E., & Zerkle, S. A. (2021). Additional Methods and Analyses for “Who gets mentioned next? The answer depends on the experimental task.” Technical Report #5. UNC Language Processing Lab, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 

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