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1. 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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2. 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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3. The role of discourse-level expectations in non-native speakers' referential choices

   Grüter, T.; Rohde, H.; Schafer, A. (May 2014, Proceedings of the annual Boston University Conference on Language Development)

   Expectation is a powerful mechanism in native-language processing. Less is known about its role in non-native language processing, especially for expectations at the discourse level. This study presents evidence from a story-continuation task, adapted from previous work with native speakers (Rohde et al., 2006), probing next-mention and coherence expectations among Japanese- and Korean-speaking learners of English. As in previous work, verbal aspect (perfective/imperfective) in a context sentence describing a transfer-of-possession event (e.g., Ron gave/was giving a towel to Patrick) modulated participants’ choices of next referents in their continuations. However, this effect was diminished in the non-native compared to the native-speaker group, despite comparable performance on an independent task assessing knowledge of verbal aspect in English, and previous evidence for significant effects of aspect on referential patterns in native Japanese and Korean processing (Ueno & Kehler, 2010; Kim et al., 2013). The two groups of speakers were equally sensitive to a cue that does not require predictive processing – the referential form of the story-continuation prompt – in that both groups were significantly more likely to establish reference to the discourse topic/Source of the transfer event for pronoun-initial continuations than for name-initial ones. Moreover, recency played a stronger role in non-native speakers’ referential choices than in those of native speakers. These results suggest that while native speakers engage in proactive discourse processing, non-native speakers are less able to do so, being sufficiently burdened by reactive processes required for information integration that they have only Reduced Ability to Generate Expectations (RAGE). 

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4. Individual differences (or the lack of them) in comprehension of singular they.

   Arnold, J. E.; Mayo, H.; Dong, L. (January 2020, UNC Language Processing Lab Technical Report #3)

   Arnold, J. E., Mayo, H., & Dong, L. (2020). Individual differences (or the lack of them) in comprehension of singular they. Technical Report #3. UNC Language Processing Lab, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The 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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5. Individual Differences in Print Exposure Predict Use of Implicit Causality in Pronoun Comprehension and Referential Prediction

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.672109  

   Johnson, Elyce; Arnold, Jennifer E. (July 2021, Frontiers in Psychology)

   In three experiments, we measured individual patterns of pronoun comprehension (Experiments 1 and 2) and referential prediction (Experiment 3) in implicit causality (IC) contexts and compared these with a measure of participants’ print exposure (Author Recognition Task; ART). Across all three experiments, we found that ART interacted with verb bias, such that participants with higher scores demonstrated a stronger semantic bias, i.e., they tended to select the pronoun or predict the re-mention of the character that was congruent with an implicit cause interpretation. This suggests that print exposure changes the way language is processed at the discourse level, and in particular, that it is related to implicit cause sensitivity. 

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