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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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This content will become publicly available on August 15, 2026
Kesan, James & Arnold, J. E. (2025). Singular “they” exposure increases singular interpretations in ambiguous pronouns. Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society Meeting.
Evidence is accumulating that patterns of use for singular “they” are changing in English. The pronoun is becoming the preferred generic when the gender of the referent is unknown or backgrounded. This change reflects a shift in patterns of acceptability for uses of singular “they” which is in turn linked to the increased frequency of singular they. We predict that adaptation may be a cognitive mechanism underlying this change, and if so, we may see short-term adaptation within a lab session. In the present study, we use a between-subjects priming paradigm to test whether participants adapt to the frequency with which they encounter singular or plural senses of “they” in the local discourse. We find that selections of singular “they” are significantly more likely after participants have been exposed to unambiguously singular vs. plural uses of “they”. This finding implicates adaptation and suggests that adaptation may link changes in the frequency of linguistic forms to changes in their acceptability.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1917840
- PAR ID:
- 10652852
- Publisher / Repository:
- Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 47(0)
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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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.more » « less
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