Abstract
The gender information in written Chinese third person pronouns is not symmetrically encoded: the character for "he" (with semantic radical, meaning human) is used as a default referring to every individual, while the character for "she" (with semantic radical, meaning woman) indicates females only. This critical feature could result in different patterns of processing of gender information in text, but this is an issue that has seldom been addressed in psycholinguistics. In Chinese, the written forms of the reflexive pronouns are composed of a pronoun plus the reflexive "self" (herself). The present study focuses on how such gender specificity interacts with the gender type of an antecedent, whether definitional (proper name) or stereotypical (stereotypical role noun) during reflexive pronoun resolution. In this event-related potential (ERP) study, gender congruity between a reflexive pronoun and its antecedent was studied by manipulating the gender type of antecedents and the gender specificity of reflexive pronouns (default: himself vs. specific: herself). Results included a P200 "attention related" congruity effect for himself and a P600 "integration difficulty" congruity effect for tli/herself. Reflexive pronoun specificity independently affected the P200 and N400 components. These results highlight the role of himself as a default applicable to both genders and indicate that only the processing of herself supports a two-stage model for anaphor resolution. While both reflexive pronouns are evaluated at the bonding stage, the processing of the gender-specific reflexive pronoun is completed in the resolution stage.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 151 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Volume | 7 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2016 Feb 12 |
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All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Psychology(all)
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When "He" Can also be "She" : An ERP study of reflexive pronoun resolution in written Mandarin Chinese. / Su, Jui Ju; Molinaro, Nicola; Gillon-Dowens, Margaret; Tsai, Pei Shu; Wu, Denise H.; Carreiras, Manuel.
In: Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 7, 151, 12.02.2016.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
TY - JOUR
T1 - When "He" Can also be "She"
T2 - An ERP study of reflexive pronoun resolution in written Mandarin Chinese
AU - Su, Jui Ju
AU - Molinaro, Nicola
AU - Gillon-Dowens, Margaret
AU - Tsai, Pei Shu
AU - Wu, Denise H.
AU - Carreiras, Manuel
PY - 2016/2/12
Y1 - 2016/2/12
N2 - The gender information in written Chinese third person pronouns is not symmetrically encoded: the character for "he" (with semantic radical, meaning human) is used as a default referring to every individual, while the character for "she" (with semantic radical, meaning woman) indicates females only. This critical feature could result in different patterns of processing of gender information in text, but this is an issue that has seldom been addressed in psycholinguistics. In Chinese, the written forms of the reflexive pronouns are composed of a pronoun plus the reflexive "self" (herself). The present study focuses on how such gender specificity interacts with the gender type of an antecedent, whether definitional (proper name) or stereotypical (stereotypical role noun) during reflexive pronoun resolution. In this event-related potential (ERP) study, gender congruity between a reflexive pronoun and its antecedent was studied by manipulating the gender type of antecedents and the gender specificity of reflexive pronouns (default: himself vs. specific: herself). Results included a P200 "attention related" congruity effect for himself and a P600 "integration difficulty" congruity effect for tli/herself. Reflexive pronoun specificity independently affected the P200 and N400 components. These results highlight the role of himself as a default applicable to both genders and indicate that only the processing of herself supports a two-stage model for anaphor resolution. While both reflexive pronouns are evaluated at the bonding stage, the processing of the gender-specific reflexive pronoun is completed in the resolution stage.
AB - The gender information in written Chinese third person pronouns is not symmetrically encoded: the character for "he" (with semantic radical, meaning human) is used as a default referring to every individual, while the character for "she" (with semantic radical, meaning woman) indicates females only. This critical feature could result in different patterns of processing of gender information in text, but this is an issue that has seldom been addressed in psycholinguistics. In Chinese, the written forms of the reflexive pronouns are composed of a pronoun plus the reflexive "self" (herself). The present study focuses on how such gender specificity interacts with the gender type of an antecedent, whether definitional (proper name) or stereotypical (stereotypical role noun) during reflexive pronoun resolution. In this event-related potential (ERP) study, gender congruity between a reflexive pronoun and its antecedent was studied by manipulating the gender type of antecedents and the gender specificity of reflexive pronouns (default: himself vs. specific: herself). Results included a P200 "attention related" congruity effect for himself and a P600 "integration difficulty" congruity effect for tli/herself. Reflexive pronoun specificity independently affected the P200 and N400 components. These results highlight the role of himself as a default applicable to both genders and indicate that only the processing of herself supports a two-stage model for anaphor resolution. While both reflexive pronouns are evaluated at the bonding stage, the processing of the gender-specific reflexive pronoun is completed in the resolution stage.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85015986772&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85015986772&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00151
DO - 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00151
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85015986772
VL - 7
JO - Frontiers in Psychology
JF - Frontiers in Psychology
SN - 1664-1078
M1 - 151
ER -