Date of Award

1-3-1990

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

The issue of whether old and young adults differ in their ability to resolve pronoun anaphors was investigated. Controlling their own rate of presentation, subjects read stories ranging in length and selected the antecedants for sentences which contained referent nouns and properties that were consistent, inconsistent or neutral with respect to general knowledge. Older adults were less accurate than young adults in noun choice with consistency of information affecting the older adults more than the young adults. Older adults also took longer to read both the first sentence containing the referent information and the final pronoun anaphor sentences in the passages but consistency of information had no effect on reading time. There was no age-related difference for the distance between the pronoun and its referent noun. It is argued that consistency of information is the more relevant factor for pronoun reference, not memory load, when subjects are allowed to process information at their own rate.

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