Department of Psychology, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
Top Cogn Sci. 2013 Jul;5(3):564-80. doi: 10.1111/tops.12029. Epub 2013 Jun 11.
This paper presents a study of the effect of working memory load on the interpretation of pronouns in different discourse contexts: stories with and without a topic shift. We discuss a computational model (in ACT-R, Anderson, 2007) to explain how referring expressions are acquired and used. On the basis of simulations of this model, it is predicted that WM constraints only affect adults' pronoun resolution in stories with a topic shift, but not in stories without a topic shift. This latter prediction was tested in an experiment. The results of this experiment confirm that WM load reduces adults' sensitivity to discourse cues signaling a topic shift, thus influencing their interpretation of subsequent pronouns.
有和没有主题转换的故事。我们讨论了一个计算模型（在 ACT-R 中，Anderson，2007）来解释如何获取和使用指代语。基于对该模型的模拟，预测 WM 约束仅影响有主题转换的故事中成年人对代词的解析，而不影响没有主题转换的故事。这一后续预测在一个实验中得到了检验。该实验的结果证实，WM 负荷降低了成年人对指示主题转换的语篇线索的敏感性，从而影响了他们对后续代词的解释。
