Eye movements of listeners were monitored to investigate how gender information and
accessibility influence the initial processes of pronoun interpretation. Previous
studies on this issue have produced mixed results, and several studies have concluded
that gender cues are not automatically used during the early processes of pronoun
interpretation (e.g. Garnham, A., Oakhill, J. & Cruttenden, H. (1992). The role of
implicit causality and gender cue in the interpretation of pronouns. Language and
Cognitive Processes, 73 (4), 231-255; Greene, S. B., McKoon, G. & Ratcliff, R. (1992).
Pronoun resolution and discourse models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,
Memory, and Cognition, 182, 266-283). In the two experiments presented here, participants
viewed a picture with two familiar cartoon characters of either same or different
gender. They listened to a text describing the picture, in which a pronoun referred
to either the first, more accessible, character, or the second. (For example, Donald
is bringing some mail to ¿Mickey/Minnie¿ while a violent storm is beginning. He's
carrying an umbrellaellipsis.) The results of both experiments show rapid use of both
gender and accessibility at approximately 200 ms after the pronoun offset.