The question of whether L2 learners can use discourse cues online during pronoun resolution remains debated in the field. We examine one factor that has been argued to impact pronoun resolution in native speakers, implicit causality (IC) bias, a property related to certain verbs in which one of verb’s arguments are considered to be the cause of an action. We investigate whether individual differences modulate sensitivity to IC bias in both native English speakers and Chinese-speaking learners of English, examining whether variability is similarly explained in the two populations. Results from a sentence completion task and a self-paced reading (SPR) task show similar sensitivity to IC bias in both groups; reading times on the SPR task were also modulated by working memory and vocabulary knowledge. The findings suggest that L2 learners are successful in using discourse-level cues during processing and that variability is qualitatively similar in both learners and natives.

第二语言学习者是否可以在代词解析过程中在线使用话语线索的问题仍然存在争议。我们研究了一个被认为影响母语人士代词解析的因素，即隐式因果关系 (IC) 偏差，这是一种与某些动词相关的属性，其中动词的参数之一被认为是某个动作的原因。我们研究了个体差异是否会调节英语母语者和汉语英语学习者对 IC 偏见的敏感性，并检验这两个群体中的变异性是否有类似的解释。句子完成任务和自定进度阅读 (SPR) 任务的结果显示，两组对 IC 偏差的敏感性相似；SPR 任务的阅读时间也受到工作记忆和词汇知识的影响。研究结果表明，第二语言学习者在处理过程中成功地使用了话语层面的线索，并且学习者和母语者的变异性在性质上是相似的。