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The use of social–communicative cues to interpret ambiguous pronouns: Bilingual adults differ from monolinguals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2019

Carla Contemori Open the ORCID record for Carla Contemori [Opens in a new window]  and
Fabiola Tortajada
Carla Contemori*
Affiliation:
University of Texas, El Paso
Fabiola Tortajada
Affiliation:
University of Texas, El Paso
*
*Corresponding author. Email: ccontemori@utep.edu
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Abstract

We examine the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns in Spanish–English bilingual adults, in contexts in which social–communicative cues (looking-only or looking-and-pointing) are used. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that pronoun interpretation is guided by the first-mention bias, which is modulated by the presence of the social–communicative cues both in monolinguals and in bilinguals. In Experiment 2, we show that if the speaker using the social–communicative cues is a non-native speaker of English, bilinguals rely more strongly on the social–communicative cues than monolinguals. Experiment 3 shows that stronger reliance on social–communicative cues in bilinguals’ interpretations is not the result of more accurate speech comprehension. Our results demonstrate that the ability to utilize the looking-only and looking-and-pointing cues is not driven by a superior ability to accurately read social cues in bilingual adults. In addition, monolinguals show lower sensitivity to the speaker’s intent when the speaker is a non-native speaker of English.

Keywords

ambiguous pronoun interpretationfirst-mention biasforeign-accented speechsocial–communicative cues
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 51 - 77
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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