Abstract

In three experiments, the effects of types of referencing terms and multiplicity of implied instrumental concepts on referential resolution were investigated. Experiment 1 showed that explicit referencing sentences were read faster and recognized better than the implicit ones, and that specific term referencing sentences were read faster than the general term referencing ones. Experiment 2 showed reading time was faster for the specific term referencing sentences than for general term referencing ones under multiple instrumental implication condition(MIIC), while no difference was found under single instrumental implication condition(SIIC). In Experiment 3,it was found that under SIIC target words in general term referencing sentences were recognized slower than in specific term referencing sentences and in explicit referencing ones. With MIIC, there was no difference across different types of referencing. The general results of three experiments were interpreted as suggesting that resolution of referencing relation is effective if instrumental concepts are implied strongly and uniquely in action context.