When “He” can also be “She”: an ERP study of reflexive pronoun resolution in written mandarin Chinese
The gender information in written Chinese third person pronouns is not symmetrically encoded: the character for "he" (, with semantic radical , meaning human) is used as a default referring to every individual, while the character for "she" (, with semantic radical , meaning woma...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
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Frontiers Media
2016
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47362/ |
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| author | Su, Jui-Ju Molinaro, Nicola Gillon-Dowens, Margaret Tsai, Pei-Shu Wu, Denise H. Carreiras, Manuel |
| author_facet | Su, Jui-Ju Molinaro, Nicola Gillon-Dowens, Margaret Tsai, Pei-Shu Wu, Denise H. Carreiras, Manuel |
| author_sort | Su, Jui-Ju |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | The gender information in written Chinese third person pronouns is not symmetrically encoded: the character for "he" (, with semantic radical , meaning human) is used as a default referring to every individual, while the character for "she" (, with semantic radical , meaning woman) indicates females only. This critical feature could result in different patterns of processing of gender information in text, but this is an issue that has seldom been addressed in psycholinguistics. In Chinese, the written forms of the reflexive pronouns are composed of a pronoun plus the reflexive "/self" (/himself and /herself). The present study focuses on how such gender specificity interacts with the gender type of an antecedent, whether definitional (proper name) or stereotypical (stereotypical role noun) during reflexive pronoun resolution. In this event-related potential (ERP) study, gender congruity between a reflexive pronoun and its antecedent was studied by manipulating the gender type of antecedents and the gender specificity of reflexive pronouns (default: /himself vs. specific: /herself). Results included a P200 "attention related" congruity effect for /himself and a P600 "integration difficulty" congruity effect for /herself. Reflexive pronoun specificity independently affected the P200 and N400 components. These results highlight the role of /himself as a default applicable to both genders and indicate that only the processing of /herself supports a two-stage model for anaphor resolution. While both reflexive pronouns are evaluated at the bonding stage, the processing of the gender-specific reflexive pronoun is completed in the resolution stage. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:05:17Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-47362 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T20:05:17Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-473622020-05-04T17:37:16Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47362/ When “He” can also be “She”: an ERP study of reflexive pronoun resolution in written mandarin Chinese Su, Jui-Ju Molinaro, Nicola Gillon-Dowens, Margaret Tsai, Pei-Shu Wu, Denise H. Carreiras, Manuel The gender information in written Chinese third person pronouns is not symmetrically encoded: the character for "he" (, with semantic radical , meaning human) is used as a default referring to every individual, while the character for "she" (, with semantic radical , meaning woman) indicates females only. This critical feature could result in different patterns of processing of gender information in text, but this is an issue that has seldom been addressed in psycholinguistics. In Chinese, the written forms of the reflexive pronouns are composed of a pronoun plus the reflexive "/self" (/himself and /herself). The present study focuses on how such gender specificity interacts with the gender type of an antecedent, whether definitional (proper name) or stereotypical (stereotypical role noun) during reflexive pronoun resolution. In this event-related potential (ERP) study, gender congruity between a reflexive pronoun and its antecedent was studied by manipulating the gender type of antecedents and the gender specificity of reflexive pronouns (default: /himself vs. specific: /herself). Results included a P200 "attention related" congruity effect for /himself and a P600 "integration difficulty" congruity effect for /herself. Reflexive pronoun specificity independently affected the P200 and N400 components. These results highlight the role of /himself as a default applicable to both genders and indicate that only the processing of /herself supports a two-stage model for anaphor resolution. While both reflexive pronouns are evaluated at the bonding stage, the processing of the gender-specific reflexive pronoun is completed in the resolution stage. Frontiers Media 2016-02-12 Article PeerReviewed Su, Jui-Ju, Molinaro, Nicola, Gillon-Dowens, Margaret, Tsai, Pei-Shu, Wu, Denise H. and Carreiras, Manuel (2016) When “He” can also be “She”: an ERP study of reflexive pronoun resolution in written mandarin Chinese. Frontiers in Psychology, 7 . ISSN 1664-1078 ERPs; reflexive pronoun resolution; type of gender information; gender specificity; Mandarin Chinese https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00151 doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00151 doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00151 |
| spellingShingle | ERPs; reflexive pronoun resolution; type of gender information; gender specificity; Mandarin Chinese Su, Jui-Ju Molinaro, Nicola Gillon-Dowens, Margaret Tsai, Pei-Shu Wu, Denise H. Carreiras, Manuel When “He” can also be “She”: an ERP study of reflexive pronoun resolution in written mandarin Chinese |
| title | When “He” can also be “She”: an ERP study of reflexive pronoun resolution in written mandarin Chinese |
| title_full | When “He” can also be “She”: an ERP study of reflexive pronoun resolution in written mandarin Chinese |
| title_fullStr | When “He” can also be “She”: an ERP study of reflexive pronoun resolution in written mandarin Chinese |
| title_full_unstemmed | When “He” can also be “She”: an ERP study of reflexive pronoun resolution in written mandarin Chinese |
| title_short | When “He” can also be “She”: an ERP study of reflexive pronoun resolution in written mandarin Chinese |
| title_sort | when “he” can also be “she”: an erp study of reflexive pronoun resolution in written mandarin chinese |
| topic | ERPs; reflexive pronoun resolution; type of gender information; gender specificity; Mandarin Chinese |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47362/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47362/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/47362/ |