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• Tests the role of predictability on pronoun comprehension for several constraints. • Provides first evidence that gazing/pointing affects referential predictions. • A new method provides converging evidence that goals are more predictable than sources. • The subject bias in pronoun comprehension is only sometimes related to predictability judgments. Current models suggest that pronoun comprehension is guided by expectations about who or what will be mentioned (Arnold, 1998; Kehler & Rohde, 2013; Hartshorne et al., 2015; Brocher et al., 2018), which we call referential predictability. Yet there is disagreement about whether these expectations explain all types of discourse biases, and in particular some scholars suggest that the subject bias is unrelated to referential predictability (Kehler & Rohde, 2013; Fukumura & van Gompel, 2015). Moreover, the role of expectation has not been broadly tested against the numerous constraints known to affect pronoun comprehension, and no study has tested whether expectation is related to social constraints like gaze and pointing. In eight experiments we systematically test how both pronoun comprehension and prediction judgments are influenced by four constraints: (1) the subject bias in joint-action predicates like Ana went hiking with Liz; (2) both the goal and subject biases in transfer predicates (Ana threw the ball to Liz or Ana got the ball from Liz); (3) pointing while gazing, and (4) gazing. We replicate and extend the known effects of these constraints on pronoun comprehension. Critically, we find that most of these constraints also affect prediction judgments, but the subject bias is inconsistent across verb types. Results support models in which referential expectation affects pronoun comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test the hypothesis that language experience influences the cognitive mechanisms used to interpret ambiguous pronouns like he or she , which require the context for interpretation. Pronoun interpretation is influenced by both the linguistic context (e.g., pronouns tend to corefer with the subject of the previous sentence) and social cues (e.g., gaze can signal the pronoun’s referent). We test whether pronoun comprehension biases are related to the individual’s linguistic exposure. We focus on written language experience as a metric of linguistic exposure, given that reading experience varies widely, and can be probed with the Author Recognition Task (ART). In three experiments, people with higher ART scores assigned pronouns to the grammatical subject more consistently. ART scores correlated with some skill measures, but pronoun comprehension was not explained by working memory, theory of mind, or socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that language exposure affects language comprehension at the discourse level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]