Effects Of Implicit Causality Of L2 Verbs And Working Memory Capacity On Pronoun Ambiguity Resolution

Anaphora ambiguity is one of the robust phenomena in the psycholinguistics.A considerable amount of literature has been published on how semantic factors influence pronoun ambiguity resolution.So far,however,there is a general paucity of literature specifically relating to the effect of semantic factors and working memory capacity on pronoun ambiguity resolution for L2 learners.Working memory capacity plays a significant role in language comprehension.This paper aims to critically analyze the effect of implicit causality of verbs and working memory capacity on L2 learners’ pronoun ambiguity resolution,revealing the role of working memory capacity and implicit causality of verbs on language comprehension.The study incorporated two experiments.The first experiment was a working memory span test.Thirty participants,selected from sixty volunteers,were divided into two groups:the high working memory capacity group and the low working memory capacity group according to the working memory span test.The second experiment was a sentence comprehension test.The experiment materials,including congruent and incongruent sentences,were adapted from studies in Long and De Ley（2000）carried out by E-prime 2.0.Questions were made to test whether participants understood the sentences with ambiguous pronouns.After reading the testing items,the participants were required to answer the related questions.The main findings are as follows:First of all,the implicit causality of verbs influences the pronoun ambiguity resolution for L2 learners.In the same working memory group,there is a significant difference between congruent sentences and incongruent sentences in reading time;in the high working memory capacity group,the significant difference is observed between congruent sentences and incongruent sentences in comprehension score.Secondly,working memory capacity influences pronoun ambiguity resolution for L2 learners.There are significant differences between the high working memory group and the low working memory group in reading time and comprehension score of congruent sentences.Participants with a larger working memory capacity would perform better in sentence comprehension and the integration of information to enhance the efficiency of understanding sentences.Finally,2 × 2 mixed ANOVA shows that there is a significant working memory capacity and implicit causality of verbs interaction on reading time,and there is no significant working memory capacity and implicit causality of verbs interaction on comprehension score.Participants with a larger working memory capacity do better in the the integration of implicit causality of verbs in congruent sentences to promote language comprehension when they are in the same language proficiency level.Pedagogical implications are provided.As for teachers,more exercises on working memory capacity and pronoun ambiguity resolution should be provided to help students improve their language comprehension.With respect to learners,they should be cognizant of the importance of working memory capacity on language comprehension and acquire knowledge about pronoun ambiguity resolution to improve their reading skills.