The understanding of referential and coreferential expressions is an essential part of the mental construction of a discourse model that embodies the meaning of a sentence or a series of sentences. Correct understanding of (co) reference is essential both to integrating and differentiating meaning in a discourse model; it is the basis by which the characteristics and actions associated with different expressions that refer to the same entity are integrated together and by which they are simultaneously differentiated from the characteristics and actions associated with different entities mentioned in the text. In order to do their work, the mechanisms of coreferential processing must interact with basic memory processes that are involved in the processing of words. Research on lexical memory processes has for a long time used repetition priming and semantic priming in order to understand basic episodic and semantic characteristics of word processing; this work has provided the basis for many commonly accepted mechanisms of cognitive processing. However, the correct interpretation of reference and coreference places very different demands on information processing from those that arise in the processing isolated words or lists of words. The current project examines how language comprehension uses, and in some cases overrides, basic mechanisms of lexical processing. The project addresses five specific aims: (1) to investigate memory integration of coreferential expressions, (2) to compare memory integration in structured language and word lists, (3) to investigate memory integration of coreferential expressions consisting of category terms, (4) to investigate the nature of linguistic focus and its relation to other kinds of attention, and (5) to investigate the role of the right hemisphere in coreferential processing. Throughout the proposed research, the combined use of eye tracking and ERPs during reading will provide complementary measures of the cognitive and neural processes involved in language comprehension. Because language is an essential cognitive process, elucidating basic language mechanisms remains a high priority in the effort to understand, diagnose and treat developmental and acquired language impairments.
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