Journal of Memory and Language 42, 545–570 (2000)

doi:10.1006/jmla.1999.2695, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

Implicit Causality and Discourse Focus: The Interaction of Text and

Reader Characteristics in Pronoun Resolution

Debra L. Long and Logan De Ley

University of California, Davis

We conducted this study to examine how pronoun resolution is affected by the implicit causality
inherent in certain verbs. In three probe-recognition experiments, we found that the implicit causality
effect depended on important characteristics of the reader and of the stimuli. First, only skilled
readers showed an early effect of implicit causality on pronoun resolution, responding faster to names
that matched the causal bias of the verb than to names that did not match. Implicit causality influenced
less skilled readers’ performance at the end of the sentence, when they integrated information from
the two clauses. Second, the implicit causality effect exhibited by skilled readers was limited to NP 2
verbs, those verbs in which the implied cause of the event was the grammatical object of the sentence.
In order to explore why the effect was limited to NP 2 verbs, we examined a small corpus of natural
texts. We found that NP 2 verbs were better predictors of the subsequent mention of the implied cause
than were NP 1 verbs. © 2000 Academic Press
Key Words: implicit causality; pronoun resolution; reading skill; discourse focus; reading
comprehension.

An important goal of research in text com-
prehension is to specify the nature of readers’
text representations and how various combina-
tions of text, task, and reader characteristics
affect the processes that construct them. Re-
searchers generally agree that readers represent
a text in the form of a discourse model
(Garnham, 1981, 1987; Greene, McKoon, &
Ratcliff, 1992; Grosz, 1981; Grosz & Sidner,
1986). Discourse models are representations of
the entities (e.g., people, objects, places) and
events in a text and the relations among them.
Readers construct a discourse model by inte-
grating each sentence in a text into their devel-
oping representation. This involves discovering
two classes of relations. Referential relations
reflect knowledge that two text elements refer to
the same entity. These relations often involve
readers’ knowledge about anaphors, linguistic
forms that refer to entities (antecedents) intro-
duced earlier in a text. Coherence relations re-
flect the knowledge that ideas in a text are
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Debra
Long, Department of Psychology, One Shields Avenue,
University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616. E-mail:
dllong@ucdavis.edu.
545
connected in terms of the situation or context to
which a text refers. These relations often in-
volve inferences about the causes and conse-
quences of events, the spatial arrangements of
objects, the procedure for performing a task, or
the goals and intentions of individuals.
Readers are aided in finding referential rela-
tions among entities in their discourse model by
a variety of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic
devices (Greene et al., 1992; Grosz, 1981;
Grosz & Sidner, 1986). These devices function
to establish one (or a small set) of entities as the
focus of the reader’s attention. Entities that are
focused in the discourse model are easily acces-
sible and available for subsequent reference.
Focus can be seen in the ease with which an
entity can be referenced by a pronoun. Pronouns
are used readily to refer to focused entities, but
are seldom used to refer to entities that have
been backgrounded by subsequent events. In the
current study, we examined how pronoun reso-
lution was affected by one possible focus de-
vice, the implicit causality inherent in certain
verbs, and how pronoun resolution was affected
by the interaction of implicit causality and read-
ing skill.
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546 LONG AND DE LEY
IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND
DISCOURSE FOCUS
Psychologists have been very interested in
the extent to which certain verbs, in particular,
those that exhibit “implicit causality,” act as
focus devices. Implicit causality is a property of
transitive verbs in which one or the other of the
verb’s arguments is implicated as the underly-
ing cause of the action or attitude (Au, 1986;
Brown & Fish, 1983; Garvey & Caramazza,
1974; Garvey, Caramazza, & Yates, 1975;
Greene & McKoon, 1995). Some of these verbs
appear in sentence contexts in which the initia-
tor is the grammatical subject of the sentence
and the reactor is the object. These include
verbs such as annoy, charm, and infuriate, often
called NP 1 verbs. For example, the subject of
the verb annoy performs some action or has
some characteristic that evokes a response from
the grammatical object (e.g., John annoyed Paul
because John wouldn’t sit still). In contrast, NP 2
verbs appear in contexts in which the initiator is
the grammatical object and the reactor is the
subject, such as admire, praise, and thank. For
example, the object of the verb praise performs
some action that evokes a response from the
grammatical subject (e.g., John praised Paul
because Paul did all of his homework).
Researchers have found that implicit causal-
ity can play an important role in the interpreta-
tion of pronouns. For example, Caramazza,
Grober, Garvey, and Yates (1977) had partici-
pants read sentences such as “John telephoned
Bill because he wanted some information” and
decide whether the pronoun referred to the first
or to the second person in the sentence. Car-
amazza et al. found that participants identified
referents for the pronouns that were consistent
with the verbs’ implicit causality. In addition,
responses were faster when the subordinate
clause was consistent with the verb’s bias than
when it was inconsistent. Similar results have
been found using sentence-completion and
-generation tasks (Au, 1986; Brown & Fish,
1983; Garvey & Caramazza, 1974; Garvey,
Caramazza, & Yates, 1975). Such findings are
consistent with the claim that implicit causality
focuses the reader’s attention on the individual
who is the cause of the action, thereby facilitat-
ing comprehension of a pronoun that refers to
that individual.
WHEN DOES IMPLICIT CAUSALITY
HAVE ITS EFFECT?
Previous research has clearly demonstrated
that readers use knowledge about implicit cau-
sality to help resolve ambiguous pronouns in
sentences. The time course by which readers
use such knowledge, however, is much less
clear (Garnham, Traxler, Oakhill, & Gerns-
bacher, 1996; Greene & McKoon, 1995; Mc-
Donald & MacWhinney, 1995). In this section,
we describe two proposals for understanding
readers’ use of implicit causality.
Implicit causality may have its effect when
readers encounter the verb. That is, implicit
causality may operate to make the individual
who is the implied cause of an event the most
activated entity in the reader’s discourse model
and the likely referent of a subsequent pronoun.
This proposal is based on the assumption that
readers use many sources of information to de-
termine how entities in the discourse model are
related and they do so as early in the compre-
hension process as possible. This assumption
plays a central role in a text-processing frame-
work described by Sanford and Garrod (1998),
called the Scenario Mapping and Focus (SMF)
theory.
According to SMF, the reader’s primary goal
is to develop a contextualized representation,
one in which linguistic input is mapped onto
relevant world knowledge, at the earliest possi-
ble moment. Incoming language is analyzed
against background knowledge structures: rep-
resentations of recent text input and general
world knowledge. Some of these representa-
tions are in explicit focus. Explicit focus tracks
currently relevant discourse entities: representa-
tions of foregrounded characters, objects,
places, and so on. Other representations are in
implicit focus; implicit focus tracks currently
relevant scenarios: representations of actions,
events, and so on. Representations in explicit
and implicit focus are distinct, but are related by
mappings between discourse entities and the roles
that these entities play in activated scenarios.
Scenario Mapping and Focus Theory can be
used as a framework for understanding how
 IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND DISCOURSE FOCUS
implicit causality might focus the reader’s at-
tention on the implied cause of an event. Con-
sider the sentence, “John telephoned Bill be-
cause he wanted some information.” When
readers comprehend the first clause, the dis-
course entities “John” and “Bill” are in explicit
focus. Moreover, these entities are mapped onto
a representation of the scenario “telephoning” in
implicit focus. The scenario includes roles rel-
evant to telephoning, the initiator of the phone
call (i.e., John) and the recipient of it (i.e., Bill).
The scenario also includes other schemalike
information about a telephoning event, includ-
ing a typical instrument (e.g., telephone) and
typical events (e.g., the initiator dials a tele-
phone, a telephone rings). To the extent that the
initiator plays a central role in a scenario, such
as telephoning, that individual should be easily
accessible in the reader’s discourse model.
Therefore, readers should find it easy to under-
stand a connective that explicitly suggests a causal
connection between the two clauses (i.e., because)
and to determine that the implied cause of the
event is the referent of a subsequent pronoun.
An alternative account places the locus of
implicit causality later in the comprehension
process. Readers may use knowledge about the
implied cause to resolve a pronoun, not when
they encounter it, but later when they integrate
their representations of the two clauses. Such an
account is described by Millis and Just (1994).
They have proposed a model of the influence of
connectives on the comprehension of complex
sentences, called the Connective Integration
Model (CIM). According to CIM, readers inter-
pret a connective like “because” as a cue to
integrate information across two clauses. When
readers encounter a connective in a sentence,
their representation of the first clause is set aside
in working memory while they construct a rep-
resentation of the second. Subsequently, readers
reactivate their representation of clause 1 and
the two clausal representations are integrated.
Integration may involve modifying the reader’s
representation of one or both clauses and elab-
orating their representation with inferences to
make it consistent with the meaning of the con-
nective.
The CIM can be used as a framework for
understanding how implicit causality may have
547
its effect on pronoun resolution at the end of a
sentence. Readers will construct a representa-
tion of the first clause (e.g., “John telephoned
Bill”) and set it aside when they encounter the
connective “because.” Then, readers will con-
struct a representation of the second clause and
reactivate their representation of the first. When
readers integrate the two clauses, they will as-
sign a referent to the pronoun based on the
meaning of the connective “because” and their
knowledge about the implied cause of the event.
In summary, implicit causality may have its
effect when readers comprehend the pronoun
because the implied cause is in implicit focus
and readily accessible in the discourse model.
Alternatively, implicit causality may have its
effect at the end of the sentence when readers
integrate information from the two clauses. Re-
cently, Garnham et al. (1996) reported results
that are relevant to these alternatives. They con-
ducted their experiments using two-clause sen-
tences: a main clause that contained either an
NP 1 or an NP 2 verb and a subordinate clause
that was either congruent or incongruent with
the verb’s bias. Consider the following sen-
tences:
(a) David approached Brian after
school because he wanted some
advice. (NP 1/congruent)
(b) David approached Brian after
school because he looked friendly.
(NP 1/incongruent)
(c) Sherry envied Evette all the time
because she had a fast car. (NP 2/
congruent)
(d) Sherry envied Evette all the time
because she had no money. (NP 2/
incongruent)
One of their hypotheses was that implicit cau-
sality might have a focus effect, increasing the
accessibility of the argument that is consistent
with the verb’s bias. According to this hypoth-
esis, the effect should be seen as soon as the
main clause has been processed, consistent with
the Scenario Mapping and Focus theory. Thus,
David should be more accessible than Brian
when readers encounter the pronoun in (a) and
in (b), whereas Evette should be more accessi-
ble than Sherry at the pronoun in (c) and in (d).
548 LONG AND DE LEY
Given the greater accessibility of the implied
cause of the event, readers should be able to
assign a referent to the pronoun as soon as they
encounter it.
Their second hypothesis was that implicit
causality might have its effect at the end of the
sentence, a prediction that is consistent with the
Connective Integration Model. Rather than fo-
cus the reader’s attention on the implied cause,
implicit causality may affect the ease with
which readers can integrate information in the
two clauses. At integration, the implied cause
may be more accessible than other arguments,
but only when the subordinate clause is congru-
ent with the verb’s bias [e.g., David in (a) and
Evette in (c)].
Garnham et al. (1996) tested their hypotheses
using a probe task in which participants read
sentences and verified the presence of a probe
name. The probe names were presented at var-
ious points in the sentence to determine whether
they were differentially activated as a function
of the verb in the main clause. The results
supported the integration hypothesis. When the
probe name appeared immediately after the pro-
noun, participants exhibited a first-mention ef-
fect; the first name that appeared in the sentence
was verified faster than the second name (see
Gernsbacher, 1990, for a complete description
of the first mention effect). This effect was not
modified by verb bias. When the probe name
appeared at the end of the sentence, participants
exhibited a congruency effect, responding faster
when the subordinate clause was congruent
with the verb’s bias than when it was incongru-
ent. Interestingly, Garnham et al. found no re-
liable pronoun referent effect. That is, partici-
pants responded no faster to the referent of the
pronoun than to the nonreferent; responses to
both names were faster following the congruent
than following the incongruent ending.
Garnham et al.’s (1996) results suggest that a
verb’s implicit causality has no immediate ef-
fect on pronoun resolution; rather, its effect
occurs when readers integrate a subsequent
clause into their existing representation. It may
be premature, however, to conclude that im-
plicit causality has no immediate focus effect.
According to the Scenario Mapping and Focus
theory, making an immediate connection be-
tween a referent and contextually relevant world
knowledge depends on statistical regularities in
the language. For example, when readers com-
prehend the verb “write,” they automatically
integrate an instrument of the verb (e.g., pen)
into their discourse representation only if the
instrument is the preferred semantic default.
Similarly, we might expect the implied cause of
an event to be focused in the readers discourse
model only to the extent that it is usually the
topic of continued discourse. Garnham et al.
(1996) mentioned such regularities as one of the
reasons why implicit causality may not have an
immediate focus effect. It may be counterpro-
ductive to focus attention on the implied cause
of the event when it may not be the subject of a
subsequent clause. For example, a subordinate
clause that describes the consequence rather
than the cause of an event may contain no
reference to the individual who is the implied
cause. Thus, implicit causality may have an
early effect on pronoun resolution only to the
extent that verbs with implicit causality are re-
liably followed by mention of explicit causes.
We return to this issue later when we describe
our analysis of a corpus of natural language.
A second reason implicit causality may not
have an immediate effect on pronoun resolution
is that readers may be limited in their ability to
use such information early in comprehension.
Computing causal relations can require consid-
erable processing resources (Long & Golding,
1993; McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992; Oak-
hill, 1994). If resolving a pronoun requires a
complex causal inference, readers may not have
the processing resources available to make the
inference until the end of the sentence. Indeed,
Garnham et al. (1996) suggest that implicit cau-
sality effects may be reliable only when a main
event and a subordinate clause can be connected
by a relatively simple inference. One implica-
tion of this is that the locus of implicit causality
effects may differ across readers. In particular,
implicit causality may have an early effect on
pronoun resolution in readers who have suffi-
cient resources to make use of such information
on-line during comprehension. We examined
the locus of implicit causality effects among
readers of different skill levels in Experiments 1
through 3.
 IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND DISCOURSE FOCUS
EXPERIMENT 1
We hypothesized that implicit causality may
have an early effect on pronoun resolution, but
only among particularly skilled readers. We
based this hypothesis on two sets of findings
about the comprehension abilities of these read-
ers. One set suggests that skilled readers are
more likely than other readers to elaborate their
discourse models with knowledge-based infer-
ences (Long & Golding, 1993; Lee-Sammons &
Whitney, 1991; Long, Oppy, & Seely, 1994,
1997; Oakhill, 1983, 1984; Oakhill, Yuill, &
Donaldson, 1990). For example, Long and her
colleagues have found that skilled, but not less
skilled readers, (a) make inferences about the
topics of sentences (Long et al., 1994, 1997), (b)
form memory connections among stories that
share the same theme (Long et al., 1997), and
(c) make inferences about the goals of charac-
ters who perform actions in stories (Long &
Golding, 1993). Thus, skilled readers may be
more likely than less skilled readers to elaborate
their discourse model with information about
the implied cause of an event.
A second set of findings suggests that skilled
readers are more likely than other readers to use
knowledge about the statistical regularities in
language to resolve local ambiguities (Pearl-
mutter & MacDonald, 1995; Van Petten, Weck-
erly, McIsaac, & Kutas, 1997). Pearlmutter and
MacDonald (1995) examined how readers who
differed in their working memory capacity used
such knowledge to resolve syntactic ambigu-
ities. They found that both high- and low-ca-
pacity readers were sensitive to statistical regu-
larities in an off-line rating task. For example,
both groups understood that the verb cooked
was more likely to have a past-tense, intransi-
tive interpretation in the context of an inanimate
noun phrase (e.g., the soup) than an animate
noun phrase (e.g., the chef). However, high-
capacity readers were more likely to use this
information on-line to resolve a syntactically
ambiguous verb than were low-capacity read-
ers. Pearlmutter and MacDonald argued that
reading skill influences the speed with which
readers can compute contextual constraints.
Skilled readers compute these constraints more
rapidly and efficiently than do less skilled read-
549
ers because they have done so more frequently
in the past. Thus, less skilled readers show
sensitivity to these constraints in tasks that al-
low sufficient computation time (e.g., plausibil-
ity judgments), but not in more demanding on-
line tasks (e.g., reading time). The situation may
be similar when readers are faced with an am-
biguous pronoun. They may have knowledge
about the relative plausibility of alternative ref-
erents of the pronoun (based on knowledge
about the implicit causality of a verb), but only
skilled readers may use this information on-line
to resolve the ambiguity.
Our methodology was similar to that used in
previous studies of implicit causality (Garnham
et al. 1996; McKoon, Greene, & Ratcliff, 1993).
Participants read sentences depicting a causal
relation between a main event and a subordinate
clause (e.g., “Paul annoyed Harry because he
wouldn’t sit still”). We used a probe-verifica-
tion task to assess the relative accessibility of
the verbs’ arguments immediately before and
after the pronoun in the sentences. One impor-
tant difference between the current experiment
and the Garnham et al. (1996) experiments de-
scribed above is that we constructed two-clause
sentences in which the second clause was al-
ways congruent with the implied causality of
the verb in the main clause. Thus, in the context
of this experiment, a verb’s implied causality
reliably predicted the referent of a subsequent
pronoun.
The focus hypothesis predicts that the indi-
vidual who initiates the main event should be
more accessible in the discourse model than the
individual who reacts to it. In addition, the
implied cause should be the default referent of
the subsequent pronoun. Thus, readers should
respond faster when the probe name is consis-
tent with the verb’s bias than when it is incon-
sistent. This pattern may be found, however,
only among readers who have the resources to
use causal information early in the comprehen-
sion process.
Method
Participants. Participants were 120 under-
graduate psychology students who received
course credit for their participation. We admin-
istered the vocabulary and comprehension sec-
550 LONG AND DE LEY
tions of the Nelson–Denny Reading Test (Form
F) and identified a group of skilled and less
skilled readers based on their test performance
(the top and bottom third of our participants,
respectively). Skilled readers had scores that
ranged from 75 to 98% (M ⫽ 85%, n ⫽ 40).
Less skilled readers had scores that ranged from
42 to 64% (M ⫽ 57, n ⫽ 40). All participants
spoke English as their first language and none
had a diagnosed reading or learning disability.
Materials. We selected 57 NP 1 and 36 NP 2
verbs from those used in previous studies of
implicit causality (Au; 1986; Brown & Fish,
1983; Garvey & Caramazza, 1974; Garvey et
al., 1975; Greene & McKoon, 1995; McKoon et
al., 1992). We collected sentence-completion
data for these verbs from a separate group of 40
participants. Participants were asked to com-
plete sentence fragments of the following type:
NP 1 verb ⫹ ed NP 2, because (e.g., “Ann an-
noyed Pam because ”). We scored the
completions as to whether the subject of the
subordinate clause was consistent or inconsis-
tent with the verb’s bias. We then selected the
verbs with the highest consistency scores. This
resulted in a set of 24 NP 1 verbs (NP 1 was the
subject of the subordinate clause in 84% of the
completions) and 24 NP 2 verbs (NP 2 was the
subject in 81% of the completions).
We constructed 48 experimental and 48 filler
sentences. The experimental sentences appear in
Appendix A. These sentences are similar to the
congruent sentences used by Garnham et al.
(1996). They were constructed using the follow-
ing frame: name verb ⫹ ed name, because pro-
noun verb ⫹ ed noun phrase (“Ann annoyed Pam
because she kept fidgeting in class”). The names
used in the sentences were common American
first names. In each sentence, the two names were
either stereotypically female or stereotypically
male. Across sentences, half of the names were
female and half were male. These names also
served as the test probes for the experimental
sentences. All sentences ended with a subordinate
clause that was consistent with the verb’s causal
bias. The filler sentences were constructed in the
same way. The verbs in these sentences were
similar to those used in the experimental sen-
tences; the majority were selected from the set of
verbs that exhibited inconsistent causal attribu-
tions in our normative data.
We included a set of 48 questions about the
sentences to encourage sentence comprehen-
sion. Each question was a true/false paraphrase
based on information in the preceding sentence.
Half of the test questions followed the experi-
mental sentences and half followed the filler
sentences. In addition, half of the test sentences
were true about the preceding sentence and half
were false.
We created four lists of stimulus sentences
and test probes. Each list contained 96 sen-
tences (all of the experimental and filler sen-
tences) and 48 test questions. In each set of
materials, half of the experimental sentences
appeared with test probes that were NP 1 names
and half with probes that were NP 2 names. The
filler sentences appeared with names that were
not mentioned in the sentences. Half of all
probes appeared immediately before the pro-
noun and half appeared immediately after it.
The probe conditions (i.e., name and position)
were counterbalanced across material sets. Each
material set was preceded by 10 additional sen-
tences and associated test probes. These sen-
tences were used in practice trials to familiarize
participants with the task.
Procedure. Participants were randomly as-
signed to one of the four material sets (10
skilled and 10 less skilled readers per set). The
sentences were presented in random order on
PCs by means of a word-by-word presentation
procedure. All words were presented in the cen-
ter of the screen for 300 ms with a 150-ms
interval between words. 1 Each trial began with
a warning signal, a row of asterisks presented
for 1 s in the middle of the screen. The warning
signal was followed by a 1-s pause and then the
first word of the sentence. The test probes ap-
peared in capital letters near the top of the
screen. When a test probe was presented before
the pronoun, it appeared 150 ms after the offset
of the word immediately preceding the pronoun.
When it was presented after the pronoun, it
1
We have found in previous studies that this is a com-
fortable reading rate for both our skilled and less skilled
readers (Long & Golding, 1993; Long et al., 1994). Graham
et al. (1996) used similar timing parameters in their study (a
constant of 300 ms plus 16.667 ms per character).
 IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND DISCOURSE FOCUS
Experiment 1: Probe Response Times (in Milliseconds) and Percentage Correct Responses (in Parentheses)
Skilled
Probe before pronoun Probe after pronoun
NP 1 name
NP 1 verb 901 (99.1)
NP 2 verb 931 (97.8)
NP 2 name
NP 1 verb 928 (96.1)
NP 2 verb 911 (96.9)
appeared 150 ms after the pronoun’s offset.
Participants were asked to decide whether the
test probe had appeared in the sentence. They
pressed a key labeled YES if the probe had
appeared and one labeled NO if it had not
appeared.
Half of the sentences were followed by com-
prehension questions. When this occurred, the
word TEST appeared for 1 s in the middle of the
screen. This was followed by a comprehension
question. Participants pressed YES if the test
item was true about the immediately preceding
sentence and pressed NO if it was false.
Results and Discussion
We performed 2(skill) ⫻ 2(bias) ⫻ 2(posi-
tion) ⫻ 2(name) ANOVAs on the accuracy and
response-time data. All analyses were per-
formed with participants treated as a random
variable (F 1) and again with items treated as the
random variable (F 2). Skill (skilled vs less
skilled readers) was a between-participant and
between-item factor and bias (NP 1 vs NP 2
verb), position (before vs after the pronoun),
and name (NP 1 vs NP 2) were within-participant
and within-item factors. All effects were tested
at a significance level of p ⬍ .05 unless other-
wise indicated.
Comprehension. We analyzed skilled and
less skilled readers’ responses to the compre-
hension test questions. Skilled readers per-
formed better than did less skilled readers (M ⫽
92% and M ⫽ 86%, respectively), F(1,78) ⫽
8.86, MS e ⫽ 13.01.
551
TABLE 1
Reading skill
Less skilled
Probe before pronoun Probe after pronoun
909 (99.6) 965 (96.1) 960 (96.2)
986 (99.6) 973 (96.2) 969 (96.3)
923 (94.7) 1014 (95.8) 1004 (96.0)
913 (97.0) 1003 (95.9) 1000 (96.0)
Accuracy. The percentage of correct re-
sponses and response times to the probe words
appear in Table 1. Our analysis revealed two
reliable effects. Participants were more accurate
in their responses to NP 1 names (M ⫽ 97.6)
than to NP 2 names (M ⫽ 96.1), F 1(1,78) ⫽
14.09, MS e ⫽ .42; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 19.65, MS e ⫽
1.97, and skilled readers responded more accu-
rately (M ⫽ 97.6) than did less skilled readers
(M ⫽ 96.1), F 1(1,78) ⫽ 6.03, MS e ⫽ .67;
F 2(1,46) ⫽ 10.01, MS e ⫽ .94.
Response times. All errors and latencies more
than 3 standard deviations from a participant’s
mean were treated as missing data (6.6% of the
data) and excluded from the analyses. Our anal-
yses revealed reliable skill ⫻ name, bias ⫻
name, and skill ⫻ bias ⫻ name interactions,
F 1(1,78) ⫽ 7.44, MS e ⫽ 12316; F 2(1,46) ⫽
12.70, MS e ⫽ 2249 and F 1(1,78) ⫽ 9.41, MS e ⫽
7478; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 5.62, MS e ⫽ 1833 and
F 1(1,78) ⫽ 3.86, MS e ⫽ 7478; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 3.81,
MS e ⫽ 2249, respectively.
We examined these interactions by perform-
ing separate analyses of skilled and less skilled
readers’ response times. Skilled readers’ re-
sponses to NP 1 names were affected by verb
bias and by probe position. When the probe
appeared after the pronoun, skilled readers ex-
hibited an implicit causality effect (i.e., faster
response times to the name that was the implied
cause than to the other name in the sentence).
Interestingly, this effect was limited to the NP 2
verbs. Responses to NP 1 names were slower in
the context of NP 2 verbs (M ⫽ 986) than in the
552 LONG AND DE LEY
context of NP 1 verbs (M ⫽ 909), F 1(1,78) ⫽
17.28, F 2(1,46) ⫽ 9.57. Responses to these
names were also slower than responses to NP 2
names that appeared with either NP 1 verbs
(M ⫽ 923), F 1(1,78) ⫽ 13.36; F 2(1,46) ⫽
12.98) or NP 2 verbs (M ⫽ 913), F 1(1,78) ⫽
16.66; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 10.01. When the probe ap-
peared before the pronoun, skilled readers ex-
hibited no reliable differences. In contrast, less
skilled readers exhibited only one reliable ef-
fect. They responded faster to NP 1 names (M ⫽
967) than to NP 2 names (M ⫽ 1005),
F 1(1,78) ⫽ 11.60, F 2(1,46) ⫽ 12.67.
These results suggest that implicit causality
can have an effect relatively early in the com-
prehension process, but only in certain circum-
stances. First, the effect depended on reading
skill; implicit causality had an effect on skilled,
but not on less skilled, readers’ performance.
Second, the effect was limited to the NP 2 verbs.
Skilled readers responded faster to NP 2 than to
NP 1 names presented after the pronoun,
whereas they showed no differences in the con-
text of NP 1 verbs.
One explanation for less skilled readers’ fail-
ure to show an implicit causality effect is that
they have less knowledge about implicit causal-
ity than do skilled readers. We examined this
possibility by asking another group of skilled
and less skilled readers to perform a pronoun-
identification task. We presented each experi-
mental sentence up through the pronoun (e.g.,
“Ann annoyed Pam because she . . .”) and had
participants identify the pronoun’s referent.
Again, we used Nelson–Denny scores to iden-
tify skilled and less skilled readers (M ⫽ 82%,
n ⫽ 20 and M ⫽ 54%, n ⫽ 20 for skilled and
less skilled readers, respectively). We found no
differences in the groups’ performance. Both
were likely to select NP 1 as the referent of the
pronoun in the context of an NP 1 verb (72 and
73%, skilled and less skilled readers, respec-
tively) and NP 2 as the referent in the context of
an NP 2 verb (70 and 72%, skilled and less
skilled readers, respectively).
More interesting than the response-time dif-
ferences between skilled and less skilled readers
was the way in which skilled readers manifested
the implicit causality effect. Implicit causality
slowed responses to the argument that did not
match the verb’s bias rather than facilitated
responses that matched. This finding is incon-
sistent with previous results reported by Mc-
Donald and MacWhinney (1995), who found an
increase in the accessibility of NP 2 names pre-
sented immediately after the pronoun; however,
it is consistent with Gernsbacher’s claims about
the mechanisms involved in referential access
(Gernsbacher, 1989, 1990). She argues that both
referents and nonreferents are active when read-
ers encounter an ambiguous pronoun. Pronoun
resolution, therefore, does not involve enhanc-
ing the activation of the referent; the referent is
already active. Rather, pronoun resolution in-
volves suppressing the nonreferent. This is the
pattern that we observed for the NP 2 verbs.
Responses to NP 1 names were slower after the
pronoun than before it, whereas time to respond
to NP 2 names did not change as a function of
probe position.
A second interesting characteristic of our data
concerns the asymmetrical effect of implicit
causality; the effect occurred with NP 2, but not
with NP 1, verbs. This asymmetry would be ex-
pected if NP 2 verbs were better predictors of the
pronoun’s referent. However, the asymmetry
was not found in our normative data. We found
strong effects of implicit causality for both
types of verbs when we asked participants to
complete sentence fragments and when we
asked skilled and less skilled readers to identify
the referents of the pronouns. Our response-
time results suggest that pronoun resolution
may be more robust with NP 2 than with NP 1
verbs. We examined this issue further in Exper-
iment 2.
EXPERIMENT 2
Skilled readers’ responses to probe names in
Experiment 1 were influenced by implicit cau-
sality, but only when the verb’s causality was
directed toward the grammatical object of the
sentence. Our goal in Experiment 2 was to
examine this asymmetry. We asked whether
implicit causality effects occur with NP 1 verbs
when additional information from the sentence
context supports NP 1 as the referent of the pro-
noun. If so, then an implicit causality effect may
be found for NP 1 verbs by testing the activation
 IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND DISCOURSE FOCUS
Experiment 2: Probe Response Times (in Milliseconds) and Percentage Correct Responses (in Parentheses)
Skilled
Probe before pronoun Probe after sentence
NP 1 name
NP 1 verb 874 (96.5)
NP 2 verb 907 (97.4)
NP 2 name
NP 1 verb 888 (96.1)
NP 2 verb 895 (95.6)
of the verbs’ arguments at the end of the sen-
tence.
Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1
except for the position of the test probes; an
end-of-sentence probe replaced the after-the-
pronoun probe. If pronoun resolution is affected
by additional supporting context, then we
should find similar effects for NP 1 and NP 2
verbs. Readers should respond faster to the
name that is consistent with the verb’s bias than
to the name that is inconsistent with its bias.
METHOD
Participants. Participants were 112 under-
graduates who received course credit for their
participation. We identified groups of skilled
and less skilled readers using Nelson–Denny
scores as described in Experiment 1 (range ⫽
72 to 99%; M ⫽ 82%; n ⫽ 40 and range ⫽ 31
to 62%; M ⫽ 55%; n ⫽ 40, respectively).
Materials and procedure. Materials and pro-
cedure were the same as those used in Experi-
ment 1 with one exception. We replaced the
after-the-pronoun probe with an end-of-sen-
tence probe.
Results and Discussion
The data were analyzed as described in Ex-
periment 1. Mean response times and accuracy
scores appear in Table 2.
Comprehension. Skilled readers performed
somewhat better on the comprehension test
questions than did less skilled readers (M ⫽
95% and M ⫽ 93% correct, respectively); how-
553
TABLE 2
Reading skill
Less skilled
Probe before pronoun Probe after sentence
898 (98.7) 969 (97.6) 982 (97.2)
988 (97.8) 966 (99.5) 977 (98.1)
911 (93.9) 992 (95.2) 1019 (92.9)
912 (92.5) 996 (93.8) 1002 (93.3)
ever, this difference was not reliable, F(1,78) ⫽
2.17, MS e ⫽ 15.55, p ⫽ .14.
Accuracy. Participants were more accurate in
response to NP 1 names (M ⫽ 97.85) than to NP 2
names (M ⫽ 94.16), F 1(1,78) ⫽ 14.25, MS e ⫽
.21 and F 2(1,46) ⫽ 14.45, MS e ⫽ 2.67.
Response times. Errors and outliers consti-
tuted 7.8% of the data. Skilled readers exhibited
faster response times (M ⫽ 909) than did less
skilled readers (M ⫽ 988), F 1(1,78) ⫽ 3.88,
MS e ⫽ 214538 and F 2(1,46) ⫽ 14.14, MS e ⫽
1777. In addition, readers responded faster to
before-the-pronoun probes (M ⫽ 936) than to
end-of-sentence probes (M ⫽ 961), F 1(1,78) ⫽
8.7, MS e ⫽ 12155 and F 2(1,46) ⫽ 4.45, MS e ⫽
2700.
The analysis also revealed reliable skill ⫻
name and skill ⫻ bias ⫻ name interactions,
F 1(1,78) ⫽ 9.43, MS e ⫽ 13427; F 2(1,46) ⫽
11.38, MS e ⫽ 1777 and F 1(1,78) ⫽ 3.68, MS e ⫽
8806; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 4.42, MS e ⫽ 1777, respec-
tively. Follow-up analyses revealed a pattern of
response times very similar to that in Experi-
ment 1. When the probe appeared at the end of
the sentence, skilled readers exhibited an im-
plicit causality effect, but only in the context of
NP 2 verbs. Responses to NP 1 names were
slower in the context of NP 2 verbs (M ⫽ 988)
than in the context of NP 1 verbs (M ⫽ 891),
F 1(1,78) ⫽ 11.10 and F 2(1,46) ⫽ 9.79. Re-
sponses to these names were also slower than
responses to NP 2 names that appeared with ei-
ther NP 1 verbs (M ⫽ 911), F 1(1,78) ⫽ 14.28
and F 2(1,46) ⫽ 4.52, or NP 2 verbs (M ⫽ 912),
554 LONG AND DE LEY
F 1(1,78) ⫽ 16.54 and F 2(1,46) ⫽ 13.16. When
the probe appeared before the pronoun, skilled
readers exhibited no reliable response time dif-
ferences. In contrast, less skilled readers
showed a reliable first-mention effect, but no
effect of implicit causality. They responded
faster to NP 1 names (M ⫽ 974) than to NP 2
names (M ⫽ 1002) irrespective of verb bias,
F 1(1,78) ⫽ 4.42 and F 2(1,46) ⫽ 4.13.
The pattern of response times in this experi-
ment replicated our earlier findings. Again, we
found that verb bias directed the reader’s atten-
tion to the implied cause of the event, but only
when the reader was a skilled comprehender.
We also replicated the asymmetrical effect of
implicit causality observed in Experiment 1.
Considered together, Experiments 1 and 2 sug-
gest that pronoun resolution is more robust for
NP 2 than for NP 1 verbs. Although previous
studies of implicit causality provide no ready
explanation for the difference between the two
verb types, two previous studies have reported
results consistent with the asymmetry that we
observed here (McKoon et al., 1993; McDonald
& MacWhinney, 1995). McKoon et al. (1993)
examined the differential activation of NP 1 and
NP 2 names when a subordinate clause was ei-
ther consistent or inconsistent with the bias of
the verb in the main event. In two of their
experiments, readers responded to the test
probes at their own pace (Experiments 1 and 3).
In an additional two experiments, readers were
encouraged to make very fast responses (Exper-
iments 2 and 4). McKoon et al. examined the
extent to which readers exhibited a matching
effect, responding faster to the name that was
consistent with the verb’s bias than to the name
that was inconsistent. When readers responded
at their own pace, McKoon et al. found a match-
ing effect for both NP 1 and NP 2 verbs. When
readers were encouraged to respond quickly,
they continued to show a matching effect for
NP 2 verbs, but no longer showed the effect for
NP 1 verbs.
McDonald and MacWhinney (1995) also ob-
served an asymmetrical effect of implicit cau-
sality in an experiment using a cross-modal
priming paradigm. They presented probes at
four points in the sentence: after the NP 2 name
in the first clause, immediately after the pro-
noun, 200 ms after the pronoun, and at the end
of the sentence. They found a robust first-men-
tion effect at all delays in sentences that con-
tained NP 1 verbs. However, in the context of
NP 2 verbs, the first-mention effect disappeared
immediately after the pronoun and at the end of
the sentence. In the following experiment, we
address possible explanations for the asymmet-
rical effect of implicit causality.
EXPERIMENT 3
Our experiments and those conducted by
McKoon et al. (1993) were similar in that par-
ticipants read sentences in which the subordi-
nate clause immediately followed the NP 2 name
(e.g., “Matt congratulated Scott because he won
the race”). An early effect of implicit causality
was found for NP 2 verbs in both studies. In
contrast, Garnham et al. (1996) used sentences
in which the subordinate clause followed a filler
phrase (e.g., “Jane congratulated Mary on the
beach because she won the contest”) and found
no early effect of implicit causality. In order to
determine whether this difference in materials
contributed to the inconsistency between our
results and those reported by Garnham et al., we
added filler phrases to all of the sentences used
in this experiment.
We also changed our materials to determine
whether our previous results were affected by
the reliability with which implicit causality pre-
dicted the pronoun’s referent. Experiments 1
and 2 were similar to McDonald and MacWhin-
ney’s (1995) experiment in that we used sen-
tences in which the second clause was always
congruent with the implied causality of the verb
in the main clause. In Experiment 3, we manip-
ulated congruency such that half of the sen-
tences were followed by clauses that were con-
gruent with the verb’s bias and half were
followed by clauses that were incongruent with
the verb’s bias. Test probes appeared after the
pronoun or at the end of the sentence. By adding
filler phrases and manipulating congruency, we
replicated the conditions in Garnham et al.
(1996, Experiment 3).
Method
Participants. Participants were 120 under-
graduates who received course credit for their
 IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND DISCOURSE FOCUS 555

TABLE 3

Experiment 3: Probe Response Times (in Milliseconds) and Percentage Correct Responses (in Parentheses)

Skilled readers Less skilled readers

Congruent Incongruent Congruent Incongruent

Probe after Probe after Probe after Probe after Probe after Probe after Probe after Probe after
pronoun sentence pronoun sentence pronoun sentence pronoun sentence

NP 1 name
NP 1 verb 892 (99.8) 916 (97.5) 900 (99.5) 1028 (96.7) 948 (97.8) 1017 (95.1) 953 (97.7) 1034 (95.2)
NP 2 verb 988 (98.7) 997 (96.0) 999 (95.0) 1020 (96.7) 931 (96.2) 1007 (94.2) 939 (96.5) 1046 (94.7)
NP 2 name
NP 1 verb 911 (97.6) 923 (95.0) 914 (99.2) 1039 (95.0) 1011 (98.3) 1005 (95.2) 999 (97.5) 1097 (95.2)
NP 2 verb 912 (99.2) 920 (94.3) 901 (97.5) 1041 (95.8) 1016 (96.7) 1011 (97.5) 989 (96.7) 1042 (95.8)

participation. We identified groups of skilled
and less skilled readers using Nelson–Denny
scores as described in Experiments 1 and 2
(range 74 to 97%; M ⫽ 83%; n ⫽ 40 and
range ⫽ 28 to 62%; M ⫽ 50%; n ⫽ 40, respec-
tively).
Materials and procedure. Each of the exper-
imental and filler sentences used in Experiments
1 and 2 was altered by adding a two- to three-
word filler phrase before the connective. In ad-
dition, we wrote an incongruent ending for each
sentence. The experimental sentences appear in
Appendix A. We then created eight lists of
stimulus sentences and test probes. Each list
contained 96 sentences (48 experimental and 48
filler sentences). Congruency (congruent vs in-
congruent ending), probe name (NP 1 vs NP 2
name), and probe position (after-the-pronoun vs
end-of-sentence) were counterbalanced across
material sets. The procedure was the same as
that used in Experiments 1 and 2.
Results and Discussion
The data were analyzed as described in Ex-
periment 1. Mean response times and accuracy
scores appear in Table 3.
Comprehension. Skilled readers were more
accurate in response to the comprehension test
questions than were less skilled readers (M ⫽
91 and M ⫽ 90% correct, respectively); how-
ever, this difference was not reliable, F ⬍ 1.
Accuracy and response times. Errors and out-
liers constituted 5.4% of the data. We found no
reliable effects in our analysis of the accuracy
scores. Our analysis of the response times re-
vealed reliable effects of congruency and posi-
tion. Participants were faster to respond to
probes in congruent sentences (M ⫽ 963) than
in incongruent sentences (M ⫽ 996),
F 1(1,78) ⫽ 12.90, MS e ⫽ 26646; F 2(1,46) ⫽
32.50, MS e ⫽ 3738. Participants were also
faster to respond to probes that appeared after
the pronouns (M ⫽ 950) than to those that
appeared at the end of the sentences (M ⫽
1008), F 1(1,78) ⫽ 28.87, MS e ⫽ 28927;
F 2(1,46) ⫽ 112.63, MS e 3738. These effects
were modified by the following interactions:
skill ⫻ bias [F 1(1,78) ⫽ 3.61, MS e ⫽ 25585,
p ⫽ .06; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 5.31, MS e ⫽ 4610], skill ⫻
name [F 1(1,78) ⫽ 5.37, MS e ⫽ 44680;
F 2(1,46) ⫽ 14.72, MS e ⫽ 4610], bias ⫻ name
[F 1(1,78) ⫽ 3.12, MS e ⫽ 24084, p ⫽ .08;
F 2(1,46) ⫽ 6.68, MS e ⫽ 3738], congruency ⫻
position [F 1(1,78) ⫽ 11.60, MS e ⫽ 21276;
F 2(1,46) ⫽ 9.76, MS e ⫽ 3738], skill ⫻ posi-
tion ⫻ name [F 1(1,78) ⫽ 6.33, MS e ⫽ 21120;
F 2(1,46) ⫽ 9.03, MS e ⫽ 4610], congruency ⫻
position ⫻ name [F 1(1,78) ⫽ 5.54, MS e ⫽
30717; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 7.95, MS e ⫽ 3738], and
skill ⫻ bias ⫻ congruency ⫻ name [F 1(1,78) ⫽
3.89, MS e ⫽ 21494; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 10.54, MS e ⫽
4610]. The skill ⫻ bias ⫻ position ⫻ name and
the skill ⫻ bias ⫻ position ⫻ name ⫻ congru-
ency interactions were marginally reliable in
both the participants and items analyses
[F 1(1,78) ⫽ 3.40; MS e ⫽ 28699, p ⫽ .08;
556 LONG AND DE LEY
F 2(1,46) ⫽ 2.78, MS e ⫽ 4610, p ⫽ .10 and
F 1(1,78) ⫽ 3.30, MS e ⫽ 68963, p ⫽ .07;
F 2(1,46) ⫽ 3.55, MS e ⫽ 4610, p ⫽ .06, respec-
tively].
We analyzed skilled and less skilled readers’
response times separately and found results sim-
ilar to those reported in Experiments 1 and 2.
When the test probe appeared after the pronoun,
skilled readers exhibited an implicit causality
effect, but no effect of congruency. (Note that a
congruency effect would be surprising at this
point because readers had not yet encountered
the incongruent information.) Responses to NP 1
names were slower in the context of NP 2 verbs
(M ⫽ 994) than in the context of NP 1 verbs
(M ⫽ 896), F 1(1,78) ⫽ 7.75; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 7.74.
Responses to these names were also slower than
responses to NP 2 names that appeared with ei-
ther NP 1 verbs (M ⫽ 913) or NP 2 verbs (M ⫽
907), F 1(1,78) ⫽ 6.15; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 8.67 and
F 1(1,78) ⫽ 7.11; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 26.08. When the
probe appeared at the end of the sentence,
skilled readers responded faster to probes in
congruent sentences (M ⫽ 939) than in incon-
gruent sentences (M ⫽ 1032), F 1(1,78) ⫽
21.23; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 23.31. In addition, they
showed a different effect of implicit causality in
the two types of sentences. When the sentence
ending was congruent with the verb’s bias,
skilled readers showed the same pattern as they
did when the test probe appeared after the pro-
noun. They were slower to NP 1 names in the
context of NP 2 verbs (M ⫽ 997) than in the
context of NP 1 verbs (M ⫽ 916), F 1(1,78) ⫽
6.22; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 7.24. They were also slower to
these names than to NP 2 names that appeared
with either NP 1 verbs (M ⫽ 923) or NP 2 verbs
(M ⫽ 920), F 1(1,78) ⫽ 5.17; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 24.50
and F 1(1,78) ⫽ 5.60; F 2(1,46) ⫽ 4.81. When
the sentence ending was incongruent with the
verb’s bias, skilled readers showed no effect of
referent name, Fs ⬍ 1.
Less skilled readers showed reliable effects
of position and name, responding faster to after-
the-pronoun probes (M ⫽ 973) than to end-of-
sentence probes (M ⫽ 1032), F 1(1,78) ⫽ 13.68;
F 2(1,46) ⫽ 56.63, and responding faster to NP 1
names (M ⫽ 984) than to NP 2 names (M ⫽
1021), F 1(1,78) ⫽ 3.33, p ⫽ .07; F 2(1,46) ⫽
12.61. When the test probe appeared after the
pronoun, they showed no effect of congruency
(all Fs ⬍ 1); however, they were faster to test
probes in congruent sentences (M ⫽ 1010) than
in incongruent sentences (M ⫽ 1056) when the
probes appeared at the end of the sentence. This
latter effect was reliable in the participants, but
not in the items, analysis [F 1(1,78) ⫽ 7.30;
F 2(1,46) ⫽ 1.47].
Changing our materials to be consistent with
those used previously by Garnham et al. (1996)
had little effect on skilled readers’ performance.
These readers continued to exhibit an early ef-
fect of implicit causality, but only in the context
of NP 2 verbs. This occurred even though filler
material intervened between the main clause
and the subordinate clause and even though the
implied cause of the verb did not reliably pre-
dict the pronoun’s referent. Less skilled readers,
in contrast, showed a late effect of congruency,
replicating Garnham et al.’s results. Like
Garnham et al., we found no pronoun-referent
effect. Less skilled readers responded to both
NP 1 and NP 2 names faster following the con-
gruent than the incongruent ending.
As we mentioned previously, the asymmetry
between NP 1 and NP 2 verbs is not consistent
with the sentence-continuation and pronoun-
identification data presented here and in other
studies of implicit causality (Au, 1986; Brown
& Fish, 1983; Garvey & Caramazza, 1974).
Why then do we find skilled readers exhibiting
an implicit causality effect in the response time
data for NP 2, but not for NP 1, verbs? One pos-
sibility is that NP 1 and NP 2 verbs are used
differently in natural language and this is re-
flected in on-line measures, such as reading
time or probe verification, but not in off-line
measures, such as pronoun identification or sen-
tence continuation. We examined this possibil-
ity by analyzing how these verbs were used in a
small corpus of natural language.
CORPUS ANALYSIS
One explanation for the asymmetrical effect
of implicit causality that we observed in the
previous experiments is that NP 2 verbs are bet-
ter predictors of a subsequent pronoun’s refer-
ent than are NP 1 verbs. In this study, we exam-
ined the use of NP 1 and NP 2 verbs in a small
corpus of natural text. We used the Internet to
 IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND DISCOURSE FOCUS
access the archives for two newspapers pub-
lished in San Francisco, California. The ar-
chives contain staff-written articles and “Letters
to the Editor” published in recent years. We
searched the archives to find examples of the
NP 1 and NP 2 verbs used in this study.
We coded several pieces of information from
the corpus. First, we coded information about
the clause in which each verb appeared, includ-
ing information about its grammatical form
(e.g., tense, voice) and information about its
arguments (e.g., animacy). Second, we coded
information about the subsequent clause (or
sentence), including information about the ana-
phor (e.g., pronoun, explicit name, relative pro-
noun) and information about the anaphor’s ref-
erent (e.g., NP 1, NP 2, other). Finally, we coded
information about the relation between the two
clauses (e.g., cause, consequence, etc.), includ-
ing information about the connective (if any)
that appeared between them.
Method
Materials. Our corpus was obtained from the
archives of the San Francisco Chronicle and the
San Francisco Examiner (http://www.sfgate.
com/). These are two daily newspapers that
serve communities in the metropolitan area of
San Francisco. The archives contain all staff-
written articles and “Letters to the Editor” pub-
lished in the past 5 years. We accessed the
archives via the Internet to examine those arti-
cles and letters published between January 1,
1996 and December 31, 1998. Specifically, we
used the NP 1 and NP 2 verbs from the previous
experiments to search the archives for informa-
tion about how these verbs were used.
Procedure. We searched the archives for ex-
amples of the NP 1 and NP 2 verbs, using the
verb ⫹ ed form. This gave us an initial corpus
of 16417 contexts (7481 NP 1 and 8936 NP 2
contexts). For each verb, we randomly sampled
from the initial corpus, selecting each context in
which the verb was used in its transitive form.
We continued this procedure until we had iden-
tified 100 examples of the verb or until we had
exhausted the entire sample for that verb. This
constituted our final corpus (1777 NP 1-verb and
2022 NP 2-verb contexts). Table 4 contains the
557
frequency for each verb in the initial and in the
final corpus.
For each example in our final corpus, two
independent judges recorded information about
the verb’s use. (One judge was the first author;
the other was a graduate student in the linguis-
tics program at the University of California,
Davis.) First, we coded information about the
clause in which the verb appeared (clause 1).
This included information about the sentence
type (active vs passive voice) and information
about the animacy of the verb’s arguments. Sec-
ond, we coded information about the clause (or
sentence) that followed the verb (clause 2). We
focused on the subject of this clause. We deter-
mined whether the subject was an anaphor; if
so, we recorded whether it was a pronoun, a
relative pronoun, or an explicit noun phrase. In
addition, we recorded information about the ref-
erent of the subject anaphor: NP 1, NP 2, or other.
The subject anaphor was always coded as NP 1 if
it referred to the first noun phrase in the preced-
ing clause and was always coded as NP 2 if it
referred to the second noun phrase. We fol-
lowed the same procedure in both active and
passive sentences. Finally, we coded for the
relation between the two clauses. We recorded
information about any connective that appeared
between the two clauses (e.g., and, because,
when, then, so). We also recorded information
about the semantic relation between the clauses.
Based on an initial survey of the corpus, we
identified four types of relations: (a) clause 2
was the cause of the event in clause 1 (cause),
(b) clause 2 was the consequence of the event in
clause 1 (consequence), (c) clause 2 provided
additional information about NP 1 (NP 1-elabora-
tive), and (d) clause 2 provided additional in-
formation about NP 2 (NP 2-elaborative). All
other types of relations were coded as other.
Appendix B contains examples from our final
corpus. Included are examples of NP 1 and NP 2
verbs followed by subject referents that are con-
sistent with their bias and examples that are
inconsistent with their bias. Also included are
examples of NP 1 and NP 2 verbs followed by
causes and examples of the verbs followed by
consequences.
Cause and consequence relations were iden-
tified using a question–answering procedure de-
558 LONG AND DE LEY

TABLE 4

Frequency of Occurrence in the Initial and in the Final Corpus

NP 1 verbs NP 2 verbs

Initial corpus Final corpus Initial corpus Final corpus

aggravated 288 100 admired 378 100

agitated 89 18 adored 125 100
amazed 280 46 appreciated 334 100
amused 158 31 assisted 132 53
angered 217 100 blamed 1132 100
annoyed 123 62 comforted 107 100
apologized to 351 100 commended 119 100
bored 298 11 congratulated 111 100
charmed 116 100 consoled 64 41
cheated 124 100 deplored 35 19
concerned 552 100 despised 118 100
confessed to 360 91 detested 109 100
deceived 119 100 dreaded 152 47
disappointed 1330 39 envied 121 100
exasperated 79 31 feared 754 100
fascinated 195 80 honored 939 47
flabbergasted 85 69 liked 1373 100
frightened 246 100 mourned 102 88
humiliated 117 69 noticed 1097 100
infuriated 128 100 praised 691 100
inspired 1319 100 reassured 105 100
intimidated 225 100 resented 107 100
peeved 51 30 thanked 180 100
scared 631 100 valued 551 27

scribed by Graesser and Clark (1985). They
have found that answers to why questions reveal
causal information about the goals of actions,
states that initiate goals, and the causal anteced-
ents of events. In contrast, answers to what-
happened-next questions reveal information
about the consequences of actions and events.
In order to identify causes, we phrased clause 1
as a why-question and judged whether clause 2
was a sensible answer to the question. If so, it
was coded as a cause. Consider example (1)
from the Appendix. When clause 1 in (1) is
phrased as a why question (i.e., “Why did Allen
Edwards exasperate Pitino?”), clause 2 yields a
sensible answer (i.e., “because he came back
slowly from an ankle injury”). We followed a
similar procedure for identifying consequences.
We phrased clause 1 as a what-happened-next
question and judged whether clause 2 was a
sensible answer. If so, we coded it as a conse-
quence. Consider example (11) from the Ap-
pendix. When clause 1 in (11) is phrased as a
what-happened-next question (i.e., “What hap-
pened after a man living in a nearby apartment
frightened the person away?”), clause 2 yields a
sensible answer (i.e., “He called the police who
arrived only minutes later”). If we determined
that clause 2 was not a sensible answer to either
question, then we asked whether it provided
elaborative information about one of the verb’s
arguments in clause 1 (e.g., information about
occupation, role, location). If so, we coded it as
either NP 1-elaborative or NP 2-elaborative; if
not, then we coded it as other.
Results and Discussion
Table 5 contains descriptive information
about the examples in our final corpus. Agree-
ment between the two judges across the coding
categories was high, ranging from 86 to 100%.
All disagreements were resolved by discussion.
Only those categories containing at least 2% of
 IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND DISCOURSE FOCUS 559

TABLE 5 is consistent with the implicit causality of the

Analysis of Verbs Appearing in Their Transitive Form: verbs. The implicit causality of a verb is re-
Classification as a Function of Verb Type (in Percentages) versed when it is written in the passive voice.
For example, admired is an NP 2 verb and in the
Verb type active voice the implied cause is NP 2 (e.g., John
admired Paul because he was so talented); thus,
NP 1 verbs NP 2 verbs
(n ⫽ 1777) (n ⫽ 2022) we would have coded a subsequent reference to
the implied cause as NP 2; however, in the pas-
Clause 1 sive voice, the implied cause is NP 1 voice (e.g.,
Sentence type Paul was admired by John because he was so
Active voice 65.1 87.6 talented); thus, we would have coded a subse-
Passive voice 34.8 12.4
Animacy of the verb’s
quent reference to the implied cause as NP 1
arguments even though admired is an NP 2 verb. Our un-
NP 1 animate 72.7 92.5 derestimate of the subsequent mention of the
NP 2 animate 61.7 50.2 implied cause may have been greater for NP 1
Clause 2 than for NP 2 verbs because NP 1 verbs were
Subject anaphor
Pronoun 33.8 44.2
more likely than NP 2 verbs to appear in the
Relative pronoun 15.2 14.0 passive voice. We examined this possibility by
Explicit NP 51.1 41.8 analyzing examples in the active and the passive
Subject referent voice separately.
NP 1 47.7 35.4 Table 6 contains descriptive information
NP 2 50.3 63.9
Relation between clauses
about the contexts in which the NP 1 and NP 2
Connective verbs appeared in the transitive form/active
None 77.9 78.5 voice. Information about the referent of the ana-
And 9.8 11.7 phor in clause 2 (subject referent) and informa-
Because 2.1 4.0 tion about the semantic relation between the two
Relation type
Cause 26.8 41.3
clauses is presented as a function of the type of
Consequence 31.0 14.7 connective that appeared between the two
NP 1-elaborative 12.7 8.6 clauses.
NP 2-elaborative 14.4 13.7 When no connective appeared between the
two clauses, the referent of the anaphor in
clause 2 was more likely to be NP 2 than NP 1 in
the corpus are presented in the table. One im- the context of an NP 2 verb (76.7% of the 1400
portant difference between the contexts contain- examples vs 22.8% of the examples) [␹ 2(1) ⫽
ing the NP 1 and NP 2 verbs is that we found 82.16, p ⬍ .001]. Thus, the referent was gener-
more examples of NP 2 than NP 1 verbs appear- ally consistent with the implicit causality of NP 2
ing in the transitive form, active voice (87.6% verbs. This was not the case for NP 1 verbs. In
vs 65.1% of the corpus, respectively) [␹ 2(1) ⫽ the absence of a connective, verb bias did not
74.41, p ⬍ .001]. In addition, NP 2 verbs were reliably predict the referent of the anaphor in
more likely than NP 1 verbs to appear in contexts clause 2. We also found NP 2 verbs were more
in which the subject of the subsequent clause likely than NP 1 verbs to be followed by causes
was consistent with the verb’s implicit causality [␹ 2(1) ⫽ 143.25, p ⬍ .001], whereas NP 1 verbs
[␹ 2(1) ⫽ 61.40, p ⬍ .001]. NP 2 verbs were also were more likely than NP 2 verbs to be followed
more likely than NP 1 verbs to be followed by by consequences [␹ 2(1) ⫽ 143.89, p ⬍ .001],
causes of the event in the preceding clause NP 1-elaborations [␹ 2(1) ⫽ 25.18, p ⬍ .001], or
[␹ 2(1) ⫽ 38.82, p ⬍ .001]. NP 2-elaborations [␹ 2(1) ⫽ 4.58, p ⫽ .03].
It should be noted that the information in When the connective and appeared between
Table 5 is collapsed across sentence type (active clause 1 and 2, the pattern for NP 1 and NP 2
vs passive voice). Thus, we may be underesti- verbs was fairly similar. The referent of the
mating the frequency that subsequent reference anaphor in clause 2 was more likely to be NP 1
560 LONG AND DE LEY

TABLE 6 consistent with verb bias; NP 1 was likely to be

Analysis of Verbs Appearing in Their Transitive Form/ the referent in the context of NP 1 verbs and NP 2
Active Voice: Classification as a Function of Verb Type and was likely to be the referent in the context of
Connective (in Percentages) NP 2 verbs. This effect, however, was stronger
for NP 2 than for NP 1 verbs [␹ 2(1) ⫽ 12.45, p ⬍
Verb type
.001]. The presence of the connective because
NP 1 verbs NP 2 verbs was also predictive of the semantic relation
Connective (n ⫽ 1157) (n ⫽ 1771) between the two clauses. In almost every exam-
ple, clause 2 was the cause of the event in clause
None n ⫽ 871 n ⫽ 1400 1; we found no effect of verb type.
Subject Referent Table 7 contains descriptive information
NP 1 40.6 22.8
NP 2 58.4 76.7
about the contexts in which NP 1 and NP 2 verbs
Relation between clauses appeared in their transitive form/passive voice.
Cause 20.0 48.5 When no connective appeared between the two
Consequence 36.9 11.7 clauses, the subject referent was generally con-
NP 1-elaborative 10.7 5.1 sistent with the verb’s bias [␹ 2(1) ⫽ 4.01, p ⫽
NP 2-elaborative 18.0 14.6
“And” n ⫽ 138 n ⫽ 214
.05]. NP 2 was more likely to be the referent than
Subject referent NP 1 in the context of an NP 1 verb, whereas NP 1
NP 1 74.6 87.4 was more likely to be the referent than NP 2 in
NP 2 23.2 12.2 the context of an NP 2 verb. NP 1 verbs were
Relation between clauses more likely than NP 2 verbs to be followed by
Cause 0.0 8.1
Consequence 59.8 34.1
consequences [␹ 2(1) ⫽ 7.20, p ⬍ .01]; we found
NP 1-elaborative 22.5 14.0 no effect of verb type on the other semantic
NP 2-elaborative 0.0 4.7 relations.
“Because” n ⫽ 31 n ⫽ 78 When the connective and appeared between
Subject referent clauses 1 and 2, the referent of the anaphor in
NP 1 74.2 0.3
NP 2 25.8 96.2
clause 2 was more likely to be NP 1 than NP 2 in
Relation between clauses the context of both NP 1 and NP 2 verbs. This
Cause 96.8 97.4 was somewhat more likely for NP 2 than for NP 1
Consequence 0.0 0.0 verbs [␹ 2(1) ⫽ 5.91, p ⫽ .02]. NP 1 verbs were
NP 1-elaborative 0.0 0.0 more likely than NP 2 verbs to be followed by
NP 2-elaborative 0.0 0.0
causes [␹ 2(1) ⫽ 4.27, p ⫽ .04], whereas NP 2
verbs were more likely than NP 1 verbs to be
followed by consequences [␹ 2(1) ⫽ 19.88, p ⬍
than NP 2 in the context of both NP 1 and NP 2 .001]. This is the same pattern that we observed
verbs. This was particularly true for NP 2 verbs, for verbs that appeared in the active voice (see
␹2(1) ⫽ 7.57, p ⫽ .006. We also found that NP 2 Table 6). We found no effect of verb type on
verbs were more likely than NP 1 verbs to be elaborations of NP 1 and NP 2.
followed by causes [␹ 2(1) ⫽ 5.96, p ⫽ .02] and Finally, when the connective because ap-
elaborations of NP 2 [␹ 2(1) ⫽ 6.65, p ⫽ .01], peared between clauses 1 and 2, the referent of
whereas NP 1 verbs were more likely than NP 2 the anaphor in clause 2 was generally consistent
verbs to be followed by consequences [␹ 2(1) ⫽ with the verb’s bias, NP 2 in the context of NP 1
12.20, p ⬍ .001] and elaborations of NP 1 verbs and NP 1 in the context of NP 2 verbs
[␹ 2(1) ⫽ 4.17, p ⫽ .04]. [␹ 2(1) ⫽ 9.35, p ⬍ .01]. We found no effect of
The connective because did not appear in our verb type on the semantic relation between
corpus very often, but in the few examples in clauses 1 and 2.
which it did appear, we still found that NP 2 Our analysis suggests differences in the way
verbs were somewhat better predictors of a sub- that NP 1 and NP 2 verbs are used in natural
sequent referent than were NP 1 verbs. The ref- contexts. These differences are consistent with
erent of the anaphor in clause 2 was generally the asymmetry that we observed in our re-
 IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND DISCOURSE FOCUS 561

TABLE 7 more likely than NP 1 verbs to be followed by a

Analysis of Verbs Appearing in Their Transitive Form/ reference to the implied cause of the event. An
Passive Voice: Classification as a Function of Verb Type entirely different pattern of results was found
and Connective (in Percentages) when the context included the connective and.
NP 1 was generally the referent of the subse-
Verb type
quent anaphor, irrespective of verb bias.
NP 1 NP 2 verbs Although our findings from the corpus anal-
Connective (n ⫽ 620) (n ⫽ 251) ysis correspond to the asymmetry that we ob-
served in Experiments 1–3, there are several
None n ⫽ 512 n ⫽ 187 reasons to interpret our data with caution. First,
Subject referent our final corpus of NP 1 and NP 2 verbs was
NP 1 41.0 52.9
NP 2 58.2 46.5
small, containing a total of 3799 examples of
Relation between clauses verbs used in the past-tense, transitive form.
Cause 39.8 34.0 The size of the corpus was even smaller when
Consequence 16.5 7.5 we considered only those contexts in the active
NP 1-elaborative 10.2 17.6 voice (2928 examples). Second, our corpus
NP 2-elaborative 18.0 23.0
“And” n ⫽ 36 n ⫽ 23
came from a single genre of text, articles, and
Subject referent letters that appeared in the newspaper. There
NP 1 77.8 95.7 may be systematic differences in the way that
NP 2 22.2 0.0 these verbs are used across genres. Indeed, we
Relation between clauses observed differences in how these verbs were
Cause 16.7 0.0
Consequence 30.6 78.3
used across newspaper articles on different top-
NP 1-elaborative 27.7 21.7 ics. Verbs such as aggravated, confessed, and
NP 2-elaborative 5.6 0.0 cheated appeared predominantly in articles on
“Because” n⫽7 n⫽9 crime, whereas verbs such as admired, com-
Subject referent forted, and mourned appeared in articles about
NP 1 28.6 100.0
NP 2 71.0 0.0
death (the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales
Relation between clauses and Mother Teresa, in particular). These differ-
Cause 100.0 100.0 ences may result from the semantics of the
Consequence 0.0 0.0 verbs and generalize across other genres, but
NP 1-elaborative 0.0 0.0 some of these differences may be specific to
NP 2-elaborative 0.0 0.0
newspapers.
One final reason for caution in interpreting
these results is that the verbs in our corpus
sponse-time data. NP 2 verbs were more likely almost never appeared with the connective be-
than NP 1 verbs to appear in the grammatical cause. In most of our examples, the clause con-
form that we used in Experiments 1–3 (transi- taining the NP 1 or NP 2 verb was followed by
tive form/active voice). In addition, NP 2 verbs another sentence. Although the verbs some-
were generally better predictors of subsequent times appeared in a main clause followed by a
mention than were NP 1 verbs. When the verbs subordinate clause, the subordinate clause was
appeared in the past tense, transitive, or active typically introduced by a relative pronoun (e.g.,
voice and when the verbs appeared without a who) and not by a connective. This may be one
connective, NP 2 verbs were more likely than reason why we found differences in the use of
NP 1 verbs to be followed by a subject anaphor NP 1 and NP 2 verbs. When a subordinate clause
that was consistent with the implied causality of is introduced by a relative pronoun, the pronoun
the verb. In addition, NP 2 verbs were more typically refers to the most recently mentioned
likely to be followed by causes than were NP 1 antecedent. This antecedent is likely to be the
verbs. When contexts included the connective implied cause when the main event contains an
because, both NP 1 and NP 2 verbs were likely to NP 2 verb in the active voice (e.g., “The world
be followed by causes, but NP 2 verbs were still mourned Mother Teresa who was buried in Cal-
562 LONG AND DE LEY
cutta today”) In contrast, when a relative pro-
noun refers to the implied cause in the case of
an NP 1 verb, the verb is likely to appear in the
passive voice (e.g., Sales recruits were charmed
by Chen Wang, who shared Horatio Alger hom-
ilies and old Chinese proverbs.). This may ex-
plain why NP 1 verbs were more likely to be
followed by causes when they appeared in the
transitive form/passive voice than when they
appeared in the transitive form/active voice.
In summary, we found that NP 2 verbs were
better predictors of the subsequent mention of
the implied cause of an event than were NP 1
verbs. This may be related to the finding that
NP 2 verbs also appeared more often in the tran-
sitive, active voice. Although our findings are
consistent with the asymmetry that we observed
in Experiments 1–3, additional studies are
needed to examine the use of such verbs in a
wider range of contexts.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Does implicit causality have an effect on
discourse focus early in the comprehension pro-
cess; that is, soon after readers encounter the
verb? Our results suggest that this question has
no simple “yes” or “no” answer. Rather, the
answer depends on a complex interaction be-
tween the type of verb in the sentence and the
comprehension skill of the reader. In three ex-
periments, we found that implicit causality af-
fected readers’ comprehension of a subsequent
pronoun, but only when the reader was a skilled
comprehender and only when the sentence con-
tained an NP 2 verb. In Experiment 1, we com-
pared response times to NP 1 and NP 2 names
presented before and after the pronoun. We
found that skilled readers’ responses to the NP 1
names were affected by the implicit causality of
the verb contained in the sentence. When the
sentence contained an NP 2 verb, skilled readers
responded slower to NP 1 names presented after
the pronoun than before it. When the sentence
contained an NP 1 verb, we found no difference
in response times before and after the pronoun.
Skilled readers showed a similar pattern of re-
sponse times when we replaced the after-the-
pronoun test probes with end-of-sentence
probes (Experiment 2). In contrast, less skilled
readers exhibited a first-mention effect in both
experiments, always responding faster to NP 1
than to NP 2 names.
In Experiment 3, we replicated an earlier
experiment by Garnham et al. (1996, Experi-
ment 3) to determine whether our findings de-
pended on the reliability with which verb bias
predicted the referent of the subsequent pro-
noun. When we compared the results of the two
experiments, we found that our less skilled
readers exhibited the same pattern of response
times as did participants in Garnham et al.’s
experiment. When the probe name appeared at
the end of the sentence, readers exhibited a
congruency effect, responding faster when the
subordinate clause was congruent with the
verb’s bias than when it was incongruent. The
performance of these readers is consistent with
predictions from the Connective Integration
Model (Millis & Just, 1994). Less skilled read-
ers use knowledge about the implied cause of an
event to resolve a pronoun, but not when they
encounter it. Rather, this knowledge is used
later when they integrate their representations of
the two clauses. The similarity between the per-
formance of our less skilled readers and the
performance of participants in Garnham et al.’s
experiment is interesting. It suggests that less
skilled readers have no particular deficit in their
knowledge about implicit causality. They use
knowledge about implicit causality to resolve
an ambiguous pronoun, but do so later in the
comprehension process than do skilled readers.
Differences between our results and those
reported by Garnham et al. (1996) are found
only in the behavior of our skilled readers. First,
we found a much earlier effect of implicit cau-
sality than did Garnham et al. Once again, this
effect was dependent on verb type. When the
probe appeared after the pronoun, skilled read-
ers responded slowly to NP 1 names in the con-
text of NP 2 verbs, irrespective of congruency.
When the probe appeared after the sentence,
skilled readers again responded slowly to NP 1
names in the context of NP 2 verbs, but only in
the congruent sentences. Second, we found no
first-mention effect in the behavior of our
skilled readers. We are unaware of any previous
studies examining the influence of reading skill
on the first-mention effect. It may be that the
effect is less robust in skilled than in less skilled
 IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND DISCOURSE FOCUS
readers. Alternatively, skilled readers may show
a reliable first-mention effect, but not at the
points in sentence processing that we tested.
The first-mentioned participant may be more
accessible than the second-mentioned partici-
pant as skilled readers comprehend the first
clause, but both participants may be readily
accessible when readers begin processing the
second clause.
In both Experiments 1 and 2, we found no
evidence for an implicit causality effect before
the pronoun in the sentence. This finding can be
interpreted in one of two ways. First, the pro-
cess by which the implied cause of an NP 2 verb
becomes focused may be initiated at any point
after readers encounter the verb (e.g., when they
comprehend the verb or when they comprehend
the connective because), but the process may
not be complete until later in processing. Thus,
the implicit causality effect may not be apparent
before readers encounter the pronoun. Second,
the process may be initiated when readers com-
prehend the pronoun. This possibility is consis-
tent with Greene et al.’s (1992) “pronoun-as-
cue” framework. According to this framework,
a pronoun serves as a memory cue to the most
likely entity in the reader’s discourse model.
The morphological and syntactic features of the
pronoun (e.g., gender, number, grammatical
role) are matched automatically to the semantic
features of entities in the discourse model. The
accessibility of these entities is determined by
syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic features. If
the degree of match between the pronoun and
one of the entities is higher than the match
between the pronoun and other entities, the ref-
erent for the pronoun is automatically identified.
If the matching process fails to identify a unique
referent, then pronoun resolution will be de-
layed or the reader may invoke a problem-
solving strategy to select a referent. Implicit
causality may be one of the factors that affects
the matching process, leading to the early iden-
tification of the pronoun’s referent.
Implicit causality appeared to have its effect
on the behavior of skilled readers by decreasing
the accessibility of entities other than the im-
plied cause. As we mentioned previously, this is
consistent with Gernsbacher’s (1990) claim that
the mechanism of suppression plays an impor-
563
tant role in pronoun resolution. It is also con-
sistent with the individual differences that we
observed. Gernsbacher has presented consider-
able evidence that the ability to suppress acti-
vated, but irrelevant, information underlies in-
dividual differences in comprehension skill
(Gernsbacher & Faust, 1991; Gernsbacher &
Robertson, 1995; Gernsbacher, Varner, &
Faust, 1990).
We were not surprised to find that implicit
causality was manifested as a suppression effect
in our data; however, we were very surprised to
find that the effect was limited to the NP 2 verbs.
The asymmetry between NP 1 and NP 2 verbs
appears to be a robust finding. We observed it in
three experiments and McKoon et al. (1993)
and McDonald and MacWhinney observed a
similar effect in their experiments. One expla-
nation for the asymmetrical effect of implicit
causality is that NP 2 verbs may be better pre-
dictors of the subsequent mention of the implied
cause than are NP 1 verbs. We presented prelim-
inary evidence in our corpus analysis that the
implied cause was the subject of a subsequent
clause more often when the verb in the main
event was NP 2 biased than when it was NP 1
biased.
As we discussed earlier, the data from our
corpus analysis should be interpreted cau-
tiously. Our corpus was relatively small and
based on a single genre of text. However, in a
recent study of NP 1 and NP 2 verbs in a very
large corpus of natural text, Burgess, Livesay,
and Lund (1998) also observed an asymmetry in
the verbs’ use. Burgess and his colleagues have
developed a computerized text-analysis system,
the Hyperspace Analog to Language (HAL),
that derives word representations from a large
text corpus of 300 million words (Burgess et al.,
1998; Burgess & Lund, 1997; Lund & Burgess,
1996). The corpus contains conversations from
a variety of Internet news groups. HAL con-
structs a matrix of co-occurrence values for the
70,000 most frequently occurring words in the
corpus. The co-occurrence values are computed
within a 10-word moving window and are in-
versely proportional to the number of words
separating a specific pair. Rows in the matrix
encode information about the extent to which a
word was preceded by other words in the cor-
564 LONG AND DE LEY
pus; columns encode information about the ex-
tent to which a word was followed by other
words. Complete knowledge about a word is
represented by the concatenation of a word’s
row and column vector. These vectors (with a
length of 140,000 values) can be viewed as the
coordinates of points in a high-dimensional se-
mantic space, with each word occupying one
point. Using this representation, differences be-
tween two words’ co-occurrence vectors can be
measured as the distance between the high-
dimensional points defined by their vectors.
Burgess et al. (1998) examined the vector
representations of 15 NP 1 and 13 NP 2 verbs.
(Their corpus included 8 of the NP 1 and 9 of the
NP 2 verbs used in our study.) They applied a
multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedure to
the verbs’ co-occurrence vectors to obtain a
spatial representation of the distances between
them. They found that the NP 2 verbs were well
differentiated from the NP 1 verbs; however, the
NP 1 verbs were only marginally differentiated
from the NP 2 verbs. In other words, the NP 2
verbs were clustered more closely in the high-
dimensional space than were NP 1 verbs. In ad-
dition, they found some subcategorization
within each verb type. For example, the NP 2
verbs, loathe, despise, hate, abhor, and detest,
formed a cluster. Likewise, the NP 1 verbs, de-
ceive, annoy, repel, and disappoint, formed
their own cluster. Interestingly, these subclasses
of NP 1 and NP 2 verbs were quite distant in the
space even though both sets contain words with
negative connotations.
Burgess et al.’s (1998) results, in combina-
tion with the results of our corpus analysis,
suggest that the contextual use of NP 1 and NP 2
verbs is somewhat different. The contexts in
which NP 2 verbs are used appear to be more
similar than are the contexts in which NP 1 verbs
are used. The asymmetry in the verbs’ use may
be due to differences in the verbs’ implicit cau-
sality. We found that NP 2 verbs were more
likely than NP 1 verbs to be followed by the
cause of the event and were more likely to be
followed by a reference to the entity who was
the implied cause (i.e., NP 2).
We have suggested that NP 2 verbs are better
predictors of the subsequent mention of an im-
plied cause than are NP 1 verbs and that this may
explain why skilled readers exhibited an im-
plicit causality effect in the context of NP 2
verbs, but not in the context of NP 1 verbs.
However, this correspondence between subse-
quent mention in the corpus data and the acces-
sibility of the referents in the reaction-time data
does not necessarily mean that one caused the
other. Both may be due to some other underly-
ing factor. For example, we found grammatical
differences between the verbs that could be
responsible for asymmetries in both the corpus
and the reaction-time data. NP 2 verbs were
more likely than NP 1 verbs to appear in the
past-tense/transitive/active voice. HAL’s vector
representations appear to be sensitive to the
grammatical contexts in which words are used
(Burgess & Lund, 1997). Thus, NP 2 verbs may
cluster more closely because they are more
likely than NP 1 verbs to appear in the same gram-
matical form. The grammatical differences be-
tween the verbs may also influence pronoun res-
olution, perhaps by affecting the ease with which
information can be integrated across clauses.
Whichever factor is responsible for differ-
ences in the contextual use of NP 1 and NP 2
verbs, skilled readers appear to be sensitive to it.
They resolve a pronoun referent to the implied
cause of an event earlier in comprehension
when the pronoun follows an NP 2 verb than
when it follows an NP 1 verb. The differences
that we observed in the performance of our
skilled and less skilled readers may be due to
processing differences between the two groups.
Skilled readers, who tend to have faster and
more accurate word-recognition skills than do
less skilled readers, may have more resources
available to elaborate their discourse represen-
tations with appropriate world knowledge, in-
cluding knowledge about the implied cause of
the event (Perfetti, 1985; Long et al., 1994,
1997). Processing differences alone, however,
do not explain why skilled readers show an
early effect of implicit causality in the context
of NP 2, but not in the context of NP 1, verbs.
Alternatively, differences in skilled and less
skilled readers’ performance may be related to
differences in reading experience. Skilled read-
ers, who generally have more reading experi-
ence than do less skilled readers, may have
encoded more information about the contextual
 IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND DISCOURSE FOCUS 565

use of individual words, perhaps in the manner
suggested by lexicalist accounts of language
comprehension (e.g., MacDonald, Pearlmutter,
& Seidenberg, 1994). This might lead skilled
readers to expect the implied cause to be the
referent of a subsequent pronoun when the main
event contains an NP 2 verb used in its transitive,
active voice, but not when it contains an NP 1
verb in this form.
In summary, our findings suggest that the
locus of implicit causality effects depend on
important characteristics of the stimuli and of
the reader. Implicit causality appears to play a
role in pronoun resolution, but only among
skilled readers and only for those verbs that
exhibit NP 2 causality.
APPENDIX A
Experimental Sentences for
Experiments 1, 2, and 3
Congruent sentences appeared in all experiments (infor-
mation in parentheses appeared in Experiment 3 only).
Incongruent sentences appeared in Experiment 3.
Congruent Sentences
Verb Bias ⫽ NP 1
(1) John aggravated Dick (last night) because he played
the stereo too loud.
(2) Kate agitated Jane (at the movies) because she
smacked her gum continuously.
(3) Walter amazed Ronald (on vacation) because he went
skydiving.
(4) Sandra amused Carol (at the party) because she told
funny jokes.
(5) Rick angered Scott (at the park) because he was cruel
to animals.
(6) Ann annoyed Pam (this morning) because she kept
fidgeting in class.
(7) David apologized to Peter (after work) because he
was sorry for his mistake.
(8) Janet bored Ellen (at dinner) because she told the
same story three times.
(9) Tom charmed Jack (at the interview) because he was
so debonair.
(10) Sue cheated Gail (yesterday afternoon) because she
wanted to win.
(11) Donald concerned Robert (at school) because he
hadn’t been to class in a week.
(12) Tina confessed to Lisa (the next day) because she
felt guilty.
(13) Luke deceived Dean (at the trial) because he didn’t
want to be convicted.
(14) Lynn disappointed Ruth (last week) because she
didn’t come to the party.
(15) Brian exasperated Harry (last night) because he
dropped the roast on the floor.
(16) Jenny fascinated Sara (at the concert) because she
was a wonderful musician.
(17) Mike flabbergasted Frank (at work) because he
made the coffee.
(18) June frightened Kay (in the car) because she ran a
red light.
(19) Joel humiliated Alex (at the party) because he
wanted a scapegoat.
(20) Cindy infuriated Brenda (at work) because she was
always late for meetings.
(21) Steve inspired Bill (this year) because he volun-
teered at a homeless shelter.
(22) Jill intimidated Gwen (before the game) because she
was so athletic.
(23) Randy peeved Jerry (yesterday afternoon) because
he made such a mess.
(24) Becky scared Nancy (last night) because she lost
control of her temper.
Verb Bias ⫽ NP 2
(1) Mark admired James (last year) because he was such
a good student.
(2) Beth adored Joy (for years) because she was the
nicest person in the world.
(3) Richard appreciated Charles (last week) because he
was such a good listener.
(4) Sharon assisted Debra (at the office) because she had
an urgent deadline.
(5) Glen blamed Phil (after the game) because he missed
the goal.
(6) Claire comforted Grace (last week) because she
broke up with her boyfriend.
(7) Eric commended Andy (at the ceremony) because he
saved the child’s life.
(8) Amy congratulated Helen (yesterday afternoon) be-
cause she won the race.
(9) Sam consoled Ken (last week) because he lost his dog.
(10) Eve deplored Faith (for many years) because she
was a mean-spirited gossip.
(11) Gary despised Alan (for several years) because he
was rude to everyone.
(12) Joanne detested Cathy (for years) because she stole
money from a church.
(13) Paul dreaded Jeff (at work) because he said such
cruel things.
(14) Liz envied Marge (last year) because she won the
state lottery.
(15) Matthew feared Albert (at school) because he was
such an aggressive person.
(16) Donna honored Lucy (at the event) because she
deserved the award.
(17) Greg liked Ted (at work) because he was so easy to
get along with.
(18) Peg mourned Dawn (after the accident) because she
died much too young.
(19) Danny noticed Gary (at the concert) because he was
wearing such bright colors.
(20) Patty praised Linda (after the meeting) because she
had made a good presentation.
566 LONG AND DE LEY

(21) Neal reassured Bruce (after the game) because he Verb Bias ⫽ NP 2
needed an ego boost. (1) Mark admired James last year because he needed to
(22) Joan resented Bev (during childhood) because she admire someone.
was the favorite daughter. (2) Beth adored Joy for years because she adored almost
(23) Edward thanked Douglass (yesterday morning) be- everyone.
cause he had washed the car. (3) Richard appreciated Charles last week because he
(24) Diane valued Gina (these days) because she was thought it was appropriate.
such a good friend. (4) Sharon assisted Debra at the office because she
wanted to be useful.
Incongruent Sentences (5) Glen blamed Phil after the game because he needed
Verb Bias ⫽ NP 1 to blame someone.
(1) John aggravated Dick last night because he was eas- (6) Claire comforted Grace last week because she
ily aggravated. wanted to help.
(2) Kate agitated Jane at the movies because she was (7) Eric commended Andy at the ceremony because he
already feeling anxious. thought it was proper.
(3) Walter amazed Ronald on vacation because he was (8) Amy congratulated Helen yesterday afternoon be-
cause she liked the performance.
amazed so easily.
(9) Sam consoled Ken last week because he wanted to be
(4) Sandra amused Carol at the party because she was
of assistance.
easily entertained.
(10) Eve deplored Faith for many years because she
(5) Rick angered Scott at the park because he was al-
deplored most people.
ready feeling angry.
(11) Gary despised Alan for several years because he
(6) Ann annoyed Pam this morning because she got
was jealous.
annoyed so easily.
(12) Joanne detested Cathy for years because she de-
(7) David apologized to Peter after work because he
tested almost everyone.
demanded an apology.
(13) Paul dreaded Jeff at work because he was so
(8) Janet bored Ellen at dinner because she had already
envious.
heard the story.
(14) Liz envied Marge last year because she had low
(9) Tom charmed Jack at the interview because he was
self-esteem.
so gullible.
(15) Matthew feared Albert at school because he feared
(10) Sue cheated Gail yesterday afternoon because she
most people.
was easy to deceive.
(16) Donna honored Lucy at the event because she
(11) Donald concerned Robert at school because he was thought the honor was deserved.
responsible for the students. (17) Greg liked Ted at work because he liked most
(12) Tina confessed to Lisa the next day because she people.
would have found out anyway. (18) Peg mourned Dawn after the accident because she
(13) Luke deceived Dean at the trial because he was so believed that life was sacred.
unsuspecting. (19) Danny noticed Gary at the concert because he was
(14) Lynn disappointed Ruth last week because she set an observant person.
herself up for disappointment. (20) Patty praised Linda after the meeting because she
(15) Brian exasperated Harry last night because he was wanted to be polite.
expecting more cooperation. (21) Neal reassured Bruce after the game because he
(16) Jenny fascinated Sara at the concert because she wanted to be helpful.
was easily captivated. (22) Joan resented Bev during childhood because she
(17) Mike flabbergasted Frank at work because he was was filled with resentment.
expecting someone else. (23) Edward thanked Douglass yesterday morning be-
(18) June frightened Kay in the car because she got cause he thought it was polite.
scared so easily. (24) Diane valued Gina these days because she valued all
(19) Joel humiliated Alex at the party because he was an of her friends.
easy target.
(20) Cindy infuriated Brenda at work because she was APPENDIX B
already feeling angry.
(21) Steve inspired Bill this year because she was des- Examples Containing NP 1 Verbs
perate for inspiration.
Subject Referent ⫽ NP 1 (consistent with verb bias)
(22) Jill intimidated Gwen before the game because she
was such a wimp. Relation between clauses ⫽ Cause
(23) Randy peeved Jerry yesterday afternoon because he (1) Allen Edwards exasperated Pitino when he came
was already irritable. back slowly from an ankle injury.
(24) Becky scared Nancy last night because she was (2) George, who was appointed by Governor Pete Wil-
so timid. son, infuriated abortion opponents. First, he dissented from
 IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND DISCOURSE FOCUS
the court’s original ruling upholding the law, and then he
granted a rehearing that led to its being overturned.
(3) Alan Schlosser, managing ACLU attorney, said po-
lice intimidated residents. They essentially forced their way
into apartments, sometimes by blocking the door with their
foot.
(4) Oracle Corp.’s second-quarter results disappointed
Wall Street. The Redwood Shores-based company’s net
income rose only slightly to $187.3 million, 19 cents a
share, from $179.5 million, 18 cents.
(5) I apologized to AirTouch Communications CEO Sam
Ginn. I had lampooned his company a few years earlier over
the name AirTouch; I thought it was stupid, but it has grown
on me.
(6) A state Board of Education vote granting a lucrative
contract for a new statewide achievement test angered San
Francisco officials because it means The City may have to
shelve years of testing information on its students.
(7) A California Supreme Court ruling in August in-
spired the measure. The ruling overturned a never-enforced
1987 law that required unmarried teenagers seeking abor-
tions to get permission from a parent, guardian or judge.
(8) ACT intimidated me. Everybody there was so in-
volved with acting.
(9) Prisons always fascinated me because they embody
everything that’s right and wrong about a country.
(10) This statement annoyed me because it is totally
untrue and unfair to those who might be going to see the
shows at the Fillmore.
Relation between Clauses ⫽ Consequence
(11) A man living in a nearby apartment frightened the
person away. He then called the police who arrived only
minutes later.
(12) In 1992, FMC similarly deceived the Army. The
corporation was sued and charged with budgeting more for
research than it had actually spent.
(13) The rookie armored car guard who allegedly shot
his partner to death and stole more than $300,000 confessed
to Oakland detectives on a rainy Utah highway. He was
charged in the shooting death of Rodrigo Cortez Monday
night.
(14) Uwaezuoke apologized to the team yesterday morn-
ing, so he gets his job back Sunday night in Seattle in the
final regular-season game.
(15) The sandhill crane’s courting behavior charmed the
visitors so much that it was sometimes disrupted by the late
afternoon crowds.
(16) The board’s intrusion angered Newman. They tried
to appease him by delaying the vote until next Thursday.
(17) The governor infuriated Reddy’s supporters and
then he gave a scathing response to their criticisms at
Thursday’s press conference.
(18) They believed they cheated death, so they embraced
all manner of self-destructive behavior.
(19) Bickerstaff cheated scores of elderly clients. He was
arrested on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles.
(20) Columbia University Professor and MacArthur “ge-
nius award” winner Sherry Ortner was flabbergasted by the
decision. She immediately accused the university of “a
567
blanket condemnation of a category of work they didn’t
like.”
Subject Referent ⫽ NP 2 (inconsistent with verb bias)
Relation between Clauses ⫽ Cause
(21) Roe flabbergasted both sides because neither ex-
pected the court to go so far.
(22) She said a second boyfriend intimidated her because
she feared serious injury.
(23) Maureen Malloy D’Honau’s account of her hus-
band’s last weeks of life in an acute-care hospital (“On
machine: His doctors avoided dying patient’s agony,” Opin-
ion Page, Nov. 5) saddened and angered me. As a physician,
I found her story quite believable; such experiences are all
too common and could occur in most hospitals in our
country.
(24) He immediately assisted a small delegation of Fran-
ciscan friars who were desperately trying to return to Assisi.
(25) Debra J. Saunders definitely cheated The Chronicle
on December 23. You paid her for a full column of repeat
words.
(26) The press response flabbergasted me. I talked to
critics who were practically weeping.
(27) The school’s decision flabbergasted me. I can’t be-
lieve the girls will have to be out there for four hours a
night.
(28) The street paintings fascinated the critics, who saw
them as a new form of contemporary art.
(29) The scrutiny scared me. I knew what was coming
and I knew I wasn’t ready for it.
(30) Mythology fascinated me. I found that a classic
“good vs. evil” story touched people deeply.
Relation between Clauses ⫽ Consequence
(31) The Contra Costa County district attorney’s office
so intimidated Wills, he was no longer willing to testify for
the defense.
(32) Judith’s story inspired the heroes of the Hanukkah
story. They retook their temple from the Greeks in the
second century B.C.E.
(33) The grotesque result humiliated her so much that
she felt physically and spiritually destroyed.
(34) Bart negotiators’ departure infuriated union offi-
cials. They demanded the other side return to the table, but
state mediators approved the recess and asked negotiators to
return at 10 a.m. Friday.
(35) Seems reasonable to us, but it infuriated Ammiano.
He objected and forced the matter off the board’s calendar
and back to committee.
(36) The threat scared a lot of people. They were afraid
to come to the meeting.
(37) When he heard her soprano, it frightened him. He
jumped off her lap and ran away.
(38) Symonds attended a New York City public high
school where classmates intimidated her. She often wakes
up in the middle of the night, riven by images of cowering
in a classroom.
(39) The lingerie ads fascinated the Sherpas. They filled
a scrapbook of the ads to take back home to their families.
568 LONG AND DE LEY
(40) When he was 13, his aunt took him to the temples of
Japan where the monks fascinated him. In college, he took
courses in world religions, holistic health and Eastern per-
spectives.
Examples Containing NP 2 Verbs
Subject Referent ⫽ NP 1 (inconsistent with verb bias)
Relation between Clauses ⫽ Cause
(41) Indeed the 49ers needed and much appreciated the
break. They have played 20 games over the last 5-1/4
months.
(42) Venus is different, all right, and many of her fellow
players resented her. They just can’t understand all the
attention she gets.
(43) Analysts commended HP. They believe that the
company has given priority to strong revenue growth.
(44) Actors revered Mr. Zinnemann. They admired his
patient attention to their performances.
(45) The Dodgers resented such exultation. They are
likely emotionally incapable of it themselves.
(46) Many of his peers detested Burton. They found him
offensive at best and intolerable at worst.
(47) Most residents in the neighborhood deplored Lantier’s
arrest. They felt that he was just protecting himself.
(48) I appreciated Dan Rather’s column “A new ’Great
Game’ at the Caspian Sea” (Opinion Page, Dec. 2). I
thought that the closing warning, “So much attention is
centered on the Persian Gulf and troubles with Iraq and Iran
that the rise of the campaigns for control of the Caspian Sea
has been nearly ignored,” fit in well with the latest devel-
opments at the Kyoto conference.
(49) Her parents blamed the sound of a slamming door.
They thought it frightened her soul “out of her body.”
(50) In a letter to the Santa Cruz community released
yesterday, Jacobson thanked his friends and family. He
believes that their support helped him to be a survivor rather
than a victim.
Relation between Clauses ⫽ Consequence
(51) Van Buren feared Southern voters’ anger. He ma-
neuvered to have the judge presiding over the trial replaced
by one sympathetic to his interests.
(52) Ayala feared his wife. A couple of times, he brought
young Gilbert with him on the night shift, letting him sleep
in the car as Ayala scuttled between him and the building
that he was supposed to be watching.
(53) In fact, environmentalists revered him so much they
dissuaded President Clinton from appointing him to the
Supreme Court so he could regain some of the momentum
that had disappeared during three Republican presidential
terms.
(54) “I dreaded it. I waited to the last minute to drive up
from Los Angeles,” said Sonya Enchill, 21, a second-year
student and an African American.
(55) Rabin so despised phony politicking, he was dubbed
“the undiplomatic diplomat.”
(56) I’ve always despised the concept of shopping-as-
religion. So, I can’t stand Blomingdale’s.
(57) My family and I greatly appreciated your special
Datebook section on the National Endowment for the Arts.
I am sending the following statement to Senators Barbara
Boxer, Dianne Feinstein and Slade Gordon and Represen-
tative Ralph Regula: I and my family urge you to protect
and, if possible, even increase the appropriation for the
NEA.
(58) In Vietnam, my sister and I adored this dish. We ate
it two or three times a week.
(59) Tony adored the script. He contacted his agent im-
mediately.
(60) The Vietnamese believed that cows and buffaloes
were indispensable beasts of burden and greatly valued
them. They ate little red meat, preferring pork, chicken and
seafood.
Subject Referent ⫽ NP 2 (consistent with verb bias)
Relation between Clauses ⫽ Cause
(61) Christopulos thanked the custodians of the Season
of Sharing Fund. “They made it possible for dear and
grateful friends of Wally’s to perpetuate his memory in a
manner that I know would please him.”
(62) I appreciated the picture of a rainbow over The City.
It seemed a perfect way to commemorate a very special
event that took place Sunday afternoon.
(63) In a report last month to San Mateo County super-
visors, Cullen blamed a retaining wall. The wall failed and
caused the slide.
(64) Officials who happily lured the Raiders back from
Los Angeles in 1995 blamed the football team. It failed to
cooperate with efforts to take some of the burden off tax-
payers.
(65) “I never knew Savio, but I much admired him. He
had an unassuming nature, basic decency, and eloquency
when the time called for it.”
(66) The Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey com-
mended the royal couple. “They have kept their marriage
vows through the profoundest of changes in personal and
national life.”
(67) Most of the children resented court-ordered visita-
tion schedules. Such schedules didn’t take into account
either their terror at traveling alone when they were young
or their own plans when they got older.
(68) In other words, she said, the white American middle
class resented them because they are seen as moral invaders
to the prevailing political, social and economic order.
(69) Marino blamed the media because they stirred the
emotions of the community.
(70) Slade commended the European leaders. “They
adopted an aggressive stance on cutting emissions and held
out hope that the United States would follow.”
Relation between Clauses ⫽ Consequence
(71) Her mother, Chris Zupanovich, an administrator in
Levi Strauss’ human resources department, and father, Dan
De Vries, a fund-raiser with the National Center for Youth
Law, immediately reassured her. Gina, with her parents’
blessing, began attending programs at the Lavender Youth
 IMPLICIT CAUSALITY AND DISCOURSE FOCUS
Recreation and Information Center in the Castro District
and has since become a vocal advocate for gay rights.
(72) I congratulated her on this achievement. She only
laughed.
(73) He blamed the offensive line. The linemen just
dismissed his comments and chalked them up to post-game
spin.
(74) Diana says she adored Hewitt. He took advantage of
that when her marriage crumbled.
(75) Soviet authorities detested Paradjanov. He managed
to make only three films in the 26 years after “Shadows.”
(76) My fellow clerks also resented the Spanish-speak-
ing customers. They were frequently denied service or
served last.
(77) The study found that the mother’s heartbeat com-
forted the babies. They fell asleep much faster when they
were held on the left than on the right side.
(78) The FBI director admired Reno, so she relied on his
support during this administration.
(79) Nivette adored the child. She blossomed under his
care.
(80) Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who
told Congress that financial troubles in Asian economies
don’t appear poised to “threaten prosperity in this country,”
reassured investors. They reacted by pushing the market up
over 100 points.
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(Received July 20, 1999)
(Revision received October 22, 1999)