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Journal of Research in Reading, ISSN 0141-0423
Volume 25, Issue 3, 2002, pp 319–320
Book review
(2001). Mental Models and the Interpretation of Anaphora. Hove:
Psychology Press. ISBN: 1841691283
GARNHAM, A.
An anaphor is an expression that refers back
to an entity mentioned earlier in a text or
discourse. Pronouns (he, she, they) are the
most obvious examples of anaphors. Noun
phrases such as the man are also anaphoric
devices: whereas a man refers to any one of
millions of men, the man refers to a particular
man, the one that has already been introduced to the reader or listener. Language is
littered with anaphoric expressions, yet most
of the time, comprehension flows smoothly
and effortlessly, until perhaps we read a poorly
written text where we struggle to resolve a
particular anaphor. Then it becomes very clear
that understanding anaphora is a crucial component of language comprehension. Garnham’s
monograph, which is part of Psychology
Press’s Essays in Cognitive Psychology series,
provides a rich and up-to-date review of
current thinking on this important topic.
Garnham’s account of anaphora interpretation is firmly set within the broader context
of the mental models theory of language
comprehension. This theory assumes that as
people hear or read language, they are building a mental model of the situation described;
this model is a representation of the world
that the language describes – be it real or
imaginary. Building a mental model allows
people to go beyond the meanings of individual words and sentences: by actively
integrating information from different
sources (e.g. information contained within
the text itself, and the general knowledge that
we already have about what the text is referring to), we are able to construct a mental
model of the situation described by the text.
Throughout the book, Garnham argues convincingly that to understand the processes
involved in anaphor resolution, the notion
of a mental model is essential. Put simply,
as many anaphors do not have much in the
way of semantic content (for example, it, they,
that one), their interpretation demands an
appreciation of the context they occur in, and
this is achieved via mental models.
Following a useful introduction to mental
models theory (both in general and with respect to language comprehension), Garnham
begins his exploration of anaphora by describing linguistic accounts of the understanding of anaphora. As a non-linguist, I found this
chapter tough going and it was with some relief
that I came to the more familiar territory
reviewed in the following two chapters on
psycholinguistic approaches to understanding
anaphora. The first describes the methodological approaches (e.g. self-paced reading,
priming and eye-tracking) that psycholinguists
have used and highlights the strengths and
weaknesses of different techniques. This sets
the scene for the next chapter, which describes
# United Kingdom Reading Association 2002. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road,
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320
many empirical findings. Broadly, he addresses
three issues: how we identify anaphoric expressions, how we recognise the context
relevant to their interpretation (both linguistic
and non-linguistic) and how we arrive at a
final interpretation by combining meaning
from their own semantic content with aspects
of the relevant context. In doing so, Garnham
reviews evidence concerning a variety of
issues ranging from morphosyntactic factors
(such as gender and number agreement),
through to discourse-based factors and ends
with a discussion of how we bring to bear
real-world knowledge. For me, it was discussion of this final point, and in particular,
how world knowledge influences the interpretation of pronouns, that really hammered
home the importance of world knowledge to
the construction of a mental model and in
turn, the importance of this for subsequent
comprehension. For example, consider the
sentence ‘Sandra lied to Elaine during the
trial because she was gullible’. Here, we
assume that she refers to Elaine whereas in
the sentence ‘Sandra lied to Elaine during the
trial because she was scared’, we assume that
she refers to Sandra.
This discussion of world-based factors on
pronoun resolution leads nicely to later
chapters that detail work by Garnham and
his collaborators on three specific topics:
anaphoric islands, implicit causality and
stereotypes. Anaphoric islands refer to anaphoric expressions that do not have a specific
antecedent. For example, in the sentence
‘They had a feature on violent teenagers,
attributing it to drink’, we assume that it
refers to violence in youngsters. We have no
trouble in understanding that violence is a
property of the children and that in this
context, it refers to this. The chapter on
implicit causality follows in a similar vein and
reviews literature on how and when people
resolve pronouns that occur in the context of
verbs that have a causality bias. For example,
the pronoun he in the sentence ‘John blamed
Bill because he left the knife in a dangerous
place’ refers to Bill, but in the sentence ‘John
phoned Bill because he had to tell someone
the news’, he refers to John. The final
empirical chapter addresses an interesting
question. When we hear or read certain
words, we appropriately activate relevant
BOOK REVIEW
information and begin to build a mental
model. Words such as boy, girl, man and
woman have obvious gender referents. But
how about a word such as nurse or engineer?
Experiments have looked to see whether
gender information is automatically activated
and represented when words such as these are
encountered. So, on reading ‘the electrician
fixed the light’, do we assume that the electrician is male? It seems that the answer to
this question is yes: after reading this sentence,
we are slower to read ‘she needed a special
attachment to fix it’ compared to ‘he needed a
special attachment to fix it’. Once again, these
observations demonstrate that readers are
actively integrating text in a constructive way
and that stereotyped gender information is
encoded into mental models.
Readers without a background in linguistics or psycholinguistics may struggle as the
book is not – nor is it intended to be – an
introductory text. Instead, it is aimed at
advanced students and researchers in the
field. With its breadth, depth and detail, the
book clearly fulfils its aim to provide a very
useful and thought-provoking review for
more advanced readers. But there is something here for the more general reader too.
What is impressive about Garnham’s book is
that it highlights how complex language
comprehension is. From my perspective as
a reader who is interested in reading and
language development, reading this book
makes me even more amazed that most
children learn to comprehend so easily.
Although Garnham does not consider educational or developmental implications here,
research of this sort has a lot to offer those
who are interested in these issues. Interestingly, although psychological research findings have influenced the aspects of National
Literacy Strategy concerning word-recognition
development, this is not the case for comprehension. Readers who are interested in
‘bridging the gap’ between psychological
research and education, and who are prepared to make some effort in working
through the technical, specialist and at times
rather dense aspects of the text, will find it
has much to offer.
KATE NATION
University of York
# United Kingdom Reading Association 2002