Listening comprehension for sentences: the accessibility of referents for pronouns as a function of age, topic continuity, and pronoun emphasis.

An auditory comprehension task was employed to determine how subjects (20 first graders, 20 fifth graders, and 20 adults) use topic continuity and contrastive emphasis in the assignment of referents for pronouns in sentences. Significant differences in performance for emphasized and unemphasized pronouns were found suggesting that subjects used contrastive emphasis when assigning referents for pronouns. Fifth graders overused the cue of topic continuity in assigning referents for emphasized pronouns. This effect has not been shown previously in studies of children's understanding of pronomial reference. An interaction between age and pronoun emphasis was also significant. This interaction suggests that developmental changes continued to take place in the learning of cues for resolving pronouns by school age children.