Depth of semantic processing by Japanese EFL learners focusing on anaphora resolution

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When we identify what the pronouns refer to in "Roy questioned Anthony because he ..." or "Susan praised Diane because she ...," our processing is affected by the verbs' implicit causality information (Stewart et al., 2000). The verb "question" makes the pronoun "he" refer to Roy (NP1-biased), while "praise" tends to make "she" refer to Diane (NP2-biased). This study examined the influence of implicit causality information on L2 anaphor resolution. The results indicat that Japanese learners of English could not use the verbs' implicit causality information.