Pronoun interpretation is more subject-biased than expected by the Bayesian Model

A Bayesian Model proposed by Kehler et al. ([2008]. Coherence and coreference revisited. <i>Journal of Semantics</i>, 25(1), 1–44. https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffm018) suggests that pronoun production and interpretation are driven by a different set of factors following the Bayes’ rule. Evidence suggests that the Bayesian Model makes better predictions on pronoun interpretation compared to other models that assume that pronoun production and interpretation are influenced by the same set of factors. Yet, it remains unclear precisely to what extent the Bayesian Model can capture this relationship. The current study examines the validity of the Bayesian Model by comparing its performance across three different contexts using a variety of evaluation methods. Our results demonstrate that the Bayesian Model’s performance varied across contexts and consistently underestimated the subject bias in interpretation. We suggest that the underestimation is likely because the subject bias in pronoun production is not sufficient to account for the subject bias in actual interpretation, contra to the assumption of the Bayesian Model. We discuss potential sources of the additional subject bias in interpretation.