Resolution of anaphoric expressions in children and adults: evidence from eye movements

This eye–tracking study uses the visual world paradigm to explore the anaphora resolution strategies in children and adults. The pro–drop feature of Croatian was used to indicate the switch in topic while visual cues on the accompanying pictures provided different contexts. The results suggest that both children and adults rely more on visual cues, but when these cues are not available, the two groups behave differently. Adults tend to choose the Agent as the antecedent, while children’s behaviour is unclear as they perform at chance. These results are in line with similar studies in Italian and Spanish regarding the pro–drop feature as an indicator of the change in topic, as well as with French and Greek studies regarding developmental changes in the reliance on linguistic