Parker, Adam J;
Taylor, JSH;
Rodd, Jennifer M;
(2024)
Readers Use Recent Experiences With Word Meanings to Support the Processing of Lexical Ambiguity: Evidence From Eye Movements.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
, Article Advance online publication. 10.1037/xlm0001418.
(In press).
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Abstract
Fluent reading comprehension demands the rapid access and integration of word meanings. This can be challenging when lexically ambiguous words have less frequent meanings (e.g., the dog meaning of boxer). Indeed, readers fixate on lexically ambiguous words that are disambiguated toward their subordinate meaning for longer than matched control words embedded within identical sentence contexts. Wordmeaning priming studies have shown that participants flexibly use recent experiences with ambiguous words to guide their interpretation when these words are presented in isolation, even after substantial delays. However, word-meaning priming paradigms have almost always used artificial tasks to measure wordmeaning availability and we do not therefore know how priming would support lexical processing when reading for comprehension. Thus, we conducted two eye-movement experiments to examine wordmeaning priming during sentence reading. Both experiments employed a 2 (ambiguity: low-ambiguity control vs. high-ambiguity) × 2 (priming: unprimed vs. primed) within-participants design, with either a 1-min delay (Experiment 1; N = 28) or a 30-min delay (Experiment 2; N = 60) between prime and test sentences. Both experiments showed greater reductions in go-past times and total reading times following priming for high-ambiguity target words than matched low-ambiguity control words, indicating that recent encounters support the processing of word meanings during sentence reading and that this effect extends beyond the simple repetition effect observed for low-ambiguity control words. This illustrates the remarkable flexibility of the human language system in using diverse input to refine stored lexical knowledge even in skilled readers.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Readers Use Recent Experiences With Word Meanings to Support the Processing of Lexical Ambiguity: Evidence From Eye Movements |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1037/xlm0001418 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001418 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s), 2024. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | eye movements, reading, lexical ambiguity, subordinate bias effect, word-meaning priming |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10196333 |
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