Word Meanings and Ambiguity - SM1 Flashcards
What is lexical access?
the process of finding and retrieving all the stored knowledge we have about a word, principally its semantic representation (its meaning)
In gating experiments, what does context influence?
Recognition point
What is the process of a gating experiment?
- read a fragment of a word to participants
- they guess how the word ends
- keep adding more to the word until it is full
- at which point can they confidently distinguish the actual word from its competitors? = Recognition point
If context makes recognising words easier, what does this tell us about word recognition processes? (What can’t they be?)
They can’t be serial and autonomous
What happens in cross-modal priming?
- If you hear the word ‘captain’ and are presented with a picture of a boat it will help you be faster at recognising the boat
- If you hear the word ‘capital’ and are presented with a picture of some money it will help recognising the money
- If you hear just ‘cap…’ then it will prime both of the images
What do cross-modal priming studies show? (2)
- that you briefly activate numerous meanings of potential candidates before you actually identify the word and before it has finished
- there is no hard division between word recognition and meaning activation
What is a transient ambiguity?
The ambiguity is resolved by the end of the word
How are meanings and senses different?
- different meanings of words are semantically unrelated
- different senses of words are semantically related, but still seperable
What did Rodd et al (2022) find when looking at whether ambiguity influences single word activation? (2)
- Recognition is faster for words with many senses and few meanings
- Word recognition is not independent of meaning
What type of ambiguity seems to actually be helpful in word identification?
Different senses
What are semantic feature models of lexical representation? (4)
- meanings are represented as collections of semantic features
- multiple meanings are incoherent sets of features - conflict needs to be resolved, which takes time
- multiple senses are more coherent sets of features, leads to more flexible representation - some of the features are shared so there is less conflict
- Word recognition involves a meaning resolution process
What do theoretical models (of word understanding) all assume?
Sentence context has some influence on meaning selection
How do theoretical models (of word understanding) differ?
- When sentence context influences (early, late)
- How it influences (interactive, autonomous)
- Role of meaning frequency
What does the multiple access model suggest? (2)
- all meanings accessed in a context-independent way
- contextually appropriate word is chosen from all the accessed words
What kind of model is the multiple access model? (3)
- autonomous/modular
- late timing of context effect
- low influence of frequency
What does context-guided single-reading lexical access suggest? (2)
- context used to restrict access to only appropriate meaning
- inappropriate meanings never accessed
What kind of model is context-guided single-reading lexical access? (3)
- interactive
- early timing of context effect
- low influence of frequency
What is cross-modal priming? (3)
- spoken prime word followed by a semantically related target
- make a speeded lexical decision judgement on the target (is it a word or not?)
- provides a measure of meaning activation
What are the early effects of context in the ‘bugs’ study? Which model does this fit with?
- target words presented at offset of ambiguous word get priming for both meanings
- context has no effect
- fits with the multiple access model
What are the late effects of context in the ‘bugs’ study? Which model does this fit with?
- target words presented 3 syllables later get priming only for appropriate meaning
- context effect occurs after lexical access
- fits with the multiple access model
What did Tanenhaus et al (1979) find when looking at how noun/verb ambiguity is resolved with the word ‘watch’? (2)
- initial priming of both interpretations
- later (~200ms) priming of context-appropriate item only
What are balanced and unbalanced meaning frequencies?
- balanced = both meanings equally common
- unbalanced = one meaning is dominant
What was found when cross-modal priming was used to study context and homonyms (port)? which models do the results support (2)
- subordinate constraining context = equal priming for both targets (multiple access model)
- dominant constraining context = priming for dominant meaning (selective priming)
What are subordinate and dominant meanings?
subordinate = less common meaning
dominant = most common meaning
What did Lucas (1999) find in a meta-analysis of literature on sentential context effects? What does this suggest?
- small systematic biasing effects across the experiments (so context just biases meaning activation, but doesn’t completely rule out the inappropriate ones)
What did Rodd et al (2005) find about people in persistent vegetative state?
some patients are sensitive to high-level distinctions in language comprehension (brain activation)
