The selection of homograph meaning: Word association when context changes

Abstract

In a study of lexical ambiguity processing, responses to homographs were examined in a word association task. The context of repeated exposures of a homograph was manipulated by requiring a response to a word related to a meaning of the homograph on the trial prior to homograph presentation. A change of that relationship reduced the effectiveness of the contextual item as a prime on the second occurrence of the homograph. In response to a third unprimed occurrence of the homograph, associations were consistent with a conclusion that when semantic contexts are opposed, a "primacy effect" is obtained. The overall effects in the studies reported are seen as consistent with the theoretical view of Simpson and Kang (1994)that processing and responding to one meaning of a homograph result in the inhibition of alternative meanings. A mechanism to account for that inhibition is proposed.In 1976, Schvaneveldt, Meyer, and Becker demonstrated that the effectiveness of a homograph as a related prime depended on the context that preceded the homograph. When a homograph was preceded by a word that was related to the same meaning as was the subsequent target (e.g., SAVE-BANK-MONEY), responses were faster than responses to homographs preceded by an unrelated word (e.g., DAY-BANK-MONEY). These in turn were faster than responses to triples containing a prime related to the other meaning of the homograph (e.g., RIVER-BANK-MONEY). Subsequently, Onifer and Swinney (1981) reported that homographs embedded in auditory disambiguating sentences primed lexical decisions to visually presented words related to either of the homograph's meanings. However, if the target was delayed for 1.5 sec, only the contextappropriate meaning ofthe homograph was primed. Several theorists have proposed that the selection of one meaning of a homograph leads to the immediate active suppression of alternative meanings (Gernsbacher, 1990;Neill, 1989). Krueger (1990) found that processing the second oftwo sentences containing the same homograph in alternateWe thank Christian DeBiasi, Susan DeGuilio, and Sara Jamshidi, who served as experimenters. Three reviewers of an earlier version of this manuscript, Doug Nelson, Dani McKinney, and Greg Simpson, provided thoughtful ideas that resulted in clarification of the ideas presented. We are grateful to them, as well as to Jim Erickson, for their critical reviews. Correspondence should be addressed to D. S. Gorfein, Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Box 19528, Arlington, TX 76019-0528 (e-mail: gorfein@utarlg.uta.edu).meaning contexts was slower than processing following a control sentence. Simpson and Kang (1994) determined that a homograph that had primed the naming of a word related to one ofits meanings actually slowed performance on a subsequent word related to an alternate meaning. On the basis oftheir extensive review of homograph research, they concluded, "Processing one meaning ofa homograph and responding to that meaning results in the active and specific inhibition of competing meanings" (Simp...

The basal ganglia circuits, dopamine, and ambiguous word processing: A neurobiological account of priming studies in Parkinson's disease

“…Importantly, the attentionbased process of meaning facilitation and inhibition appears particularly robust in normal subjects, as this pattern of priming was maintained when the proportion of dominant and subordinate biased pairs was manipulated and when subjects were instructed to focus on less frequent meanings. This view is supported by Gorfein et al (2000) who reported that, when opposing semantic contexts are presented before an ambiguous word, a primacy effect is attained whereby processing of one meaning of an ambiguous word results in the inhibition of alternative meanings.…”

The activation—selection model of meaning: Explaining why the son comes out after the sun

“…The primacy effect obtained by Gorfein et al (2000) does not appear to be predicted by any published model of ambiguity processing. With the assumption that the inhibition of the nonselected meaning carries over across presentations of an ambiguous word, the variety of suppression and/or inhibitory mechanisms postulated in the literature can account for the reduction in priming that is obtained when the second presentation of the homograph occurs in a meaning context different from that of the first presentation.…”

“…Although the present study is an extension of Gorfein et al (2000), it differs in a number of important ways. The use of the expanded Gorfein and Walters (1989) picture/ word orienting task instead of a more standard semantic priming manipulation makes the local context in Phase 1 of the present study entirely different from that in the critical Phase 3: Both the stimuli serving to prime the meaning of a homophone and the required response differ.…”

“…The use of the expanded Gorfein and Walters (1989) picture/ word orienting task instead of a more standard semantic priming manipulation makes the local context in Phase 1 of the present study entirely different from that in the critical Phase 3: Both the stimuli serving to prime the meaning of a homophone and the required response differ. Because task similarity is an important contextual variable influencing retrieval (Morris, Bransford, & Franks, 1977;Roediger & Blaxton, 1987), the change of response from memory for location in Phase 1 of Experiment 2 to word association or spelling in Phases 2 and 3 makes it unlikely that in Phase 3, participants will episodically retrieve any implicit associates that may have been formed in Phase 1 (a potential confound in the Gorfein et al, 2000, experiments that is further discussed in Note 2). Indeed, the use of homophones instead of homographs means that the meaning of a word was primed in the Phase 1 picture condition without the participant ever having seen either graphemic form of the word, knowledge of which is of course required for the written spelling responses in Phases 2 and 3.…”

“…An impetus for the present study was the study by Gorfein, Berger, and Bubka (2000) in which participants were asked to produce free associates to homographs on three separate occasions. The context for a homograph was manipulated by presenting a word related to one meaning of the homograph (either dominant or secondary) just prior to the homograph on its first occurrence, and a word related to a different meaning of the homograph just prior to its second occurrence.…”