Influence of Context on the Activation and Selection of Ambiguous Word Senses
Open Access
- 1 February 1983
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A
- Vol. 35 (1), 51-64
- https://doi.org/10.1080/14640748308402116
Abstract
The activation of ambiguous word senses was investigated by measuring the amount of interference in naming the ink color of a word that was either related or unrelated to one of the meanings of a preceding ambiguous word. In agreement with previous results obtained using this procedure (Conrad, 1974), evidence was obtained that both meanings of the ambiguous words are activated even in the presence of biasing context. However, contrary to previous findings, the degree of activation of each word sense depended on its degree of compatibility with the context. These results are consistent with a language processing system in which all interpretations of an ambiguity are accessed and then processed until an accurate determination has been made of which interpretation best satisfies the syntactic and semantic constraints that govern it.This publication has 21 references indexed in Scilit:
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