Suppression of irrelevant ambiguous word meanings in the cerebral hemispheres

1991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Chiarello ◽  
Kim Cannon ◽  
Lorie Richards ◽  
Lisa Maxfield
Keyword(s):  
Ambiguous Word ◽  
Cerebral Hemispheres ◽  
Word Meanings

Semantic ambiguity norms for 530 Spanish words

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 457-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUAN HARO ◽  
PILAR FERRÉ ◽  
ROGER BOADA ◽  
JOSEP DEMESTRE
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Ambiguous Word ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Objective Measures ◽  
Semantic Ambiguity ◽  
Subjective Ratings ◽  
Subjective Measures ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Ambiguous Words

ABSTRACTThis study presents semantic ambiguity norms for 530 Spanish words. Two subjective measures of semantic ambiguity and two subjective measures of relatedness of ambiguous word meanings were collected. In addition, two objective measures of semantic ambiguity were included. Furthermore, subjective ratings were obtained for some relevant lexicosemantic variables, such as concreteness, familiarity, emotional valence, arousal, and age of acquisition. In sum, the database overcomes some of the limitations of the published databases of Spanish ambiguous words; in particular, the scarcity of measures of ambiguity, the lack of relatedness of ambiguous word meanings measures, and the absence of a set of unambiguous words. Thus, it will be very helpful for researchers interested in exploring semantic ambiguity as well as for those using semantic ambiguous words to study language processing in clinical populations.

Sense and Sensitivity – Using Spatial Response-Compatibility Effects to Investigate Ambiguous Word Meaning

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Christian Büsel ◽  
Pierre Sachse ◽  
Ole Goltermann ◽  
Ulrich Ansorge
Keyword(s):  
Compatibility Effect ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Ambiguous Word ◽  
Visual Features ◽  
Letter Sequence ◽  
Response Compatibility ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Stimulus Response ◽  
Spatial Response ◽  
Stimulus Response Compatibility

Abstract. We investigated sensitivity for the vertical meaning of the German particle ab by means of stimulus–response compatibility effects. In German, the particle ab is ambiguous and can take on a vertical meaning (downward) as in Auf und Ab (engl. up and down), but it can also take on nonvertical or nonspatial meanings as in Ab und An (engl. from time to time). We show that the particle ab only creates a spatial compatibility effect relative to the German particle auf (Experiment 1) but not relative to the particle an (Experiment 2). Furthermore, as participants executed upward versus downward responses in both Experiments 1 and 2, the mere vertical antagonism of the responses was insufficient to instill a verticality-based compatibility effect. In addition, the compatibility effect was restricted to the transparent version of the particle. If a letter sequence corresponding to the particles was presented in a semantically and morphologically opaque way (e.g., the letters ab were embedded in the German word kn ab e, engl. boy), no compatibility effect was found, underlining that the effect was due to word meanings rather than visual features. The results underscore the boundary conditions for using compatibility effects in investigating lexical and semantic spatial processing in humans.

Semantic Representations of Word Meanings by the Cerebral Hemispheres

2002 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ince ◽  
Stephen D. Christman
Keyword(s):  
Cerebral Hemispheres ◽  
Semantic Representations ◽  
Word Meanings

scholarly journals Retuning of lexical-semantic representations: Repetition and spacing effects in word-meaning priming.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Betts ◽  
Rebecca Anne Gilbert ◽  
Zhenguang Garry Cai ◽  
Zainab B. Okedara ◽  
Jennifer M Rodd
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Network ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Stable State ◽  
Ambiguous Word ◽  
Recent Experience ◽  
Semantic Representations ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Spacing Effects ◽  
Ambiguous Words

Current models of word-meaning access typically assume that lexical-semantic representations of ambiguous words (e.g. ‘bark of the dog/tree’) reach a relatively stable state in adulthood, with only the relative frequencies of the meanings in the language and immediate sentence context determining meaning preference. However, recent experience also affects interpretation: recently-encountered word-meanings become more readily available (Rodd et al., 2016; 2013). Here, three experiments investigated how multiple encounters with word-meanings influence the subsequent interpretation of these words. Participants heard ambiguous words contextually-disambiguated towards a particular meaning and, after a 20-30 minute delay, interpretations of the words were tested in isolation. We replicate the finding that one encounter with an ambiguous word biased later interpretation of this word towards the primed meaning for both subordinate (Experiments 1, 2, 3) and dominant meanings (Experiment 1). In addition, for the first time, we show cumulative effects of multiple repetitions of both the same and different meanings. The effect of a single subordinate exposure persisted after a subsequent encounter with the dominant meaning, compared to a dominant exposure alone (Experiment 1). Furthermore, three subordinate word-meaning repetitions provided an additional boost to priming compared to one, although only when their presentation was spaced (Experiments 2, 3); massed repetitions provided no such boost (Experiments 1, 3). These findings indicate that comprehension is guided by the collective effect of multiple recently activated meanings and that the spacing of these activations is key to producing lasting updates to the lexical-semantic network.

scholarly journals The relationship between sentence comprehension and lexical-semantic retuning

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Anne Gilbert ◽  
Matthew H. Davis ◽  
M. Gareth Gaskell ◽  
Jennifer M Rodd
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Ambiguous Word ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Ambiguous Words ◽  
Subordinate Meaning ◽  
Final Interpretation ◽  
The Relationship

A single encounter with an ambiguous word (e.g. bark, ball) in the context of a less-frequent meaning (e.g. “Sally worried about how crowded the ball would be.”) can shift the later interpretation of the word toward the same subordinate meaning. This lexical-semantic retuning functions to improve future comprehension of ambiguous words. The present paper investigates the relationship between this form of learning and the specific processes that occur during sentence comprehension. One possibility is that lexical-semantic retuning occurs immediately upon hearing the ambiguous word, during initial meaning activation and selection, so priming should be strongest when the disambiguating context is provided before the ambiguous word (prior disambiguation). Alternatively, priming may relate to the degree of reinterpretation needed, which would predict maximal learning when the word is initially misunderstood because the critical context is given after the word (subsequent disambiguation, e.g. “Sally worried that the ball would be too crowded.”). In four experiments, adults listened to prior and subsequent disambiguation sentences, and were later tested on their interpretations of primed and unprimed ambiguous words. The results showed that lexical-semantic retuning can occur for both sentence types. Importantly, however, the emergence of priming for subsequent disambiguation sentences was sensitive to the prime conditions: when the task could potentially be performed without needing to re-analyse the ambiguity, then no significant priming was observed. This is consistent with the ‘good enough’ view of language processing which states that representations can remain as (im)precise as mandated by the situation, and that lexical-semantic retuning operates on the output of good-enough interpretation. More generally, our findings suggest that lexical-semantic retuning is driven by participants’ final interpretation of the word meanings during the prime encounter, regardless of initial meaning activation or misinterpretation.

Influence of contextual features on the activation of ambiguous word meanings.

1992 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 703-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen T. Paul ◽  
George Kellas ◽  
Michael Martin ◽  
Matthew B. Clark
Keyword(s):  
Ambiguous Word ◽  
Word Meanings ◽  
Contextual Features

scholarly journals Updating ambiguous word meanings: a role for the language-selective fronto-temporal network

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy J MacGregor ◽  
Rebecca A Gilbert ◽  
Zuzanna Balewski ◽  
Daniel Mitchell ◽  
Sharon W Erzinclioglu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ambiguous Word ◽  
Temporal Network ◽  
Word Meanings
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