Responses to recently ignored stimuli may be slower or less accurate than to new stimuli. This negative priming effect decays over time when delay is randomized within subjects, but not when delay varies between subjects. In Experiment 1, response-stimulus intervals (RSI) of 500 and 4,000 ms were randomized within subjects in a target localization task. Negative priming of ignored locations diminished with longer delay. However, no significant decay was obtained when RSI and the preceding RSI were equal. Similar results were obtained when RSI and preceding RSI were deliberately confounded by blocking (Experiment 2). Negative priming appears to depend on temporal discriminability of the priming episode.

Four continuous word associations to each of 107 homographs were obtained from 50 male and 50 female undergraduates. Included in the word sample were 12 nonhomophonic homographs (heterophones). The data were analyzed to derive two indexes. A dominance score was defined on the basis of the frequency that a particular meaning was associated to each homograph. A stability score was a measure of the likelihood that the continuous associations were consistent with the first associate. Norms were provided for these measures. Comparison of heterophones to homophones indicates that the former are significantly more stable.A large proportion of English words have principal meanings ranging in distinctiveness from shades of meaning that add precision to communication to examples of nonoverlap of the attributes of a single homographic entry with the sole exception of the orthographic representation (e.g., "bass," which denotes specific meanings, i.e., as a fish and in relation to music, and is pronounced as hass or bass to correspond to the meaning). The existence of polysemy has provided a fertile ground for speculation and research for students of language and the structure and utilization of knowledge.In our review of possible factors that influence performance in situations involving homographs, we find two main factors of interest. One of these has been attended to in a number of studies, this being the variable of associative dominance. Such a measure is defined on the basis of word association data as the proportion of subjects who produce first associations related to a particular meaning of a homograph. A second variable of interest is the stability of the association. One study in the literature has had that variable as its principal focus. Geis and Winograd (1974) define stability on the basis of a repeated testing of the homograph in separate sessions at different times. In the present study, we adopt the procedure of Bilodeau and Howell (l965), asking for continued associations, and define a measure, "stability," on the basis of the sequential probability that associations to a particular homograph differ in their meaning.The present study also includes a particular class of homographs, those whose meanings have different pronunciations, that is, are nonhomophonic ("heterophones"). Heterophones are of particular interest, because in print they are ambiguous; nevertheless, the meaning referred to by a subject is clear when the subject is required to pronounce the item. (See Warren & Warren, 1976, for an illustration of this use.) SinceReprints of this paper are available from David S. Gorfein, Psychology Department, Adelphi University, Garden City, New York 11530. A more complete presentation of the normative data is also available upon request of the unpublished paper, "The Adelphi Homograph Norms." heterophone pronunciation provides excellent pointer readings to their meanings, it is of particular interest to examine how heterophones compare to homographs. They will be useful in our attempts to elucidate po...

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...

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Two experiments were performed in an attempt to evaluate explanations of repetition primingthe facilitation observed when the same word is processed a second time in the same task. One task employed was lexical decision (wordlnonword) and the other was ambiguity decision (ambiguous/unambiguous). In the first experiment, transfer on a lexical decision task was measured following either a lexical decision or an ambiguity decision. When the identical lists were processed in the first phase for lexical and ambiguity decision, equal repetition effects were obtained on lexical decision. However, when the ambiguity task was presented without nonwords, no repetition priming occurred. In a second experiment, the within-task repetition effect was large for the ambiguity decision, whereas no transfer was obtained from lexical decision to ambiguity decision. The results were interpreted as being consistent with a transfer-appropriate processing account of repetition priming.