Cerebral Mechanisms for Suppression of Inappropriate Information during Sentence Comprehension

Activation and maintenance of peripheral semantic features of unambiguous words after right hemisphere brain damage in adults

“…The finding of decay/poor maintenance of activation of both types of features for adults with RHD is potentially compatible with other evidence implicating the intact right hemisphere in sustaining activation of subordinate, secondary, weakly related, and/or context-incompatible meanings of words (Abdullaev & Posner, 1997;Faust, M. & Chiarello, 1998;Faust, M.E. & Gernsbacher, 1996;Federmeier & Kutas, 1999;Richards & Chiarello, 1995;Titone, 1998; with the potential exception of metaphoric polysemies, Klepousniotou & Baum, 2005a, 2005b.…”

“…Since that time, numerous studies have substantiated and built on the notion that the intact right cerebral hemisphere provides a critical maintenance function for weakly related, secondary, or less common word meanings (e.g., Abdullaev & Posner, 1997;Faust & Gernsbacher, 1996;Federmeier & Kutas, 1999;Richards & Chiarello, 1995;Titone, 1998). Recently this finding has extended to less frequent verbs (Chiarello, Kacinik, Shears, Arambel, Halderman & Robinson, 2006), indirectly connected words (e.g., lion -stripes [connected through "tiger"]; Yochim, Kender, Abeare, Gustafson, & Whitman, 2005), and "punch words" that reflect the endings of jokes (Coulson & Williams, 2005).…”

“…Activation for semantic features that are weakly related but compatible with the most common representations of the lexical items in question would be maintained over time by adults with RHD, because both cerebral hemispheres support continuing activation of these features. Second, other results, also primarily from split visual field studies, suggest that the intact right hemisphere is important for maintaining subordinate or distantly related meanings of words without reference to the "compatibility" dimension (e.g., Abdullaev & Posner, 1997;Faust & Gernsbacher, 1996;Federmeier & Kutas, 1999;Richards & Chiarello, 1995;Titone, 1998, Yochim et al, 2005. In this case, RHD may diminish activation maintenance for both types of semantic features.…”

Pathways to lexical ambiguity: fMRI evidence for bilateral fronto-parietal involvement in language processing

“…In general, it has been shown that following biased priming sentences at longer intervals, only the contextually appropriate meaning is facilitated in the LH, whereas all related targets (i.e., both contextually appropriate and inappropriate) are facilitated in the RH. In other words, although irrelevant meanings are suppressed in the LH, no suppression or limited suppression effects are observed in the RH (Faust & Gernsbacher, 1996). These results indicate that the two hemispheres respond differently to lexical ambiguity.…”

The effects of multiple script priming on word recognition by the two cerebral hemispheres: Implications for discourse processing

“…These Wndings are consistent with the results of previous research suggesting that LH maintains activation for a narrow semantic Weld, including only the interpretations that are dominant or most relevant to the immediate context. In a given context, these interpretations may be related to dominant word meanings (Anaki et al, 1998;Burgess & Simpson, 1988), to contextually relevant word meanings (Faust & Chiarello, 1998;Faust & Gernsbacher, 1996), or to meanings of words related to the most current script prime. This implies that the focus of activation of the LH can be quickly shifted from one subset of meanings to another.…”