Repeated text in unrelated passages: Repetition versus meaning selection effects

Abstract

Despite previous findings, Klin, Ralano, and Weingartner (2007) found transfer benefits across unrelated passages. After processing an ambiguous phrase in Story A that was biased toward its sarcastic meaning, readers were more likely to interpret the identical phrase in Story B as sarcastic, even though it contained no disambiguating information. In the present experiments, we found both repetition effects (a benefit for the lexical items) and meaning selection effects (a benefit for the selected meaning of the phrase) with short delays between Stories A and B; with longer delays, only repetition effects were found. Whereas decreasing the elaboration of the phrase eliminated both effects, moving the disambiguating context from before to after the phrase eliminated meaning selection effects only. We conclude that meaning selection effects, which are based on conceptual overlap, are more sensitive to context changes and less robust than repetition effects, which are based on both perceptual and conceptual overlap.

Seeing what they read and hearing what they say: Readers' representation of the story characters' world

“…Reading times should, consequently, be shorter on the disambiguation line, which followed the repetition line, because it was consistent with the sarcastic meaning of the repetition line. This is exactly what was found by Klin and colleagues (Klin et al, 2009;Klin et al, 2007).…”

“…In contrast with encountering a repeated word, which tends to lead to faster reading, encountering a repeated phrase might surprise readers, causing reading times to increase. Consistent with this, Klin and colleagues (Klin et al, 2009;Klin et al, 2007) found variable effects on the repetition line but shorter reading times on the disambiguation line in the repeated condition; thus, reading time on the disambiguation line is a more reliable measure.…”

“…Further, the materials differed by only a few words. Whereas the passages in Klin et al (2009) and Klin et al (2007) described the critical repeated phrase as having been part of a note or an e-mail in both Story A and Story B, the critical phrase in the present experiment was described in both Story A and Story B as having been spoken, either in person or on the telephone. This experiment was run for two reasons.…”

“…We began with a replication and extension of findings from Klin and colleagues (Klin et al, 2009;Klin et al, 2007). In those experiments, participants were presented with experimental items that were made up of two passages-Story A and Story B.…”

“…To answer this question, we examined repetition effects when a phrase is repeated across two unrelated passages. Previous research on repetition effects (Klin, Drumm, & Ralano, 2009;Klin, Ralano, & Weingartner, 2007) has indicated that comprehension of a phrase in Story B is influenced by the meaning of the phrase in Story A. In these experiments, Story A and Story B had different sets of characters, but both described one character, the communicator, leaving the same written note for a second character, the addressee (e.g., "He sure is great company").…”