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

Abstract

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 meanings 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, 3 experiments investigated how multiple encounters with word-meanings influence the subsequent interpretation of these ambiguous words. Participants heard ambiguous words contextually-disambiguated towards a particular meaning and, after a 20- to 30-min delay, interpretations of the words were tested in isolation. We replicate the finding that 1 encounter with an ambiguous word biased the 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, 3 subordinate word-meaning repetitions provided an additional boost to priming compared to 1, 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.

Contextual priming of word meanings is stabilized over sleep

“…The data from two experiments reveal a clear and coherent pattern. Like several other studies (Betts et al, 2018;Gilbert et al, 2018;Rodd et al, 2013Rodd et al, , 2016, we found evidence that encountering a lexically ambiguous word in a disambiguating sentential context alters the word's representation in a way that has consequences for its future usage. When presented 20 min later, participants tended to generate associates that were consistent with this sententially primed meaning.…”

“…The key materials (see Appendix A) were 87 homophonic spoken words and sentence contexts previously used in word-meaning priming studies (e.g., spade; Rodd et al, 2016, Experiment 2;Betts, Gilbert, Cai, Okedara, & Rodd, 2018;e.g., spade;Rodd et al, 2016, Experiment 2). Prior dominance ratings had established for each word a dominant meaning (e.g., digging implement; mean dominance = 0.70; SD = 0.14) and a subordinate meaning (e.g., suit in card game; mean dominance = 0.23; SD = 0.13).…”

Word meaning access: The one-to-many mapping from form to meaning

“…In addition to these long-term effects of experience, recent experimental evidence has shown that more encounters with particular, subordinate interpretations of ambiguous words can substantially boost the availability of these primed meanings (Betts, Gilbert, Cai, Okedara, & Rodd, 2018;Gaskell, Cairney, & Rodd, 2019;Gilbert, Davis, Gaskell, & Rodd, 2018;Rodd, Lopez Cutrin, Kirsch, Millar, & Davis, 2013). In word-meaning priming experiments, participants encounter a subordinate meaning of an ambiguous word within a strongly disambiguating sentence context (e.g., "The farmer moved the sheep into the PEN").…”

“…Then, after a delay (typically 20-40 minutes) the availability of the word's different meanings is assessed using tasks such as word association or semantic relatedness judgement (Betts et al, 2018;Gaskell et al, 2019;Gilbert et al, 2018;Rodd et al, 2016Rodd et al, , 2013. Results from these different paradigms have consistently shown that the availability of the primed, subordinate word meaning is boosted compared to a control, unprimed condition.…”

Peer Review #1 of "Towards a distributed connectionist account of cognates and interlingual homographs: evidence from semantic relatedness tasks (v0.1)"

“…A final advantage of using a semantic relatedness task is that, in the monolingual domain, this task has also been used successfully to replicate effects of long-term word-meaning priming, the monolingual equivalent of Poort et al's (2016) long-term cross-lingual priming paradigm. Initial experiments using this paradigm used a word association task to show that a single encounter with an ambiguous word's less-used (subordinate) meaning can bias future interpretation of that word towards that meaning (Betts et al, 2017;Rodd et al, 2013Rodd et al, , 2016. For example, Rodd et al (2013) found that participants who had encountered the sentence "The man accepted the post in the accountancy firm" were more likely to provide words related to the "job"-meaning of "post" than the "mail"-meaning than if they had encountered the sentence "The man accepted the job in the accountancy firm".…”