Context effects in lexical processing

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which word recognition is influenced by lexical, syntactic, and semantic contexts in order to contrast predictions made by modular and interactive theories of the architecture of the language comprehension system. We conclude that there is strong evidence for lexical context effects, mixed evidence for semantic context effects and little evidence for syntactic context effects. We suggest that top-down feedback effects in comprehension are primarily limited to situations in which there is a well-defined part-whole relationship between the two levels and the set of lower-level units that could receive feedback from a higher level is restricted.