Gaming experience affects the interpretation of ambiguous words.

Rachel B. Eligio,Michael P. Kaschak,Stefano Triberti

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0243512

Rachel B. Eligio, Michael P. Kaschak + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243512

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Journal: PloS one	Publication Date: Dec 28, 2020
Citations: 6	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Florida State University

Abstract

Rodd et al. (2016) report that recreational rowers’ acquisition of sport-related terminology affected their interpretation of words that have both rowing-related and non-rowing-related meanings (e.g., crab). The extent to which the rowing- and non-rowing-related meanings were accessible to the participants depended on experiential factors, such as how long the participant had been a rower, and how long it had been since they last rowed. We present two experiments that attempt to replicate these findings with another group of hobbyists, namely video game players. Experiment 1 examined the differences in word meaning choice between gamers and non-gamers. Participation in video-gaming lead to participants generating more gaming-related word meanings in a word association task. Experiment 2 further examined the effects of video gaming experience on the lexical representation of gaming-related words. Participants who had spent more years as gamers were more likely to produce gaming-related word meanings in a word association task. The effect of time spent gaming was no longer significant when we took into account whether the participant engaged with video-game related media (such as YouTube channels or gaming-related message boards). This finding helps us to refine our understanding of the results reported by Rodd et al. (2016), suggesting that it may not be the time spent in an activity that affects the interpretation of ambiguous words, but rather the specific exposure to activity-related vocabulary.

Highlights

When confronted with an ambiguous word, such as hand, comprehenders can access a number of possible meanings
We report the results of this analysis below, we conducted a parallel analysis that included all data from the word association task
The first question addressed in our analyses was whether gamers would produce more gaming-related responses to the word association task than non-gamers

Summary

Introduction

When confronted with an ambiguous word, such as hand, comprehenders can access a number of possible meanings. Hand can refer to a body part, a set of cards dealt to a poker player, or the transfer of an object from one person to another using the hand, among other possible interpretations. One of these interpretations is the dominant interpretation (e.g., hand = body part), whereas the other interpretations are considered to be subordinate (e.g., hand = a set of cards). Subordinate interpretations occur with lower frequency, and are accessed more slowly (e.g., [1, 2]).

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