Influence of semantic priming and word frequency on homograph processing

Abstract

Semantic priming and word frequency effects have been actively researched to provide insights into the cognitive process, attention, memory, and applications in computational models for translation. This paper investigated the influence of semantic priming and word frequency on visual word recognition by native speakers of English. Three experiments were conducted to throw light on the mechanism of meaning activation based on how the homographs were processed in isolation and in contexts with semantic priming. The homographs used in the present study were ones with the same spellings, but with different pronunciation and meanings. Thus, the reading of the words would give clues to which meaning was activated. The findings suggest that the word frequency and personal familiarity have more influence on the choice of meaning activation of homographs than semantic priming.