Listeners and readers generalize their experience with word meanings across modalities.

Rebecca A Gilbert,Matthew H Davis,Jennifer M Rodd,M Gareth Gaskell

doi:10.1037/xlm0000532

Abstract

Research has shown that adults’ lexical-semantic representations are surprisingly malleable. For instance, the interpretation of ambiguous words (e.g., bark) is influenced by experience such that recently encountered meanings become more readily available (Rodd et al., 2016, 2013). However, the mechanism underlying this word-meaning priming effect remains unclear, and competing accounts make different predictions about the extent to which information about word meanings that is gained within one modality (e.g., speech) is transferred to the other modality (e.g., reading) to aid comprehension. In two Web-based experiments, ambiguous target words were primed with either written or spoken sentences that biased their interpretation toward a subordinate meaning, or were unprimed. About 20 min after the prime exposure, interpretation of these target words was tested by presenting them in either written or spoken form, using word association (Experiment 1, N = 78) and speeded semantic relatedness decisions (Experiment 2, N = 181). Both experiments replicated the auditory unimodal priming effect shown previously (Rodd et al., 2016, 2013) and revealed significant cross-modal priming: primed meanings were retrieved more frequently and swiftly across all primed conditions compared with the unprimed baseline. Furthermore, there were no reliable differences in priming levels between unimodal and cross-modal prime-test conditions. These results indicate that recent experience with ambiguous word meanings can bias the reader’s or listener’s later interpretation of these words in a modality-general way. We identify possible loci of this effect within the context of models of long-term priming and ambiguity resolution.

Highlights

Research has shown that adults’ lexical-semantic representations are surprisingly malleable
We examined the effects of prime and test presentation modalities on word-meaning priming, using proportions of word association responses that are consistent with the primed meaning as a measure of word-meaning preference
We found significant effects of priming, with more prime-consistent word association responses for words presented in primed than unprimed conditions

Summary

Introduction

Research has shown that adults’ lexical-semantic representations are surprisingly malleable. About 20 min after the prime exposure, interpretation of these target words was tested by presenting them in either written or spoken form, using word association (Experiment 1, N ϭ 78) and speeded semantic relatedness decisions (Experiment 2, N ϭ 181) Both experiments replicated the auditory unimodal priming effect shown previously (Rodd et al, 2016, 2013) and revealed significant cross-modal priming: primed meanings were retrieved more frequently and swiftly across all primed conditions compared with the unprimed baseline. Numerous studies have shown that interpretation of ambiguous words is biased toward the meaning that occurs most frequently This bias is stronger when there is a greater imbalance in dominance, and it results in faster, less effortful access for high-frequency meanings (Vitello & Rodd, 2015). This increased availability of highfrequency meanings can be revealed most clearly in the absence of a biasing context, such as in simple word association tasks: participants are more likely to retrieve the more frequent meaning of an ambiguous word (e.g., produce the associate “write” rather than “pig” in response to “pen”; Twilley, Dixon, Taylor, & Clark, 1994)

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