Readers use recent experiences with word meanings to support the processing of lexical ambiguity: Evidence from eye movements.

Abstract

Fluent reading comprehension demands the rapid access and integration of word meanings. This can be challenging when lexically ambiguous words have less frequent meanings (e.g., the dog meaning of boxer). Indeed, readers fixate on lexically ambiguous words that are disambiguated toward their subordinate meaning for longer than matched control words embedded within identical sentence contexts. Word-meaning priming studies have shown that participants flexibly use recent experiences with ambiguous words to guide their interpretation when these words are presented in isolation, even after substantial delays. However, word-meaning priming paradigms have almost always used artificial tasks to measure word-meaning availability and we do not therefore know how priming would support lexical processing when reading for comprehension. Thus, we conducted two eye-movement experiments to examine word-meaning priming during sentence reading. Both experiments employed a 2 (ambiguity: low-ambiguity control vs. high-ambiguity) × 2 (priming: unprimed vs. primed) within-participants design, with either a 1-min delay (Experiment 1; N = 28) or a 30-min delay (Experiment 2; N = 60) between prime and test sentences. Both experiments showed greater reductions in go-past times and total reading times following priming for high-ambiguity target words than matched low-ambiguity control words, indicating that recent encounters support the processing of word meanings during sentence reading and that this effect extends beyond the simple repetition effect observed for low-ambiguity control words. This illustrates the remarkable flexibility of the human language system in using diverse input to refine stored lexical knowledge even in skilled readers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).