Betts Hannah N, Gilbert Rebecca A, Cai Zhenguang G, Okedara Zainab B, Rodd Jennifer M
Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2018 Jul;44(7):1130-1150. doi: 10.1037/xlm0000507. Epub 2017 Dec 28.
Current models of word-meaning access typically assume that lexical-semantic representations of ambiguous words (e.g., 'bark of the dog/tree') reach a relatively stable state in adulthood, with only the relative frequencies of meanings and immediate sentence context determining meaning preference. However, recent experience also affects interpretation: recently encountered word-meanings become more readily available (Rodd et al., 2016, 2013). Here, 3 experiments investigated how multiple encounters with word-meanings influence the subsequent interpretation of these ambiguous words. Participants heard ambiguous words contextually-disambiguated towards a particular meaning and, after a 20- to 30-min delay, interpretations of the words were tested in isolation. We replicate the finding that 1 encounter with an ambiguous word biased the later interpretation of this word towards the primed meaning for both subordinate (Experiments 1, 2, 3) and dominant meanings (Experiment 1). In addition, for the first time, we show cumulative effects of multiple repetitions of both the same and different meanings. The effect of a single subordinate exposure persisted after a subsequent encounter with the dominant meaning, compared to a dominant exposure alone (Experiment 1). Furthermore, 3 subordinate word-meaning repetitions provided an additional boost to priming compared to 1, although only when their presentation was spaced (Experiments 2, 3); massed repetitions provided no such boost (Experiments 1, 3). These findings indicate that comprehension is guided by the collective effect of multiple recently activated meanings and that the spacing of these activations is key to producing lasting updates to the lexical-semantic network. (PsycINFO Database Record
当前的词义通达模型通常假定，多义词（如“狗叫/树皮”）的词汇语义表征在成年期会达到相对稳定的状态，只有词义的相对频率和直接的句子语境决定意义偏好。然而，近期的经历也会影响语义理解：最近遇到的词义会更容易被提取（罗德等人，2016年、2013年）。在此，我们进行了3项实验，研究多次接触词义如何影响对这些多义词的后续理解。参与者听到在特定语境中消除歧义的多义词，在间隔20到30分钟后，对这些词的理解进行单独测试。我们重复了这一发现，即对于从属意义（实验1、2、3）和主导意义（实验1），接触一次多义词会使该词后来的理解偏向于启动的意义。此外，我们首次展示了相同和不同意义多次重复的累积效应。与仅接触主导意义相比，在随后接触主导意义后，单次接触从属意义的效应仍然存在（实验1）。此外，与一次接触相比，3次重复从属词义会对启动效应有额外的促进作用，不过只有在它们的呈现是间隔的情况下才会如此（实验2、3）；集中重复则没有这种促进作用（实验1、3）。这些发现表明，理解是由多个最近激活的意义的集体效应引导的，并且这些激活的间隔是对词汇语义网络产生持久更新的关键。（《心理学文摘数据库记录》 ）
