Department of Psychology, University of York, UK.
Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, China.
Cognition. 2022 Sep;226:105175. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105175. Epub 2022 May 27.
When a homonym (e.g., bark) is encountered in a sentential context that biases its interpretation towards a less frequent meaning, subsequent interpretations of the word are more likely to favour that subordinate meaning. Such word-meaning priming effects have been shown to be maintained via sleep-related consolidation, leading some to suggest that declarative memory systems play a crucial role in language comprehension, providing a relatively enduring contextually bound memory trace for the ambiguous word. By this account, word-meaning priming effects should be observable for all words, not just homonyms. In three experiments, participants were exposed to non-homonym targets (e.g., "balloon") in sentences that biased interpretation towards a specific aspect of the word's meaning (e.g., balloon‑helium vs. balloon-float). After a ~ 10-30 min delay, the targets were presented in relatedness judgement and associate production tasks to assess whether the sentential contexts enhanced access to the primed aspect of the word's meaning. The results reveal that word-meaning priming effects do extend to non-homonyms. Indeed, there was also some evidence of a more generalised priming that did not rely on prior presentation of the non-homonym itself. We argue that context-specific interpretations of words are maintained during recognition in order to facilitate comprehension over longer periods.
当一个同音字（例如 bark）出现在句子语境中，并且这种语境会偏向于不太常见的意思时，那么后续对这个词的解释就更有可能倾向于这个次要意思。这种词的意义启动效应已经被证明可以通过与睡眠相关的巩固来维持，这使得一些人认为陈述性记忆系统在语言理解中起着至关重要的作用，为模糊单词提供了一个相对持久的上下文相关的记忆痕迹。根据这一说法，词的意义启动效应应该可以观察到所有的词，而不仅仅是同音字。在三个实验中，参与者在句子中接触到非同音字目标（例如“balloon”），这些句子会偏向于单词特定意义方面的解释（例如，balloon-helium 与 balloon-float）。在大约 10-30 分钟的延迟后，目标会出现在关联性判断和联想产生任务中，以评估句子语境是否增强了对单词意义的启动方面的访问。结果表明，词的意义启动效应确实扩展到了非同音字。事实上，也有一些证据表明存在一种更普遍的启动，而这种启动并不依赖于非同音字本身的先前呈现。我们认为，为了促进更长时间的理解，在识别过程中会保持对单词的特定语境的解释。
