Simonetti Matilde E, Koch Iring, Roembke Tanja C
Institute of Psychology, RWTH Aachen University, Jaegerstr. 17/19, 52066, Aachen, Germany.
Mem Cognit. 2025 Mar 24. doi: 10.3758/s13421-025-01706-z.
Many words have multiple meanings. It is currently unclear how a word with more than one meaning is acquired or stored long-term. One possibility is that each word's meaning is less robustly encoded; this, in turn, may make it easier to acquire additional meanings. We investigated this hypothesis across three cross-situational statistical learning experiments (N = 62 (in-lab), N = 61 (online), N = 60 (online)), using the same general procedure: During Learning Phase 1 (LP1), participants acquired both 1:1 (each word has one meaning) and 1:2 (each word has two meanings) mappings. In Learning Phase 2 (LP2), each word received one new meaning. Across experiments, we manipulated the frequency of 1:1 and 1:2 mappings. As expected, 1:2 mappings were always harder to acquire in LP1. However, in the LP2 of Experiment 1, former 1:1 mappings were remapped more easily than former 1:2 ones, while 1:2 mappings were remapped more easily in Experiments 2 and 3. These data suggest that words with multiple meanings are more easily remapped, indicating that each meaning is less robustly associated with the word, which in turn may facilitate the acquisition of an additional meaning. However, the observed inconsistencies in the remapping results between in-lab and online experiments suggest that CSWL may differ across these two settings.
许多单词有多种含义。目前尚不清楚一个具有多种含义的单词是如何被习得或长期存储的。一种可能性是每个单词的含义编码不够稳固；反过来，这可能会使获取额外含义变得更容易。我们通过三个跨情境统计学习实验（实验室实验N = 62，在线实验1 N = 61，在线实验2 N = 60）对这一假设进行了研究，采用相同的一般程序：在学习阶段1（LP1），参与者学习1:1（每个单词有一个含义）和1:2（每个单词有两个含义）的映射关系。在学习阶段2（LP2），每个单词被赋予一个新含义。在所有实验中，我们操纵了1:1和1:2映射关系的频率。正如预期的那样，在LP1中，1:2的映射关系总是更难习得。然而，在实验1的LP2中，先前的1:1映射关系比先前的1:2映射关系更容易重新映射，而在实验2和3中，1:2映射关系更容易重新映射。这些数据表明，具有多种含义的单词更容易重新映射，这表明每个含义与该单词的关联不够稳固，这反过来可能有助于获取额外的含义。然而，在实验室实验和在线实验之间观察到的重新映射结果的不一致表明，跨情境统计学习在这两种设置下可能会有所不同。
