Perceptual representation as a mechanism of lexical ambiguity resolution: An investigation of span and processing time.
In 2 experiments, the authors investigated the ability of high- and low-span comprehenders to construe subtle shades of meaning through perceptual representation. High- and low-span comprehenders responded to pictures that either matched or mismatched a target object's shape as implied by the preceding sentence context. At 750 ms after hearing the sentence describing the target object, both high- and low-span comprehenders had activated a contextually appropriate perceptual representation of the target object. However, only high-span comprehenders had perceptually represented the contextually appropriate meaning immediately upon hearing the sentence, whereas low-span comprehenders required more processing time before the perceptual representation was activated. The results are interpreted in a framework of co-occurring lexical representations and perceptual-motor representations.
Madden
Carol J
CJ
Psychology Department, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands. madden@fsw.eur.nl
Zwaan
Rolf A
RA
D001076:Aptitude; D001288:Attention; D032882:Comprehension; D003210:Concept Formation; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception