title: Conceptual combination during sentence comprehension: evidence for compositional processes.
abstract: This experiment examined the time course of integration of modifier-noun (conceptual) combinations during auditory sentence comprehension using cross-modal lexical priming. The study revealed that during ongoing comprehension, there is initial activation of features of the noun prior to activation of (emergent) features of the entire conceptual combination. These results support compositionality in conceptual combination; that is, they indicate that features of the individual words constituting a conceptual combination are activated prior to combination of the words into a new concept.
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Diego, CA, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Swinney
authors.forename: Tracy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Love
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Walenski
authors.forename: Edward E
authors.initials: EE
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D011578:Psycholinguistics / Q000379:methods; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology