The Unselected Meaning of Ambiguous Words: Is There Evidence of Suppression?
Kimberly Wear, David S. Gorfein, & Harriett Amster
The University of Texas, Arlington
Inhibition
Activation - Exhaustive Access
• Exhaustive Access
– Initially all meanings activated, then context binds
with the appropriate meaning to boost its
activation
• Onifer & Swinney (1981)
– Auditory presentation of sentences
• Biased toward either primary or secondary
meaning of homographs
– Lexical decision
• String of letters on screen > word or not
• Highly related to primary, highly related to
secondary, or frequency matched unrelated
controls
– Varied time to lexical decision
• Immediate or after 1.5 sec. delay
Facilitation
80
60
40
20
0
Trial-20
• Slower RT to name target word on 2nd
occurrence for different meaning compared to
control
• No difference between same meaning and
unrelated pairs
• Initially > Exhaustive Access in which multiple
meanings are activated
• Followed by > Suppressed activation of unselected
meaning (based on context)
• Gernsbacher, Varner & Faust (1990)
– Sentences followed by target word, either immediately or
after 850 ms delay
– Does target word related to meaning of sentence
• Half matched, half did not (main interest)
• He dug with the spade.
ACE
• He dug with the shovel.
ACE
– Results
• Immediate – both more & less skilled readers showed
interference, taking longer to reject word related to
inappropriate meaning
• Delay – less skilled readers only showed interference
– Conclusion
• Less skilled readers unable to suppress inappropriate
meaning
Facilitation
N
N+9
N+19
or
80
60
40
20
0
-20
• Gorfein (2001)
– Balanced homograph & Associated Word
pairs
– Relatedness Decision Task
Primary
Secondary
Single
Immediate
Delay
Contrasting
Time between Sentence
& Letter String
seal-DOLPHIN
seal-DOLPHIN
--seal-ENVELOPE
walrus-OTTER
walrus-OTTER
Secondary
Biased Sentence
glue-SHUT
glue-SHUT
Primary
Immediate
Delay
Time between Sentence
& Letter String
Secondary
– Mini-Mental State Exam
– Language Background
– MEL2 used to present Word Pairs & collect RT data
RT for Test Pairs
Repeated, Same Occurrence
– Experimental Condition + Baseline
• Within Subjects
– RT of Relatedness Decision of Test Pairs
Hypotheses
– Facilitation for Same & Different meaning
Response
– Suppression for trial N meaning, greater than Contrasting
– Facilitation for trial N+5 meaning, greater than Contrasting
• Repeated, Contrasting Occurrence
860
820
780
700
660
860
Different
Meaning
820
780
740
700
660
Same
Different
Baseline
Meaning
• Contrasting Occurrence
– Facilitation for both meanings, of equal amount
– No Suppression
RT for Test Pairs
Contrasting Occurrence
860
• Contrasting Occurrence
• Repeated, Contrasting Occurrence
Meaning
Same
– Facilitation for both meanings, greater for meaning repeated
– Suppression for trial N meaning ( RT slower than Baseline)
– Facilitation for trial N+5 meaning
Baseline
RT for Test Pairs
Repeated, Contrasting Occurrence
RT for Test Pairs
Single Occurrence
– Facilitation for Same meaning greater than Single Occurrence
– Results
• Single Occurrence
–Facilitation for same meaning compared
to baseline
–Different meaning no different from
baseline
• Contrasting Occurrence
–Facilitation for both meanings
DOLPHIN
Different
740
• Repeated, Same Occurrence
----walrus-OTTER
glue-SHUT
200 ms
– Facilitation for Same Meaning
– No Suppression for Different Meaning, trend for
facilitation
• Repeated, Contrasting Occurrence
Activation + Suppression
• Single Occurrence
Same
• Single Occurrence
– Facilitation for Same meaning
– Different meaning equal to Baseline
• Contrasting Occurrence
660
Results
• Single Occurrence
– Facilitation for Same meaning greater than Single Occurrence
700
– No differences
Activation Only
• Repeated, Same Occurrence
780
740
seal
• Controls
• DV
820
500 ms
– Same/Different Meaning Trial N + 8
– Meaning of homograph at Trial N
– Homographs and Test Pairs presented in
every condition
860
#####
• Between Subjects
– Facilitation for Same meaning
– Different meaning equal to Baseline
Baseline
Informed Consent
Demographics
Language Background
Mini-Mental
Experimental Task
• Word Pairs presented visually
• Respond 1 for Related
2 for Unrelated
RT
–
–
–
–
–
– Results
Evidence Against Suppression/Inhibition Mechanism
Primary Biased Sentence
• Materials
• Procedure
Suppression
Mechanisms of Ambiguity Resolution
– 96 Students from Introductory Psychology
individually tested
– Trend toward facilitation similar to
Single Occurrence
– Possibly due to high amount of variance
between subjects
RT
Introduction
– Balanced homographs followed by target word on
2 occurrences
– Name the target word
• The current experiment is designed to specifically test whether
an unselected meaning is suppressed or inhibited.
• The conditions appear below – the Contrasting Occurrence &
Repeated, Contrasting Occurrence conditions address this
question.
• Repeated, Same Occurrence
• Participants
820
RT
Two-process theories predict facilitation when the same
meaning of an ambiguous word is required on a second
occurrence, but when the meaning is changed, suppression
of the first meaning is predicted. On the first occurrence,
homographs were presented followed by a word
associated to one meaning (SEAL-dolphin). Participants
made timed relatedness decisions. Conditions included a
single occurrence in which the homograph was presented
once and tested with either a same meaning pair (walrusotter) or a different meaning pair (glue-shut), and a
contrasting occurrence in which the homograph was
presented a second time with an associate word related to
the other meaning. Results support previous findings by
Gorfein (2001), facilitation was observed in the single
occurrence condition, but suppression was not in the
contrasting condition. Other conditions examined
repetition of the homograph, and repetition of a
contrasting meaning. Results are evaluated relative to
baseline where no homograph was presented.
• Initially > Exhaustive Access in which multiple
meanings are activated
• Followed by > Inhibited activation of unselected
meaning (based on context)
• Simpson & Kang (1984)
Method
Present Experiment
RT
Abstract
780
740
700
660
Same
Different
Meaning
Baseline
Baseline