Semantic Satiation and Lexical Ambiguity Resolution

This study examines the effects of semantic satiation on lexical ambiguity resolution. On a given trial, participants were presented with a word triad. The first word (e.g., HEART) was presented on average 2.5, 12.5, or 22.5 times, and then participants received 2 new words for relatedness judgments...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American journal of psychology 2001-12, Vol.114 (4), p.493-510
Main Author: Black, Sheila R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Analysis
Analysis of Variance
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Decision Making
Experimentation
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Habituation, Psychophysiologic - physiology
Humans
Language
Language skills
Lexical ambiguity
Lexical phonology
Memory
Pianos
Positive feedback
Production and perception of written language
Psychological aspects
Psychological research
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time
Reading
Satiation
Semantics
Standard deviation
Task Performance and Analysis
Words
Citations: Items that cite this one
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Summary:This study examines the effects of semantic satiation on lexical ambiguity resolution. On a given trial, participants were presented with a word triad. The first word (e.g., HEART) was presented on average 2.5, 12.5, or 22.5 times, and then participants received 2 new words for relatedness judgments. The first of the two new words was always a homograph (e.g., "ORGAN") and the other word was a related or unrelated pairmate (e.g., "KIDNEY"). In Experiment 1, when blocks of trials were intermixed with concordant (e.g., "HEART-ORGAN-KIDNEY"), discordant (e.g., "PIANO-ORGAN-KIDNEY"), and neutral (e.g., "CEILING-ORGAN-KIDNEY") trials, participants did not produce evidence of semantic satiation. In a second experiment in which only concordant and neutral trials were presented, however, participants did produce evidence of semantic satiation in the concordant condition. Taken together, Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that semantic satiation of the context-appropriate meaning of a homograph may impede ambiguity resolution.
ISSN:0002-9556
1939-8298
DOI:10.2307/1423607