Lexical access during sentence comprehension: (Re)consideration of context effects

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(79)90355-4Get rights and content

The effects of prior semantic context upon lexical access during sentence comprehension were examined in two experiments. In both studies, subjects comprehended auditorily presented sentences containing lexical ambiguities and simultaneously performed a lexical decision task upon visually presented letter strings. Lexical decisions for visual words related to each of the meanings of the ambiguity were facilitated when these words were presented simultaneous with the end of the ambiguity (Experiment 1). This effect held even when a strong biasing context was present. When presented four syllables following the ambiguity, only lexical decisions for visual words related to the contextually appropriate meaning of the ambiguity were facilitated (Experiment 2). Arguments are made for autonomy of the lexical access process of a model of semantic context effects is offered.

References (30)

  • CairnsH.S. et al.

    Effects of prior context upon lexical access during sentence comprehension: A replication and reinterpretation

    Journal of Psycholinguistic Research

    (1979)
  • CollinsA.M. et al.

    A spreading activation theory of semantic processing

    Psychological Review

    (1975)
  • ConradC.

    Context effects in sentence comprehension: A study of the subjective lexicon

    Memory and Cognition

    (1974)
  • FishlerI.

    Semantic facilitation without association in a lexical decision task

    Memory and Cognition

    (1977)
  • ForsterK.I.

    Accessing the mental lexicon

  • Cited by (0)

    This research was supported in part by Grant 1-ROH MH29885-01 from NIMH to the author. The author expresses his appreciation to Max Hirshkowitz and Bill Onifer for their valuable assistance in developing the technology for the experiments, and to Marie Banich, Janet Dorfzahn, Sara Robinowitz, and Susan Sklover for their assistance in data collection. In addition, the critical discussions and valuable advice given by Donald Foss, David Hakes, and Penny Prather on earlier drafts of this paper are appreciated and gratefully acknowledged.

    View full text