Familiarity and word recognition

Word recognition was examined for physics and non-physics students after a single visual presentation of a series of sixty words. Physics words likely to be familiar only to physics subjects were used to vary the prior familiarity of the two groups with the inspection material and the ratio of physics to common words (salience) was varied for each of the three inspection series. Common words, which were expected to have greater salience than physics words in one of the inspection series, were not found to be recognized better than the control pairings of physics words by either group of subjects. The absence of differences between physics and non-physics students in the number of inspection list words (positive instances) correctly identified supports the view that prior familiarity is not a critical variable when all inspection items are presented in a recognition test. Physics students made fewer errors than non-physics students in identifying both physics and common words in the the recognition test which were not in an inspection series (negative instances). It is suggested that the correct identification of negative instances involves a scanning of a subject's “internal store” of previously experienced inspection items and that this is more efficient when the meaning of all the items in this “store” is known.     

Learning new meanings for old words: effects of semantic relatedness

Changes to our everyday activities mean that adult language users need to learn new meanings for previously unambiguous words. For example, we need to learn that a "tweet" is not only the sound a bird makes, but also a short message on a social networking site. In these experiments, adult participants learned new fictional meanings for words with a single dominant meaning (e.g., "ant") by reading paragraphs that described these novel meanings. Explicit recall of these meanings was significantly better when there was a strong semantic relationship between the novel meaning and the existing meaning. This relatedness effect emerged after relatively brief exposure to the meanings (Experiment 1), but it persisted when training was extended across 7?days (Experiment 2) and when semantically demanding tasks were used during this extended training (Experiment 3). A lexical decision task was used to assess the impact of learning on online recognition. In Experiment 3, participants responded more quickly to words whose new meaning was semantically related than to those with an unrelated meaning. This result is consistent with earlier studies showing an effect of meaning relatedness on lexical decision, and it indicates that these newly acquired meanings become integrated with participants' preexisting knowledge about the meanings of words.     

Normative data for number of word meanings

A corpus of 576 words and orthographically legal pseudowords was rated by 150 undergraduates to obtain a subjective estimate of the number of meanings possessed by the stimuli. The information contained in this corpus may be used to supplement current, sources of word-meaning information (e.g., total number of dictionary entries). Experimental evidence is presented that supports the reliability of the normative data.     

Multiple semantic encoding of homophones and homographs in contexts biasing dominant or subordinate meanings

The resolution of lexical ambiguity was studied in two experiments. While subsequent selection would appear to limit longer term storage to one meaning of an ambiguous word, multiple initial encoding of homophones and homographs was indicated by the intrusion of their alternative meanings across trials in a Brown-Peterson paradigm. In Experiment 1 subjects heard four words and then engaged in a 10osec distractor task. Written recall was then demanded. On context trials a homophone with two distinct alternative meanings was presented with other words biasing either a dominant or subordinate meaning, for example, look, stare,peer, glance. On the next trial words related to an alternative meaning were presented, for example, dock, wharf, quay, jetty. Intrusions of the graphic forms of alternative meanings le.g.,PIER) into critical trial recall occurred whether the dominant or subordinate meaning of the homophone had been biased by context. Experiment 2 employed visual presentation of homographs, for example, GOLD, IRON,LEAD, and oral recall, but was logically similar to Experiment 1. Intrusions of the alternative codings of homographs across trials again occurred, for example, GUIDE, DIRECT,lead, regardless of the meaning originally biased by context.     

A context-sensitive representation of word meanings

This study provides a numerical representation of contextual effects on the meanings of words, constructed from the order judgments of 19 subjects concerning the word "red" in 19 sentences. Subjects judged whether or not the red object mentioned in a sentence was redder than, less red than, or could be equally as red as the red object mentioned in each of the other sentences. These judgments were well described as an interval order. This means that the red ascribed in a sentence can be represented by a real interval with judgments of equally red corresponding to overlapping intervals. Semiorder axioms were not met, indicating that the width of the interval varied from sentence to sentence. Possible ways of incorporating the result into theories of semantic memory were discussed, as well as ways of accounting for the pronounced individual differences which were observed. The research described herein was supported by the National Institute of Education under Contract HEW NIE-G-74-0007.     

Early word meanings: The case of object names

It has been claimed that young children use object names overgenerally and undergenerally because they do not have notions of objects of particular kinds, but rather, complexive notions of objects and their habitual actions or locations. However, for overgeneral uses in particular, it is difficult to differentiate word meaning from word use because communicative functions are not explicitly expressed in single-word speech. In the present paper, we identify three types of overgeneral uses, and argue that two of these reflect communicative functions rather than complexive meanings. We obtained production data from 10 children in the single-word period, using a standardized method of recording utterance contexts. Most uses of object names were for appropriate instances of the adult categories. Of the overgeneral uses, most were attributable to communicative functions rather than complexive meanings, and there was no evidence of undergeneral use. The results provide strong evidence that, from the very start, children's object names, like those of adults, apply to objects of particular kinds.     

Familiarity effects and word unitization in visual comparison tasks

The decision that two words are identical is made more quickly than the decision that two non-words are identical. This familiarity effect was shown to be larger in a simultaneous matching task than in a sequential matching task. In the simultaneous task, two words were not matched as quickly as a single letter and a letter in a predesignated location within a word. The latter finding rules out a perceptual unitization account of the familiarity effect (Silverman, 1985). The familiarity effect was interpreted to be due to the facilitated encoding of a comparison item when a holistic cognitive unit representing the target is activated in memory.     

Context effects in visual word recognition: Lexical relatedness and syntactic context

In three experiments, we investigated how associative word-word priming effects in German depend on different types of syntactic context in which the related words are embedded. The associative relation always concerned a verb as prime and a noun as target. Prime word and target word were embedded in visually presented strings of words that formed either a correct sentence, a scrambled list of words, or a sentence in which the target noun and the preceding definite article disagreed in syntactic gender. In contrast to previous studies (O’Seaghdha, 1989; Simpson, Peterson, Casteel, & Burgess, 1989), associative priming effects were not only obtained in correct sentences but also in scrambled word lists. Associative priming, however, was not obtained when the definite article and the target noun disagreed in syntactic gender. The latter finding suggests that a rather local violation of syntactic coherence reduces or eliminates word-word priming effects. The results are discussed in the context of related work on the effect of gender dis-/agreement between a syntactic context and a target noun.     

Preschool children master the logic of number word meanings

Although children take over a year to learn the meanings of the first three number words, they eventually master the logic of counting and the meanings of all the words in their count list. Here, we ask whether children's knowledge applies to number words beyond those they have mastered: Does a child who can only count to 20 infer that number words above 'twenty' refer to exact cardinal values? Three experiments provide evidence for this understanding in preschool children. Before beginning formal education or gaining counting skill, children possess a productive symbolic system for representing number.     

Semantic representations of word meanings by the cerebral hemispheres

Two priming experiments investigated kind and strength of semantic knowledge underlying known, frontier, and unknown low frequency words. Results from Experiment 1 suggest that known words reflect categorical knowledge, but frontier and unknown words reflect thematic knowledge. Thematic knowledge for frontier words appears to be stronger than that for unknown words. Experiment 2 entailed visual half-field presentation of targets. All facilitory effects were restricted to the lvf/RH, and inhibitory effects to the rvf/LH. Experiment 1 findings were mirrored by the RH. Thematic knowledge appears to precede categorical knowledge for the RH, but the opposite may be true of the LH. Results are also discussed in terms of the RH role in meaning acquisition and metacontrol.     

Learning new word meanings from context: a study of eye movements

This study examined how readers establish the meaning of a new word from the sentence context during silent reading. Readers' eye movements were monitored while they read pairs of sentences containing a target word, context, and a word related to the target word. The target word varied in familiarity (high, low, or novel). The context varied in informativeness about the meaning of the target word (informative or neutral). The amount of time readers spent on the context depended on both the familiarity of the target word and the informativeness of the context. Readers spent additional time on the related word only when the context was neutral and the target was novel. These results indicate that readers were able to determine which areas of text were relevant and used the information to infer a meaning for the novel word.     

Aphasic performance on a lexical decision task: multiple meanings and word frequency

The lexical access of words varying in the number of meanings and frequency of occurrence was examined in fluent and nonfluent aphasic individuals and a control group of non-brain-damaged adults, using a lexical decision task. Fluent aphasic subjects performed similarly to nonfluent aphasic and normal subjects, showing that words with a high number of meanings and with a high frequency of occurrence were recognized as real words faster than words with few meanings or a low frequency of occurrence. While previous research has demonstrated that the number of meanings associated with a word exerts a powerful influence on the internal lexicon of normals, the results of this study suggest that brain damage resulting in aphasia does not disrupt this semantic organization.     

An intervention using morphology to derive word meanings for English language learners

Many English language learners (ELL) experience academic and reading difficulties compared to native English speakers (NES). Lack of vocabulary knowledge is a contributing factor for these difficulties. Teaching students to analyze words into their constituent morphemes (meaningful word units) in order to determine the meaning of words may be an avenue to increase vocabulary knowledge. This study investigated potential benefits of morphological instruction for learning vocabulary words and generalizing taught words to untaught words containing these morphemes. Nine fourth‐ and fifth‐grade ELL with reading difficulties participated in a multiple baseline, single‐case design study. Visual analysis of the results revealed a functional relation between the intervention and an increase in participants' vocabulary scores with 90% to 100% nonoverlapping data for eight participants. The effects of training generalized to untaught words. These findings suggest that morphological analysis is a promising approach to increase vocabulary knowledge of ELL.     

Evolution of word meanings through metaphorical mapping: Systematicity over the past millennium

One way that languages are able to communicate a potentially infinite set of ideas through a finite lexicon is by compressing emerging meanings into words, such that over time, individual words come to express multiple, related senses of meaning. We propose that overarching communicative and cognitive pressures have created systematic directionality in how new metaphorical senses have developed from existing word senses over the history of English. Given a large set of pairs of semantic domains, we used computational models to test which domains have been more commonly the starting points (source domains) and which the ending points (target domains) of metaphorical mappings over the past millennium. We found that a compact set of variables, including externality, embodiment, and valence, explain directionality in the majority of about 5000 metaphorical mappings recorded over the past 1100 years. These results provide the first large-scale historical evidence that metaphorical mapping is systematic, and driven by measurable communicative and cognitive principles.     

Cerebral hemispheric mechanisms in the retrieval of ambiguous word meanings

Targets related to ambiguous primes were projected to the left and right visual fields in a lexical priming experiment with stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) of 35 and 750 msec. Right visual field results were similar to our earlier results with central projection (G. B. Simpson & C. Burgess, 1985, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 11, 28-39). Facilitation was found for the more frequent meaning at both SOAs and a decrease in facilitation for the less frequent meaning at the longer SOA. In contrast, left visual field results indicated a decay of facilitation for the more frequent meaning at the longer SOA, while activation for the subordinate meaning increased. Results suggest that, while automatic processing occurs in both hemispheres, only the left hemisphere engages in controlled processing of ambiguous word meanings. In addition, the present results support the idea that the right hemisphere has a special role in ambiguity resolution and that the right hemisphere lexicon possesses a richer endowment than earlier thought.     

Access to concrete word meanings in the cerebral hemispheres: facilitation and inhibition effects

In 2002 Shibahara and Lucero-Wagoner, using a priming paradigm, reported a larger facilitation for concrete noun pairs in the right than left hemisphere when the stimulus onset asynchrony was 250 msec. Their related prime-target pairs were similar not only in meaning but also perceptual attributes, such as shape. They had reported such perceptual information to be available only in the right hemisphere early in target processing. Thus, we predicted that, when the stimulus onset asynchrony is long, there would be no effect of perceptual information on target processing in the right hemisphere, resulting in no hemispheric differences in the amount of facilitation. We also predicted that target processing would be inhibited by prior presentation of unrelated primes only in the left hemisphere because inhibition seems to be produced by the attention system in the left hemisphere. The present experiment was designed to test these predictions, using the stimulus onset asynchrony of 550 msec. and the same prime-target pairs. Analysis showed no hemispheric differences in the amount of facilitation, and inhibition effects for unrelated pairs were produced in both hemispheres. It is suggested that the inhibition effects in each hemisphere might be produced by different mechanisms.     

Testing a predicational model of cognition: Cueing predicate meanings in sentences and word triplets

Predication is a logical process in which meaning is extended from a broader context to a narrower, targeted referent independently of syntax and the passage of time. Since predicates lend meaning to their targets in cognitive processing, it follows that when unrecalled sentences are cued with their predicate-word meanings there should be greater retrieval than when these unrecalled sentences are cued with subject words. Three experiments (combinedN=164) tested this hypothesis and found data in its support (p — levels ranging from .05 to .001). A fourth experiment (N=48) removed syntax from consideration by employing triplets in which one word out of three sharing a common topic was the broadest in meaning, and hence was the expected predicate for cueing triplets when they were not initially recalled. As predicted, it was found that when the expected predicate of unrecalled triplets was used as a cue there were twice as many retrievals occurring as when the less broadly meaningful words were used as cues (p<.001). The findings are discussed in terms of logical learning theory's claim that ongoing cognition involves the continual taking of a position within a sea of opposite possibilities.     

The word "bioethics": the struggle over its earliest meanings.

An article by Warren Reich in the December 1994 issue of this journal concludes that the word "bioethics" and the field of study it names experienced a "bilocated birth" in 1970/1971 under Van Rensselaer Potter, at the University of Wisconsin, and André Hellegers, at Georgetown University. Further historical inquiry confirms (1) that there were, from the start, some major differences -- even clashes -- between the Potter and the Hellegers/Georgetown understandings of bioethics; and (2) that the Hellegers/Georgetown approach came to be the more widely accepted meaning of the term, while Potter's idea of bioethics remained largely marginalized. However, this inquiry also results in a third, unanticipated, conclusion: that Hellegers (in contrast to the dominant model offered by the Georgetown scholars) actually proposed a global approach to bioethics, bringing his vision much closer to Potter's evolving view than previously has been acknowledged.     

The influence of adults' actions on children's inferences about word meanings

This article first establishes the effect of adults' actions on children's inferences about the shape and material of solid objects, based on data from Japanese 2-, 4-, and 6-year-olds. Japanese 2-year-olds are already sensitive to adults' actions in making inferences, and children become more adept at this as they become older. The invariance of the phenomenon of the effect of actions is then discussed in terms of three of its aspects: across age groups, across languages (the universality of the effect), and across tasks in lexical development. It is suggested that while specific linguistic characteristics (e.g., the means of individuation of entities), and complexity of object shape probably influence the effect of actions, action effects may have a potentially invariant/universal aspect.