A Time Course View of Sentence Priming Effects

Meaning activation was estimated during (standard naming) and after (delayed naming) target presentation to chart the time course of priming effects during reading comprehension. Using sentences biasing homographs toward their dominant and subordinate meanings, two experiments evaluated context effects across three naming-cue delays: immediate, baseline, baseline+600 ms all at a 0-ms interstimulus interval. When participants named a target immediately as it was presented, results converged with previous findings demonstrating initial context-sensitive meaning activation. The delayed naming conditions revealed little post-access influences for dominant contexts. Subordinate contexts, however, provided the strongest evidence of continued (or sustained) processing. It was concluded that context has immediate and automatic effects on initial meaning activation, after which, strategies are invoked for fine-tuning an interpretation of a sentence and integrating it with new information.