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Related Experiment Videos

Context effects in word recognition: evidence for early interactive processing.

Sara C Sereno1, Cameron C Brewer, Patrick J O'Donnell

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. ssereno@psy.gla.ac.uk

Psychological Science
|June 17, 2003
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Prior context influences word meaning access, shown by brain activity (event-related potentials). Ambiguous words were processed like high-frequency words in neutral contexts and low-frequency words in biasing contexts.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Electrophysiology

Background:

  • Lexical access, the process of retrieving word meaning, is influenced by word frequency and context.
  • Previous research using reaction time paradigms suggests an interaction between context and word frequency.
  • Electrophysiological measures, specifically event-related potentials (ERPs), offer high temporal resolution to investigate these processes.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the temporal dynamics of contextual influence on lexical access.
  • To examine how prior context affects the processing of ambiguous words.
  • To compare electrophysiological responses to ambiguous words with unambiguous high-frequency (HF) and low-frequency (LF) words.

Main Methods:

  • Participants' electrophysiological responses (ERPs) were recorded.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Ambiguous, HF, and LF words were presented in neutral and biasing contexts.
  • N1 component (132–192 ms poststimulus) ERPs were analyzed.

    • Main Results:

    • Word frequency effects were observed in the N1 component.
    • A marginal effect of context for LF words supported the context-by-frequency interaction.
    • In neutral contexts, ambiguous words were processed similarly to HF words; in biasing contexts, they were processed similarly to LF words.

    Conclusions:

    • Context exerts an early influence on lexical access, establishing temporal parameters for this effect.
    • The findings support an interactive model of lexical access over a modular one.
    • Electrophysiological data provide direct evidence for the timing of contextual integration in word meaning retrieval.