Processing phonological and semantic ambiguity: evidence from semantic priming at different SOAs.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Computational Linguistics

Background:

• Homographs, words with identical spelling but different meanings, pose challenges for language processing.
• Hebrew presents unique linguistic features, including heterophonic and homophonic homographs, requiring specific investigation.
• Semantic priming is a key paradigm for understanding word recognition and meaning access.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the disambiguation of heterophonic and homophonic homographs in Hebrew.
• To examine the role of stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) in accessing dominant and subordinate meanings.
• To explore the underlying lexical representation and processing mechanisms for different types of Hebrew homographs.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a semantic priming paradigm with ambiguous Hebrew primes and unambiguous targets.
• Tested at three stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs): 100 ms, 250 ms, and 750 ms.
• Measured lexical decision performance for targets related to dominant and subordinate meanings.

Main Results:

• Facilitation for dominant meanings of heterophonic homographs occurred at all SOAs.
• Subordinate meanings of heterophonic homographs showed facilitation only at longer SOAs (≥250 ms).
• Homophonic homographs facilitated lexical decision regardless of meaning dominance at all SOAs.

Conclusions:

• Heterophonic homographs likely involve multiple lexical entries, while homophonic homographs may have single entries.
• Phonological mediation appears crucial for accessing meanings of homographs.
• Language-specific factors may explain the prolonged activation of subordinate meanings in Hebrew.