Using puns to study contextual influences on lexical ambiguity resolution: evidence from eye movements

Participants' eye movements were monitored while they read sentences containing biased homographs in either a single-meaning context condition that instantiated the subordinate meaning of the homograph without ruling out the dominant meaning (e.g., "The man with a toothache had a crown made by the best dentist in town") or a dual-meaning pun context condition that supported both the subordinate and dominant meanings (e.g., "The king with a toothache had a crown made by the best dentist in town"). In both of these conditions, the homographs were followed by disambiguating material that supported the subordinate meaning and ruled out the dominant meaning. Fixation times on the homograph were longer in the single-meaning condition than in the dual-meaning condition, whereas the reverse pattern was demonstrated for fixation times on the disambiguating region; these effects were observed as early as first-fixation duration. The findings strongly support the reordered access model of lexical ambiguity resolution.