Semantic constraint on the decoding of ambiguous words.

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Abstract
Studied the effects of semantic context on decoded word meaning by means of recognition memory. In Exp. I, 101 female undergraduates were tested for single-word recognition under 1 of 3 conditions, 2 of which constrained the interpretation of semantically ambiguous words in 1 of 2 ways. In a 3rd condition, Ss heard the ambiguous words as part of a word list. The main result was that false recognitions were induced to associates of the ambiguous word that reflected the meaning cued by its sentence. False recognitions to noncued associates than to control words were not significantly more frequent. In additional experiments with 92 undergraduates, the effect of single-word context on the recognition of ambiguous words were studied by varying which of 2 cue words preceded an ambiguous word. Whereas Exp. I indicates that decoding is determined by sentence context, the remaining experiments suggest that single words have little or no effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

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