Date of Award
5-2002
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Ping Li
Second Advisor
Jane M. Berry
Third Advisor
Beth Crawford
Abstract
Many studies have been conducted to test the effects of ambiguous words in sentence processing. There are two views: the modularity hypothesis and the interactive hypothesis that dominate this field of study. The effect of ambiguity has been tested in many ways, including gating, cross-modal priming, naming, and self-paced reading. This utilizes the methods of self paced reading with lexical decision and naming tasks to examine the hypotheses as they relate to the access period of lexical differentiation. Results indicate that context has an immediate effect, after which participants look to other factors to discern meaning of a sentence. Details are discussed according to a time course activation model.
Recommended Citation
Orgain, Frazier, "Context effects and lexical ambiguity processing: an activation-based account" (2002). Master's Theses. 810.
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/masters-theses/810