| Abstract: | Effects of prior sentential context on the interpretation of unambiguous nouns were investigated in 2 cross-modal priming experiments. Exp 1 showed that a prior priming context affects word interpretation during lexical access by facilitating the recovery of contextually relevant aspects of meaning and inhibiting the recovery of irrelevant aspects. Exp 2 showed that lexical decision on a visual word related to an aspect of meaning of an unambiguous noun is facilitated only by a sentential context containing the noun and priming that aspect. Such facilitation occurs neither when the unambiguous noun is replaced by a substitute noun in the same sentential context, nor when the unambiguous noun occurs in a sentence priming an aspect of its meaning unrelated to the visual word. Furthermore, neither of these 2 conditions produced effects on lexical decision reliably different either from each other or from a sentential context completely unrelated to the visual word. Findings argue against the context-independent model of lexical access and support the hypothesis that lexical access may be affected by prior sentential context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
