Cross modal lexical decision
The materials in the cross modal lexical decision demo are all based on those used in Experiment 2 reported by
Onifer and Swinney (1981). Whereas Onifer and Swinney included visual test words related to either the primary or the secondary meaning of the
ambiguous word, the demo version only used test words related to the primary meaning. Examples of Onifer and Swinney's materials are
given below, where the ambiguous word is
bug and the context sentences bias towards either the primary or the secondary meaning of that word.
Sentence bias |
example sentence |
|---|---|
Primary |
We used insecticide to kill the bug we found crawling on the floor because they
scare me and I don't like having them in the house |
Secondary |
In order to find out what was going on in the secret talks the FBI put a bug
under the coffee table and monitored the conversation |
The visual probe word was related either to the primary meaning of the ambiguous word (SPIDER for bug) or towards its secondary meaning (SPY for bug), or was an unrelated control word matched in certain other properties (i.e. word length and word frequency) to the visual probe word. The average lexical decision response times (RTs) to the target words, and the priming effect (difference between test word response times and control word response times) are given below. The presentation of the target word was either immediate (at the offset of the ambiguous word in the spoken utterance) or delayed (1.5 seconds later).
Presentation |
Sentence bias |
Word meaning |
Mean RT (msec) for test word |
Mean RT (msec) for control |
Priming (msec) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Immediate |
Primary |
Primary |
693 |
727 |
34 |
Immediate |
Primary |
Secondary |
726 |
760 |
34 |
Immediate |
Secondary |
Primary |
705 |
730 |
25 |
Immediate |
Secondary |
Secondary |
714 |
786 |
72 |
Delayed |
Primary |
Primary |
686 |
714 |
28 |
Delayed |
Primary |
Secondary |
746 |
743 |
-3 |
Delayed |
Secondary |
Primary |
723 |
722 |
-1 |
Delayed |
Secondary |
Secondary |
695 |
747 |
52 |
As can be seen, the study found priming (shown in red) of visual probe words related to both primary and secondary meanings in both primary and secondary contexts when the probe word was presented immediately after the ambiguous word in the utterance. When there was a delay of 1.5 seconds, however, there was priming only of the probe word related to the meaning (either primary or secondary) that matched the bias of the utterance context. When the sentence context differed from the word meaning that was tested by the visual probe word, then the response time was no different from that for a control word not related in meaning to the ambiguous word.
Reference
Onifer, W. & Swinney, D.(1981). Accessing lexical ambiguities during sentence comprehension: Effects of frequency of meaning and context bias.
Memory and Cognition, 9, 225-236.