Gutiérrez Silva, César Antonio;
(2025)
The Flexibility of Lexical-Semantic Representations: Studies of Word-Meaning Priming.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Natural language exposure includes words with multiple meanings or senses (e.g. “crane”), a phenomenon called “lexical ambiguity”. This thesis explores the flexibility of lexical-semantic representations of ambiguous words after recent encounters with them. Particularly, it tests the effects of mixed-exposures to the dominant and subordinate meanings, and possible differences in the effect of word-meaning priming and semantic priming. In Experiments 1 (N= 60) and 2 (preregistered, N= 182) readers encountered both the subordinate and dominant meanings of ambiguous words once in training sentences. In Experiment 3 (preregistered, N= 340) each meaning was encountered three times and tested either immediately or the next day. Semantic relatedness judgements revealed a numerical facilitation effect for subordinate meanings and a null effect for dominant meanings (Experiment 1), a significant facilitation effect for subordinate meanings just on response times (Experiment 2), and a significant facilitation effect for subordinate meanings on accuracy and response times immediately and one day later (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 (preregistered, N= 180), which is a replication of Rodd et al. (2013; Experiment 3) tested possible differences in the effects and time-course of word-meaning priming and semantic priming after 3 and 20 minutes. Participants heard sentences that disambiguated the ambiguous words (word-meaning priming) or an unambiguous synonym (semantic priming) toward their subordinate meaning. At both delays, the number of associates consistent with subordinate meanings was significantly greater in the word-meaning priming condition than in the semantic priming condition. Moreover, the semantic priming effect was absent at both delays. Overall, our findings support the flexibility of lexical-semantic representations of ambiguous words, which was found across all experiments. Specifically, our results suggest that priming effects on subordinate meanings are stronger than the semantic competition between unrelated meanings of ambiguous words, and that word-meaning priming relies on the presence of the ambiguous word itself.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | The Flexibility of Lexical-Semantic Representations: Studies of Word-Meaning Priming |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author [2024]. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10210477 |
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