The effect of context on the activation and processing of word meaning over time
The aim of this thesis is to study the effect that linguistic context exerts on the activation and processing of word meaning over time. Previous studies have demonstrated that a biasing context makes it possible to predict upcoming words. The context causes the pre-activation of expected words and facilitates their processing when they are encountered. The interaction of context and word meaning can be described in terms of feature overlap: as the context unfolds, the semantic features of the processed words are activated and words that match those features are pre-activated and thus processed more quickly when encountered. The aim of the experiments in this thesis is to test a key prediction of this account, viz., that the facilitation effect is additive and occurs together with the unfolding context. Our first contribution is to analyse the effect of an increasing amount of biasing context on the pre-activation of the meaning of a critical word. In a self-paced reading study, we investigate the amount of biasing information required to boost word processing: at least two biasing words are required to significantly reduce the time to read the critical word. In a complementary visual world experiment we study
Frassinelli, Diego
language comprehension ; incrementality ; context effects ; eye-tracking ; self-paced reading
The effect of context on the activation and processing of word meaning over time. The aim of this thesis is to study the effect that linguistic context exerts on the activation and processing of word meaning over time. Previous studies have demonstrated that a biasing context makes it possible to predict upcoming words. The context causes the pre-activation of expected words and facilitates their processing when they are encountered. The interaction of context and word meaning can be described in terms of feature overlap: as the context unfolds, the semantic features of the processed words are activated and words that match those features are pre-activated and thus processed more quickly when encountered. The aim of the experiments in this thesis is to test a key prediction of this account, viz., that the facilitation effect is additive and occurs together with the unfolding context. Our first contribution is to analyse the effect of an increasing amount of biasing context on the pre-activation of the meaning of a critical word. In a self-paced reading study, we investigate the amount of biasing information required to boost word processing: at least two biasing words are required to significantly reduce the time to read the critical word. In a complementary visual world experiment we study
effect context activation processing word_meaning time aim_study effect linguistic context activation processing word_meaning time previous_study demonstrate bias context make_possible predict word context cause pre activation expect word facilitate process encounter interaction context word_meaning describe_term feature overlap context unfolds semantic_feature process word activate word match feature pre thus process quickly encounter aim_test key prediction account viz effect additive occur together unfolding context first analyse_effect increase_amount bias context pre activation meaning critical word self paced reading study_investigate amount bias information require boost word processing least_two bias word require significantly reduce time read critical word complementary visual world study