Abstract
Two experiments were conducted to investigate the processing of ambiguous words that varied in frequency of use of their multiple interpretations. Biasing sentential contexts were used in a cross-modal priming paradigm in which targets were presented for lexical decision at two different intervals relative to the occurrence of the ambiguous word. The results replicate previous work showing that both interpretations of an ambiguous word are accessed and that there arc no differences in amount of priming due to frequency. During selection of the appropriate interpretation, however, there is evidence of sensitivity to information about frequency and context. The results indicate that, whereas lexical access is an autonomous process, selection of the appropriate interpretation is a post-lexical process that is influenced by frequency information and context. Recent challenges to the use of the lexical decision task and to the autonomy view of lexical access are also considered.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
