Hemispheric sensitivities to lexical and contextual information: Evidence from lexical ambiguity resolution
Section snippets
1. Introduction
Understanding written words during sentence comprehension requires readers to rapidly access and integrate different sources of information from long-term memory, including lexical knowledge related to the word itself and contextual knowledge related to the sentential context in which the word is embedded. This process is complicated by the fact that many words have more then one distinct meaning and thus part of the comprehension process entails a selection of one of those meanings. Ample
2.1. Participants
Thirty six undergraduate students (18 males), aged 19–28 participated in the study. All subjects were healthy, right handed, native speakers of Hebrew with normal or corrected-to-normal vision.
2.2. Stimuli
The experimental materials consisted of 112 noun–noun polarized Hebrew homographs (both homophonic and heterophonic)
3. Results
A 3 × 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA was conducted for both RT data and error data across subjects (F1) and items (F2) with type of sentential context (dominant-consistent, subordinate-consistent or unbiased), location of target (RVF or LVF), Target Dominance (dominant or subordinate) and Target Relatedness (related or unrelated) as factors. Cutoff response times of 250 ms for anticipations, and 2500 ms for late responses were used. No data were excluded. Analyses of RTs were based on participants’ mean RT for
4. Discussion
The present study utilized a divided visual-field priming paradigm to further investigate the extent to which each hemisphere uses lexical (frequency) and contextual sources of information during the processing of homographs. Hemispheric asymmetry was found in the absence of a biasing context: dominant meanings were exclusively activated in the LH, whereas both dominant and subordinate meanings were activated in the RH. Hemispheric symmetry was found in the presence of a biasing context:
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by Grant No. 956/06 granted by the Israel Science Foundation to Orna Peleg and Zohar Eviatar.
References (60)
- et al.
Cererbral hemispheric asymmetries in processing lexical metaphors
Neuropsychologia
(1998) Semantic processing in the right hemisphere may contribute to drawing inferences from discourse
Brain and Language
(1993)- et al.
Interhemispheric transfer of spatial and temporal frequency information
- et al.
Comprehension of humorous and nonhumorous materials by left- and right-brain damaged patients
Brain and Cognition
(1986) - et al.
Surprise but not coherence: Sensitivity to verbal humor in right-hemisphere patients
Brain and Language
(1983) - et al.
Inference deficits in right brain-damaged patients
Brain and Language
(1986) - et al.
Appreciation of metaphoric alternative word meanings by left and right brain-damaged patients
Neuropsychologia
(1990) - et al.
Cerebral hemispheric mechanisms in the retrieval of ambiguous word meanings
Brain and Language
(1988) - et al.
Semantic and associative priming in the cerebral hemisphere: Some words do, some words don’t . . . sometimes, some places
Brain and Language
(1990) - et al.
Hemispheric asymmetries in the resolution of lexical ambiguity
Neuropsychologia
(2000)
Hemispheric contributions to lexical ambiguity resolution: Evidence from Individuals with complex language impairment following left hemisphere lesions
Brain and Language
Hemispheric asymmetries and joke comprehension
Neuropsychologia
Lexical ambiguity and fixation times in reading
Journal of Memory and Language
Brain correlates of discourse processing: An fMRI investigation of irony and metaphor comprehension
Neuropsychologia
Sentence context and lexical ambiguity resolution by the two hemispheres
Neuropsychologia
Levels of sentence constraint and lexical decision in the two hemispheres
Brain and Language
Cerebral mechanisms for suppression of inappropriate information during sentence comprehension
Brain and Language
Right words and left words: Electrophysiological evidence for hemispheric differences in meaning processing
Cognitive Brain Research
On the priority of salient meanings: Studies of literal and figurative language
Journal of Pragmatics
Sensitivity to local sentence context information in lexical ambiguity resolution: Evidence from left- and right-hemisphere-damaged individuals
Brain and Language
Hemispheric independence in word recognition: Evidence from unilateral and bilateral presentations
Brain and Language
Understanding metaphors—Is the right hemisphere uniquely involved?
Brain and Language
The role of the right hemisphere in processing nonsalient metaphorical meanings: Application of salysis to fMRI data
Neuropsychologia
Exploring the process of inference generation in sarcasm: A review of normal and clinical studies
Brain and Language
Production and evaluation of requests by right hemisphere brain damaged individuals
Brain and Language
Understanding ambiguous words in sentence contexts: Electrophysiological evidence for delayed contextual selection in Broca’s aphasia
Neuropsychologia
Hemispheric differences in context sensitivity during lexical ambiguity resolution
Brain and Language
Appreciation of indirect requests by left- and right-brain-damaged patients: The effects of verbal context and conventionality of wording
Brain and Language
Language in the right hemisphere following callosal disconnection
Interaction between the hemispheres and its implications for the processing capacity of the brain
Cited by (37)
Right hemisphere involvement for pun processing – Effects of idiom decomposition
2019, Journal of NeurolinguisticsDevelopmental changes in hemispheric processing of ambiguous words during adolescence
2018, Journal of NeurolinguisticsCitation Excerpt :Conversely, at a long SOA (750 ms), the subordinate meaning was suppressed in the LH, but showed equivalent or greater facilitation relative to the dominant meaning in the RH (Atchley et al., 1999; Burgess & Simpson, 1988; Chiarello et al., 1995). These differences in semantic processing are assumed to be related to the asymmetries in cortical microcircuitry (Jung-Beeman, 2005) and/or to the hemispheric differences in the links between phonological, orthographic and semantic representations (Peleg & Eviatar, 2008, 2009). Interestingly, when more controlled and strategic processing was elicited by tasks (e.g., semantic judgment) that directed the attention to either the dominant or subordinate meanings of ambiguous words, an involvement of the two hemispheres was observed. (
Hemispheric processing of idioms: The influence of familiarity and ambiguity
2014, Journal of Neurolinguistics