Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Dulce Constanza Jurado | Email: dulcejurado123@gmail.com
Dulce Jurado1°, Julieta Laurino1°2°,Laura Kaczer1°
1° Departamento de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Celular, FCEyN, UBA
2° IFIBYNE, UBA, CONICET
Semantic ambiguity, defined as the presence of multiple meanings for a single word, represents a significant challenge in language processing. Previous studies revealed that word-meaning processing is facilitated by a global semantic context that can bias the interpretation of the ambiguous word. This study explores the role of context in the subsequent word-processing. Specifically, the context consisted of a text paired with an image on a certain topic, presented before a target word.
In a first experiment, we investigated whether the facilitation of ambiguous word processing persisted even when the image was removed. We did an online priming task (n=120) where we had three factors to compare: target word type (ambiguous – non ambiguous), context congruence (matched – unmatched) and presence of image (with and without). Our results showed that facilitation, evidenced by shorter response times and higher accuracy levels in the priming task, persisted even when the image was not present in the context.
In a second experiment (n=110), we explored how similar the participants perceived the text to the semantic category of the target word, aiming to determine if a stronger context-to word similarity led to greater facilitation. Semantic similarity was measured using Likert scales, and the data were analyzed using AUC-ROC curves. We found that there was a gradual facilitation in processing, such that higher values of context word similarity lead to greater facilitation.