Semantic satiation and lexical ambiguity resolution

Abstract

This study examines the effects of semantic satiation on lexical ambiguity resolution. On a given trial, participants were presented with a word triad. The first word (e.g., HEART) was presented on average 2.5, 12.5, or 22.5 times, and then participants received 2 new words for relatedness judgments. The first of the two new words was always a homograph (e.g., "ORGAN") and the other word was a related or unrelated pairmate (e.g., "KIDNEY"). In Experiment 1, when blocks of trials were intermixed with concordant (e.g., "HEART-ORGAN-KIDNEY"), discordant (e.g., "PIANO-ORGAN-KIDNEY"), and neutral (e.g., "CEILING-ORGAN-KIDNEY") trials, participants did not produce evidence of semantic satiation. In a second experiment in which only concordant and neutral trials were presented, however, participants did produce evidence of semantic satiation in the concordant condition. Taken together, Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that semantic satiation of the context-appropriate meaning of a homograph may impede ambiguity resolution.