Children's use of language context in lexical ambiguity resolution

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology - Tập 63 Số 1 - Trang 160-193 - 2010
Maya M. Khanna1, Julie E. Boland2
1Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA#TAB#
2University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA

Tóm tắt

Lexical ambiguity resolution was examined in children aged 7 to 10 years and adults. In Experiment 1, participants heard sentences supporting one (or neither) meaning of a balanced ambiguous word in a cross-modal naming paradigm. Naming latencies for context-congruent versus context-incongruent targets and judgements of the relatedness of targets to the sentence served as indices of appropriate context use. While younger children were faster to respond to related targets regardless of the sentence context, older children and adults showed priming only for context-appropriate targets. In Experiment 2, only a single-word context preceded the homophone, and in contrast to Experiment 1, all groups showed contextual sensitivity. Individual working-memory span and inhibition ability were also measured in Experiment 2, and more mature executive function abilities were associated with greater contextual sensitivity. These findings support a developmental model whereby sentential context use for lexical ambiguity resolution increases with age, cognitive processing capacity, and reading skill.

Từ khóa


Tài liệu tham khảo

Adams M. J., 1990, Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print

10.1016/0093-934X(91)90124-J

10.1037/0033-2909.121.1.65

10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2004.05.007

10.3758/BF03212950

10.1016/0273-2297(90)90004-N

10.1007/s10936-006-9028-5

10.1207/s15326942dn2602_3

10.1002/icd.413

10.1016/S0896-6273(01)00583-9

10.1016/j.conb.2005.03.012

10.1016/j.tics.2005.01.011

Chall J. S., 1983, Stages of reading development

10.3758/MC.36.7.1306

10.1002/dev.10129

10.1016/S0022-5371(69)80069-1

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.07.057

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195134971.003.0029

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195169539.003.0006

10.1016/0001-6918(69)90065-1

10.1016/0749-596X(88)90066-6

10.1006/brln.1997.1747

10.1097/01.wnr.0000185013.98821.62

10.1111/j.1467-9280.1993.tb00567.x

10.1037/0278-7393.17.2.245

Gernsbacher M. A., 2000, On the consequences of meaning

10.1037/0278-7393.16.3.430

Gibson E., 2006, Paper presented at the Meeting for On-Line Methods in Children's Language Processing

10.1037/0096-1523.25.2.561

Hogg R. V., 2005, Introduction to mathematical statistics

10.1006/jmla.1993.1026

10.3758/BF03196574

10.1207/s15324826an1304_4

10.1080/1057356970130203

Luce R. D., 1986, Response times: Their role in inferring elementary mental organization

10.1037/0033-295X.101.4.676

10.1080/00221325.1993.9914746

10.1016/j.jecp.2003.09.001

10.1037/0096-3445.106.3.226

Nelson D. L., 1998, The University of South Florida word association, rhyme, and word fragment norms

10.3758/BF03196957

Pacht J. M., 1993, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 22, 251, 10.1007/BF01067833

10.3758/BF03197600

Posner M. I., 1975, Information processing and cognition: The Loyola symposium

Posner M. I., 1975, Attention and Performance V

10.1016/j.cogpsych.2006.07.003

10.1037/0278-7393.15.5.779

10.1037/0096-1523.2.2.243

10.1080/10862968109547419

10.1080/10862968209547431

10.1016/0010-0285(82)90017-2

10.1016/S0022-5371(81)90356-X

10.1037/0012-1649.22.2.147

10.1016/0749-596X(91)90029-J

10.2307/1130063

10.1037/0278-7393.15.1.88

10.2307/1130461

10.1016/0022-0965(81)90076-X

10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00032-3

10.1016/S0001-6918(99)00019-0

10.1111/j.1467-9280.1997.tb00418.x

10.3758/BF03201178

Wechsler D., 2003, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Fourth Edition, technical and interpretive manual

10.2307/1128240

Zeno S., 1995, The educator's word frequency guide