Methodological Issues in The Study of Lexical Ambiguity Resolution

2
Methodological Issues in the Study of

Lexical Ambiguity Resolution
Copyright American Psychological Association. Not for further distribution.
Patrizia Tabossi and Silvia Sbisa
In one of Derek Jarman’s most fascinating films, Wittgenstein, Maynard Keynes

so recounts the grief of the protagonist:
Let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time there was a young man
whose dream was to reduce the world to pure logic. The young man was very
intelligent, and succeeded indeed. Once he concluded his work, he took a
step backward to admire it. It was marvelous. A world purged of imperfec-
tion and indeterminacy. Infinite acres of glittering ice extended as far as the
horizon. Thus the intelligent man looked a t the world he had created, and
decided to explore it. He took a step forward and fell flat on his back. He had
forgotten friction, you see. The ice was smooth, leveled and immaculate, but
it could not be walked on. Thus the intelligent young man sat down and
cried bitter tears. But as he grew old and wise, he came to understand that
roughness and ambiguity are not imperfections. They are what moves the
world. He wanted to run and dance. The words and things scattered on the
ground were all ruined and dim and ambiguous, and the old wise man saw
that was the way things are. But he kept longing for the ice, where every-
thing was beaming and absolute and inflexible. Even though he had come to
appreciate the idea of a rough ground, he could not convince himself to live
there. Thus, he was now marooned between ground and ice, and in neither
place he felt a t home. And this was the cause of all his pain. (Mi & Jarman,
1993)
Keynes describes the pain of a man who lost the illusions of his youth with-
out learning to enjoy the multiform beauty of reality. In language, vagueness,
indeterminacy, and ambiguity are not defects or imperfections; they are some
of the facets with which the human symbolic system manifests itself, equally
capable of expressing the inflexible laws of logic, the roughness of ground, and
the impalpable substance of poetry.
It took psycholinguistics more than two decades to overcome Ludwig
Wittgenstein’slonging for glacial perfection and fully appreciate the power and
The present research was supported by Ministry of University, Scientific, and Technology
Research (MURST) Fondi ex 40% and Fondi 60%. We thank Corinna Michelin for collecting some
of the data. We are also grateful to David Balota, Andrea Bubka, Dave Gorfein, and Greg Simpson
for their helpful comments.
11
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/10459-001
On the Consequences of Meaning Selection: Perspectives on Resolving Lexical
Ambiguity, edited by D. S. Gorfein
Copyright © 2001 American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.
12 TABOSSI AND SBISA
flexibility of the human cognitive system deriving from its ability to cope effl-
ciently with the “imperfections” of language. Several years before the cognitive
era, Miller (1951) noticed that apart from close class words, the more frequent a
word is, the more likely it is to be ambiguous, and he concluded that it is easier
for people to deal with few ambiguous words than with many unambiguous
ones. Unfortunately, for a long time the psycholinguistic community underesti-
mated Miller’s insightful remark and considered lexical ambiguity as a special
phenomenon, an anomaly in a system mostly free from deficiencies of this sort
(Foss, Bever, & Silver, 1968; Garrett, 1970; MacKay, 1966).

At the end of the 1970s, however, psycholinguists’ attitudes changed radi-
cally, and since then lexical ambiguity has featured prominently in the field.
Several reasons may have contributed to this shift. Although context works so
powerfully that one hardly ever notices when one comes across ambiguous words,
evidence from many studies suggested that processing ambiguous words takes
longer than processing unambiguous ones, even in a context that makes un-
equivocally clear which of their multiple meanings is appropriate (Cairns &
Kamerman, 1975; Conrad, 1974; Dooling, 1972; FOSS,1970; Foss & Jenkins,
1973; Holmes, Arwas, & Garrett, 1977; Lackner & Garrett, 1972). In a domain
in which speakers’ intuitions may be regarded as empirical evidence, these
counterintuitive results probably prompted the interest of many investigators.
Researchers also realized that lexical ambiguity is but one instance of a ubiqui-
tous phenomenon. In language, ambiguity typically refers to words with two or
more independent meanings. Mint, for instance, is ambiguous as it may mean
either the place to make money or the edible substance. However, there are
other types of lexical ambiguity: The word fish is an example of syntactic cat-
egory ambiguity as it may be either a noun (e.g., The trout is a f i s h ) or a verb
(e.g., Peter went to fish), whereas spotted is an example of morphological ambi-
guity, in which the word can either be a past tense (e.g., Mary spotted the boy)
or a past participle (e.g., The boy spotted by Mary was tall). Words may also be
referentially ambiguous, as is typically the case with pronouns that may refer
to more than one entity in the discourse. Moreover, the various types of ambi-
guity are not mutually exclusive: For instance, saw is both semantically and
syntactically ambiguous, as it has unrelated meanings when used as a noun
(e.g., The carpenter’s saw was new) and as a verb (e.g., I saw the carpenter).
But ambiguity is by no means restricted to the lexicon. Structural ambigu-
ity, for instance, refers to sentences that have more than one syntactic struc-
ture, as in The boy saw the m a n with the binoculars, where the prepositional
phrase can be attached either to the verb or to the noun phrase. Given the
broad scope of the phenomenon, determining how the language comprehension
system deals with the various types of ambiguity is an unavoidable step in any
attempt to explain language comprehension.
Last but not least, lexical ambiguity has provided a n ideal battlefield for
the two competing views of the functional architecture of the mind-the modu-
lar and the interactive-which have given rise to one of the liveliest debates in
cognitive science (Fodor, 1983;McClelland, 1987).Typically,the two approaches
handle ambiguity differently. The modular approach has a module compute
multiple outputs that are then filtered by subsequent modules (Forster, 1979).
Alternatively, a module can incorporate decision principles so that it computes
METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES 13
a single output without appealing to extramodular information (Frazier, 1987).

In contrast, in the interactive view, the system will make use of the available
constraints that are relevant to resolving the ambiguity. Establishing whether
extramodular information can be used in the process of ambiguity resolution
would hence provide valuable evidence to clarify the controversy.
Whatever the reason, over the last 25 years the continuing interest on
ambiguity has resulted in an enormous amount of empirical work. Unfortu-
nately, even within the restricted domain of lexical ambiguity resolution, which
is the focus of this chapter, the findings have proved so difficult to reconcile in a
coherent theoretical frame to justify the conclusion that the literature “does not
paint a very encouraging picture. . . . All the models of ambiguity processing
have found support from one or more studies, a n d . . . there is no simple way of
classifylng studies methodologically in any way that sheds light on the discrep-
ancies among results” (Simpson, 1994, p. 367). In the remainder of the chapter,
we take up this challenge and explore whether discrepancies among studies
can be explained. The available data, once reconsidered, may provide the em-
pirical basis for a coherent theory of lexical ambiguity processing. The chapter
is organized as follows. We first set the scene, introducing the main points of
interest and the main theoretical views. We then discuss two issues that are the
most likely to explain-separately or in interaction-the discrepancies in
the data, namely, the experimental paradigms and the types of contexts used
in the different studies. Finally, we draw some conclusions, focusing on how, in
the domain of spoken word recognition, work on lexical ambiguity resolution
complements our knowledge of lexical processing.
Issues and theories

There is one point on which researchers seem to agree: Context is what nor-
mally allows people to interpret ambiguous words appropriately and without
difficulty. Context-specific interpretation is an indisputable phenomenon that
is part of the process of comprehension of both ambiguous and unambiguous
words (R. C. Anderson & Ortony, 1975; Barclay, Bransford, Franks, McCarrell,
& Nitsch, 1974; Garnham, 1979; Tabossi, 198813).The effect of context is there-
fore not at issue in the study of lexical ambiguity resolution. The primary ques-
tion is how selection is achieved: Does context constrain initial access to the
contextually appropriate meaning of an ambiguous word, or is access context-
insensitive and the contextual information used by the language comprehen-
sion system only at a later, postaccess stage?
A further question is whether the relative frequency of the different mean-
ings of an ambiguous word (dominance) affects access and interacts with effects
of context. Multiple meanings of an ambiguous word may occasionally be al-
most equally likely (balanced ambiguity); for the most part, however, one mean-
ing is much more frequent than the other meaning or meanings (unbalanced
ambiguity). Given the widespread effects of frequency in lexical processing
(Balota, 1994; Lively, Pisoni, & Goldinger, 1994; Savin, 1963), dominance is
likely to influence access to the meanings of unbalanced ambiguous words, and
how exactly it operates is a crucial part of any theory of lexical ambiguity reso-
lution. However, dominance is a lexical phenomenon, and its effects are equally
compatible with the modular and the interactive architecture of the mind. It is
perhaps not surprising, therefore, that compared with sentential context ef-
fects, dominance effects have not received much attention. The same applies to
single-word context effects. A long tradition of priming studies has shown that
naming and lexical decision to a target word are facilitated when this is pre-
ceded by a semantically related word (Meyer, Schvaneveldt, & Ruddy, 1975).
Single-word contexts are also known to constrain the initial access of an am-
biguous word (Schvaneveldt, Meyer, & Becker, 1976). But, once again, these
effects are lexical in nature, and their occurrence cannot discriminate between
the two competing views of the cognitive system.
With respect to the effects of sentential contexts, however, the two views
make different predictions. Whereas evidence showing multiple access to
the meanings of an ambiguous word regardless of its context of occurrence
would lend support to the modular hypothesis, evidence of a selective, context-
dependent access would corroborate the constraint-based hypothesis. In prac-
tice, testing these predictions has proved very hard, and a large body of contra-
dictory results has come to constitute the empirical basis for alternative theories,
each compatible with “its own data” and incompatible with most of the others.
Traditionally, there are three classes of theories: the exhaustive model, the
ordered search model, and the interactive model. The exhaustive model is per-
haps the best known (Onifer & Swinney, 1981; Swinney, 1979), according to
which lexical access is an autonomous subprocess of the language comprehen-
sion system. All the meanings of an ambiguous word are initially accessed, and
context intervenes in selecting the appropriate meaning only at a later stage. A
large number of studies, conducted with a variety of different paradigms, cor-
roborates this hypothesis (Blunter & Sommer, 1988;Cairns & Hsu, 1980;Conrad,
1974; Kintsch & Mross, 1985; Seidenberg, Tanenhaus, Leiman, & Bienkowski,
1982; Swinney, 1979; Tanenhaus, Leiman, & Seidenberg, 1979; Till, Mross, &
Kintsch, 1988).
In its strongest version, the hypothesis holds that access is also insensitive
to dominance effects. One of the most compelling pieces of evidence in support
of this claim comes from a study conducted by Onifer and Swinney (1981)using
the cross-modal priming paradigm (Swinney, Onifer, Prather, & Hirshkowitz,
1979). They had their participants listen to sentences such as
1. The housewife’s face literally lit up as the plumber extracted her

lost wedding ring from the sink.
2. The office walls were so thin that they could hear the ring of their
neighbor’sphone whenever a call came in.
Sentence 1biases the dominant meaning of ring, whereas Sentence 2 bi-

ases its subordinate meaning. The visual words, which were presented pre-
cisely at the offset of ring, were related to one of its meanings or else were
control words (e.g., FINGER-TALENT; BELL-WHIG). Onifer and Swinney
(1981) found that regardless of context and dominance, responses to the related
targets were faster than responses to their controls. Effects of dominance, how-
ever, have been reported in several studies (Carpenter & Daneman, 1981;D u e ,
Morris, & Rayner, 1988; Rayner & Frazier, 1989; Simpson & Burgess, 1985;
Tabossi, Colombo, & Job, 1987).Hogaboam and Perfetti (1975)were the first to
stress the importance of this factor. They asked the participants to decide whether
the last word in a sentence was ambiguous. The sentences actually containing
an ambiguous item biased its dominant or its subordinate meaning. The results
showed that people were faster at detecting a homograph when the sentence
biased its subordinate rather than its dominant meaning. To account for the
results, Hogaboam and Perfetti proposed the ordered search model. Like the
exhaustive hypothesis, this model is modular, as it assumes no effects of con-

text in the initial phases of access. However, unlike the exhaustive hypothesis,
it posits that dominance has an effect: The meanings of an ambiguous word are
first serially searched, independent of context, starting from the most frequent.
The retrieved meaning is then matched for congruence with context. If match-
ing succeeds, the search terminates. If it fails, the next most frequent meaning
is accessed and matched with context. The process continues until a match suc-
ceeds. Similar conclusionswere subsequently reached by Rayner and colleagues,
who referred to their hypothesis as the integration model (Rayner & Frazier,
1989).
Unlike the exhaustive model and the ordered search model, the third class of
theories is interactive and assumes that context may lead to the selective access
of the appropriate meaning of an ambiguous word (Glucksberg,Kreuz, & Rho,
1986; Paul, Kellas, Martin, & Clark, 1992; Simpson, 1981; Simpson & Krueger,
1991;Swinney & Hakes, 1976;Vu, Kellas, & Paul, 1998).In Simpson and Krueger's
(1991) study, participants read sentences ending in homographs (e.g., spring)
and named a subsequent target (e.g., SUMMER, COIL). There were three time
delays between homographs and targets: 0 ms, 300 ms, and 700 ms. At 0-ms
delay, when the sentence did not bias either meaning of the ambiguity (e.g., This
really is not a very good spring),participants were faster at naming the dominant
related target than the unrelated control, whereas subordinate related targets
were not responded faster than their controls. However, following a context that
strongly biased one meaning (e.g., This has been a cold and rainy spring and This
is a broken and rusty old spring), only the target related to that meaning was
facilitated in relation to its control. According to Simpson and Krueger, in the
absence of a biasing context, the dominant meaning of an ambiguous word is
accessed first. However, a strong biasing context may lead to selective access of
only the appropriate meaning, regardless of dominance.
In addition to the three classic classes of models, hybrid models have also
been proposed (Dopkins, Morris, & Rayner, 1992; Duffy et al., 1988; Tabossi,
1988a; Tabossi & Zardon, 1993). In a cross-modal study conducted in Italian,
Tabossi et al. (1987) had their participants listen t o a sentence that strongly
constrained the dominant (e.g., pond) or the subordinate (e.g., tin) meaning of
an ambiguous word (e.g., stagno) by making salient a central feature of one of
its meanings, as illustrated in the following examples:
The water in the bay was so calm that it seemed to be in a pond, rather than
in the sea. (Pond water is still.)
Zn the shop, the smith molded with ease the bar of tin, and made it into a little
soldier. (Tin is soft.)
At the offset of the ambiguous word, the participants performed a lexical

decision task on a visual target that either denoted a central feature of one
meaning of the ambiguous word or was a control (e.g., STILL, SOFT, PAGE).
The results showed that after the context constraining the dominant meaning,
the dominant related target was responded to faster than either of the other
targets, which did not differ from one another. In contrast, after the context
constraining the subordinate meaning, both related targets were facilitated with
respect to the control.
In a subsequent study, Tabossi (1988a)compared the dominant constraining

contexts with contexts that biased the dominant meanings pragmatically (e.g.,In
the landscape, the driver saw a pond, the only element of interest in the area).
There were two sets of visual targets presented at the offset of the ambiguous
words and on which participants performed a lexical decision. In one set, the
targets were the same as in Tabossi et al. (1987). In the other set, they were
either words associated with one of the meanings of the ambiguities or unrelated
matched controls (e.g., FROG, LEAD, MARBLE).With both sets of targets, after
the constraining contexts, the results replicated Tabossi et al. (1987). However,
after the pragmatically biasing contexts, evidence for the activation of both the
dominant and the subordinate meanings of the ambiguous words was observed,
suggesting the relevance of the nature of prior context on access.
Consistent with these results were the data obtained by Dopkins et al. (1992)
in support of what they called the reordered access model. Their participants
read sentences containing ambiguous words (e.g., speaker) with a dominant
(e.g., human talker) and a subordinate meaning (e.g., electronic component).
The words were preceded by a context that provided a positive bias toward the
subordinate meaning (e.g., Inaudible as a result of the static, the speaker was
completely rewired by the technician) or ruled out the dominant meaning (e.g.,
Having been opened and disassembled, the speaker was completely rewired by
the technician). Gaze duration on the ambiguous words was longer when the
words were preceded by a negative than a positive biasing context.
These findings corroborate the hypothesis that both dominance and con-
text play a relevant role in the process of ambiguity resolution, such that the
dominant meaning of an ambiguous word is always accessed regardless of con-
text. Context, however, may affect the initial stages of lexical access, prevent-
ing the subordinate meaning from becoming available or making it interfere
strongly with the dominant meaning.
But why is it that some studies support early context effects and others fail
to do so? Also, why do some studies provide evidence for dominance effects
whereas others do not? As is often the case when data are collected using com-
plex experimental paradigms, results may be compatible with more than one
interpretation, and which one the authors favor depends on his or her theoreti-
cal views. For example, in a phoneme-monitoring study, Cairns and Hsu (1980)
found that an ambiguous word took longer to be processed than an unambigu-
ous word in a neutral context. In a biasing context, however, this difference
disappeared. Although the phoneme-monitoring paradigm was assumed to tap
initial access phenomena and the results indicated effects of context, the au-
thors interpreted their findings as postaccess effects supporting the autono-
mous view.
From a different theoretical perspective, using the modified Stroop para-

digm, Paul et al. (1992)asked their participants to read sentences ending with
an ambiguous word (e.g., cast). Prior context biased the dominant meaning of
the ambiguous word (e.g., They had to wear a n old cast), biased its subordinate
meaning (e.g., They were all part ofthe cast), or else was a neutral control. At
different time intervals after each sentence (0, 300, 600 ms), the participants
saw a target word that denoted a high or low saliency property of one of the
meanings of the ambiguous word (e.g., high salience and dominant: PLASTER;
high salience and subordinate: ACTORS; low salience and dominant: HOLD;
low salience and subordinate: ACTION). The target word was printed in differ-
ent colors, and the participants’ task was to name the ink color as quickly as
possible. The findings showed context effects from the beginning of the process
(at 0 ms), and Paul et al. interpreted them as evidence for the context-sensitive
hypothesis. In doing so, however, they overlooked the fact that the expected
interference effects of appropriate contexts over inappropriate contexts were
found, but only for the targets related to the subordinate meaning (844 ms vs.
800 ms). No evidence of such a difference was observed for the dominant re-
lated targets (838 ms vs. 828 ms), suggesting that context did have an effect on
initial access, but it was modulated by dominance. In a somewhat different
vein, Seidenberg et al. (1982)had initially interpreted their selective results as
due to intralexical factors and hence in agreement with the autonomous model.
Subsequently, however, the findings have been reinterpreted as evidence in
favor of the interactive view (MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg, 1994).
Likewise, data taken in support of the autonomous integration model (Rayner
& Frazier, 1989)have later been reconsidered in light of the hybrid reordered
access model (Dopkins et al., 1992). However, there are discrepancies in the
ambiguity resolution studies that are in need of an appropriate interpretation.
Two factors stand up as the best candidates to explain these discrepancies,sin-
gularly or in interaction: the different methodologies and the nature of the
sentential contexts used in the various studies. Let us consider them in turn.
The Temporal Dimension of Lexical Ambiguity

Resolution and the Use of On-LineMethodologies
Lexical processing is fast. Shortly after the initial access to an ambiguous word
has occurred, evidence of multiple activation is no longer found, suggesting that
ambiguity resolution is accomplished very quickly and is over soon after the
ambiguous word has been presented to the listenerheader (Kintsch & Mross,
1985; Lucas, 1987;Onifer & Swinney, 1981).For this reason, it is of fundamen-
tal importance that the process of access be tapped on-line, while it is taking
place, and appropriate experimental paradigms must be used to this end. In
principle, the best paradigm is one which, in addition to capturing access pro-
cesses on-line, relies on a task that does not interfere with the process under
investigation and does not allow participants to develop response strategies.
Moreover, it should give as much information as possible on the availability of
the different meanings of an ambiguous word.
Various techniques have been devised over the years to match these requi-
sites. In the phoneme-monitoring paradigm, people monitor for a word begin-
ning with a specified phoneme in the sentence to which they are listening. Foss
(1970) first used this methodology with ambiguous words and found that pho-
neme monitoring took longer when the target-bearing word was preceded by an
ambiguous than an unambiguous word. As an on-line technique, phoneme moni-
toring initially enjoyed a large popularity (Cairns & Hsu, 1980; Cairns &
Kamerman, 1975; Foss & Jenkins, 1973; Swinney & Hakes, 1976). However,
one problem with this methodology is that it is a “load task”: There is no direct
evidence of whether one or more meanings of an ambiguity have been accessed.
This can only be inferred comparing the phoneme detection times after an am-
biguous word and after a control (Simpson, 1994). Moreover, careful analysis of
the characteristics of the task showed that phoneme monitoring is influenced
by many factors (Cutler & Norris, 1979;Ferreira & Anes, 1994;Holmes & Forster,
1970; Shields, McHugh, & Martin, 1974). Detecting the initial phoneme of a
target word, for example, takes longer the longer and less predictable is the
vowel following the initial phoneme (Foss & Gernsbacher, 1983; Swinney &
Prather, 1980). It also takes longer when the target is preceded by a low-
frequency word (Foss, 1969), by a long word (Mehler, Segui, & Carey, 1987), or
by a word beginning with a similar phoneme (Dell & Newman, 1980; Foss &
Gernsbacher, 1983).
An interesting alternative to phoneme monitoring was offered by the cross-
modal paradigm (Swinney et al., 1979). The paradigm relies on the semantic
priming effect (Schvaneveldt & Meyer, 1973):Performing a lexical decision or a
naming task on a visual target word (e.g., CAT) is faster when the target is
preceded by a semantically related word (e.g., DOG) than by an unrelated one
(e.g., CHAIR). In the cross-modal paradigm, participants listen to sentences
containing an ambiguous word. At the offset of the ambiguous word (the prime),
they are shown a visual target word on which they perform either a lexical
decision or a naming task. In the experimental trials, the visual target is se-
mantically related to one meaning of the ambiguity or is a control word. Re-
sponse times to the visual target following the ambiguous word in different
contexts are taken to indicate which of the meanings of the ambiguity is avail-
able.
Although the cross-modal paradigm is admittedly questionable in its eco-
logical validity, it has several desirable characteristics. It provides a direct indi-
cation of whether a meaning of an ambiguous word has been accessed, and
according to Swinney (1979, p. 6481, “the task reflects the access of the auditory
(priming) words, without drawing attention to the relationship involved.”Also,
the acoustic presentation of the prime allows an accurate control of the interval
between the offset of the prime and the onset of the target (interstimulus inter-
val; ISI). Finally, the paradigm has been the object of intense scrutiny, and a
substantial amount of research devoted to test some or other of its features
suggests its reliability (Burgess, Tanenhaus, & Seidenberg, 1989; Peterson &
Simpson, 1989).
Accurate control of the temporal relations between prime and target is usu-
ally more complex when the prime is presented in the visual modality. Among
the various reading techniques used to investigate access to ambiguous words,
the most likely to reflect initial access is probably eye tracking (Pollatsek &
Rayner, 1990). Participants read sentences containing an ambiguous word, and
the time spent on the ambiguous item in different types of context is measured.
Alternatively, the times spent on an ambiguous word and an unambiguous con-
trol are compared.
One advantage of this methodology is that reading is a normal activity, and
even though the experimental setting required to record eye position is rather
unnatural, no disrupting task is given to the participants. However, adequacy
of controls is difficult to establish. Moreover, as for phoneme monitoring, read-

ing times provide only indirect measures of meaning activation. But the major
concern with the eye-tracking methodology is its ability to reflect initial access
processes and discriminate between these and postlexical processes. In fact, as
Rayner and Sereno (1994) pointed out, “time spent on a word is a sensitive
measure of processing difficulty. . . . [However], recent findings suggest [that]
fixation time on a word reflects both lexical access and integration processes”
(p. 69).
Some of the drawbacks of the eye-trackingmethodology-namely, the indi-
rectness of the measure and the difficulty of selecting appropriate controls-
can be avoided by the intramodal priming paradigm. After reading sentences
ending with a homograph, participants perform a lexical decision or a naming
task on the visual target. In principle, the IS1 between ambiguous word and
target can be so short to guarantee that the task on the target cannot reflect
postaccess phenomena (Simpson & Burgess, 1985). However, with sentential
contexts, the paradigm remains particularly vulnerable in this respect.
Similar difficulties are faced by the modified Stroop paradigm (Warren,
1972) when context is visually presented (Paul et al., 1992). In this paradigm,
after listening to or reading a sentence containing an ambiguous word, partici-
pants are presented with a visual target. The target is either related or unre-
lated to one meaning of the ambiguity and is printed in colored ink. The partici-
pants’ task is to name the color as quickly as possible. The availability of the
meanings of the ambiguous word in different contextsis measured by the amount
of interference that a target exerts over color naming. While the visual presen-
tation of the context makes it difficult to have an accurate control of the time
relation between ambiguous word and target, the auditory presentation avoids
these problems, rendering the modified Stroop paradigm suitable to investigate
access phenomena (Conrad, 1974). Phoneme monitoring, cross-modal priming,
eye tracking, intramodal priming, and modified Stroop paradigm do not ex-
haust the methodologies used in the study of lexical ambiguity resolution (Neill,
Hillard, & Cooper, 1988; Van Petten & Kutas, 1987). However, they are by far
the most commonly used, and their characteristics may help us to make sense
of some of the discrepancies observed in the literature. Phoneme-monitoring
studies, for example, yielded contradictory results with respect to context ef-
fects, and although some gave support to a context-insensitive view of lexical
access (Cutler & FOSS, 1974; Foss & Jenkins, 1973), others showed early effects
of contexts (Swinney & Hakes, 1976). The various factors that are known to
influence the paradigm, however, are hard to control, and their different effects
across studies are likely to have a determinant role in the explanation of the
discrepancies observed.
In a similar vein, some eye-tracking studies seem to lend support to an

autonomous view (Rayner & Frazier, 1989; Rayner, Pacht, & Duffy, 1994),
whereas others suggest some early effects of context (Duffy et al., 1988). The
methodology, however, leaves much room to interpretation, allowing a differ-
ent emphasis on how much integrative processes the data reflect.
Methodological issues can also be invoked to account for most of the dis-
crepancies in the priming studies. Selective context effects have often been ob-
served in studies using intramodal methodologies (Paul et al., 1992; Simpson &
Krueger, 1991).They have also been obtained in cross-modalstudies that intro-

duced some temporal delay between prime offset and target presentation
(Simpson, 1981).In both cases, the selective findings may be the result of very
fast selective processes occurringpostaccess. In fact, when the cross-modalpara-
digm is used with no temporal delay between prime and target, the findings are
typically congruent with the context-insensitive, multiple access hypothesis,
regardless of whether the task performed by the participants on the visual tar-
get is naming (Tanenhaus et al.,1979),lexical decision (Onifer& Swinney, 19811,
or color naming (Conrad, 1974).
Yet, as important as methodological considerations may be, there are some
discrepancies they cannot explain. In particular, using the cross-modal para-
digm with no delay between prime and target, a few studies found evidence for
early effects of context (Seidenberget al., 1982; Tabossi, 1988a; Tabossi et al.,
1987; Tabossi & Zardon, 1993). At least in these cases, the nature of context
may play a crucial role.
Different Types of Sentential Contexts
In the lexical ambiguity literature, a biasing context is one that clearly sup-
ports one meaning of an ambiguous word occurring in it. The bias can be ob-
tained in different ways. For example, an ambiguous word in one of its mean-
ings (e.g., card deck) may be a very likely completion of a prior sentence fragment,
for example, Thegamblerpulled an ace from the bottom of the -(Van Petten
& Kutas, 1987). Syntactic information may also provide a very efficient bias
when the alternative meanings of an ambiguous word belong to different syn-
tactic categories (Tanenhaus et al., 1979).
Although intuition suggests that the various types of context may differ as
to how effectively they influence access, the issue has not received much atten-
tion. We have already mentioned the studies conducted by the proponents of
hybrid models (Dopkins et al., 1992; Tabossi, 1988a;Tabossi et al., 1987).Dif-
ferent types of context have also been explored by Carpenter and Daneman
(1981) and Seidenberg et al. (1982). Simpson (1981) manipulated strength of
context in a cross-modal lexical decision study. He found that when an ambigu-
ous word (e.g., count) with a dominant and a subordinate meaning occurred in a
neutral context (e.g., He had trouble keeping track of the count), the dominant
meaning was accessed first. However, when the sentential bias was weak, ac-
cess was selective if the sentence biased the dominant meaning (e.g., The musi-
cian kept losing track of the count) but was exhaustive otherwise (e.g., The king
kept losing track of the count). Finally, if the ambiguous word occurred in a
context that strongly biased one of its meaning (e.g., The dog wasn't included in
the final count and The vampire was disguised as a handsome count), only that
meaning was accessed.
These studies used various methodologies: cross-modal associated with lexi-
cal decision and with naming, reading, and eye-tracking. As for the nature of
the contexts, Tabossi and colleagues (Tabossi, 1988a;Tabossi et al., 1987) con-
trasted constrainingversus nonconstraining contexts, Dopkins et al. (1992)used
positive versus negative biases, and Seidenberg et al. (1982) looked at the ef-
fects of associated versus related words. Similarly, Carpenter and Daneman
(1981) manipulated context strength by including in the sentences words re-
lated to one meaning of the ambiguity. These differences notwithstanding, all
of the studies indicated that different contexts may produce different effects on
access, thus challenging the modular, context-insensitiveview.
From a strictly modular perspective, some of the studies suggesting differ-
ential effects of context may be accounted for methodologically. Others, in par-
ticular those introducing words related to one meaning of the ambiguity in the
biasing contexts, may be seen as showing intralexical effects. But, how does one
reconcile a strictly modular view with results such as those obtained by Tabossi
and colleagues, who used a seemingly sound paradigm and did not rely on lexi-
cal associations to manipulate sentential biases?
Even though the mechanisms explicitly used to produce the biases were
not intended to be lexical, the individual words in the sentential contexts, par-
ticularly the constraining ones, were inevitably related to the biased meaning
of the ambiguities. Those words could affect access to the ambiguous words,
producing selectiveeffectsthat could, after all, be lexical (Cutler, 1995). It might
be argued that the occurrence of an associate is not sufficient t o yield selective
access to one meaning of an ambiguous word (Onifer & Swinney, 1981; Swin-
ney, 1979). In fact, lexical priming effects do not occur automatically (Foss &
Ross, 1983; Vu et al., 19981, and many studies that compared priming effects
produced by individual words in isolation, in coherent contexts, and in scrambled
contexts invariably obtained different results depending on the context of oc-
currence of the prime (Auble & Franks, 1983; OSeaghdha, 1989; Simpson,
Peterson, Casteel, & Burgess, 1989).
A further possibility is that the individual words in the context may di-
rectly prime a target, speeding up responses to it (Simpson & Krueger, 1991).
According to this hypothesis, access is context insensitive, and in a priming
paradigm, the ambiguous word will effectively prime the related targets re-
gardless of context. However, if another word in the context is related t o a tar-
get, that word may also prime that target, contributing to speed up responses to
it.
One difficulty with this hypothesis is that lexical priming is short-lived,
and unless the relevant word immediately precedes the ambiguity, it is most
unlikely that it can exert an effect on the target (Neely, 1991). Moreover, the
hypothesis predicts that responses to the target related to both meanings of the
ambiguity are faster than responses to unrelated controls. Yet, in the studies in
which we observed selective effects, responses to subordinate related, inappro-
priate targets were never found to be reliably faster than responses to controls.
As cogent as the above considerationsmay be, they are unlikely to convince

the skeptics that genuine context effects may occur during access. For these
reasons, we recently conducted a study to examine whether lexical effects can
actually account for the results obtained by Tabossi (1988a),and the interpreta-
tion of those results needs to be reconsidered. As already mentioned, Tabossi
(1988a) found that after a context constraining the dominant meaning of an
ambiguous word, lexical decision was faster on a visual target related to that
meaning than on a target either related to the subordinate meaning of the am-
biguity or unrelated to it. The same results were obtained when the related
targets denoted a salient feature of one meaning of the ambiguous word and
when they were associated to it. Accordingly, in the first two experiments, we
examined the possibility that the constraining contexts used in that study con-
tained lexical items that could prime the dominant meaning of the ambiguous
word and lead to the selective access of that meaning. In Experiment 1, we
constructed a sequence of words for each of the ambiguous items used in Tabossi
(1988a). The sequence ended with the ambiguity (e.g., stagno: pondtin) and
began with a word that was selected from among the content words preceding
the ambiguity in the dominant constraining context (e.g., water, bay, calm, and
seem) as the most highly associated with it (e.g., water, henceforth: associate
word). In addition, each experimental sequence contained a number of new
unrelated items that equaled the number of content words occurring between
the associate and ambiguous word in the constraining context. Four content
words, for instance, separated water from pond in the dominant constraining
context; therefore, we included four new, unrelated words in the sequence.
Paired with each experimental sequence, there was a set of three words to
use as visual targets. The targets were the same associate words and unrelated
matched controls as in Tabossi (1988a).Experimental materials are illustrated
in the following example:
Priming sequence Water bush ploughed famous travel pond

Target FROG (dominant related)
LEAD (subordinate related)
MARBLE (unrelated control)
Participants listened to a list of sequences. At the offset of each sequence,

they were presented with a visual target, on which they performed a lexical
decision task. In the experimental trials, the sequence ended with an ambigu-
ous word and the target was associated to one of its meaning or was a control. If
the associate word effectively primes the ambiguity, leading to the selective
access of its dominant meaning, the ambiguous word should facilitate lexical
decision only to the dominant-relatedtarget. If, in contrast, no intralexical prim-
ing is taking place, the ambiguous word should be exhaustively accessed, thus
facilitatinglexical decision to both the associated targets, which therefore should
be responded to faster than the unrelated control. The results of Experiment 1
showed that after listening to a sequence of words ending with an ambiguity,
participants were faster at deciding that a target was a word when this was
associated with the dominant ( M = 61 ms, SD = 33) or the subordinate (M = 561
ms, SD = 52) meaning of the ambiguity than when it was unrelated to it ( M =
607 ms, SD = 40).Response latencies to targets associated with the dominant

and the subordinate meaning of the ambiguous word were not reliably differ-
ent. A similar pattern was observed in Experiment 2. This was identical to
Experiment 1,with one exception: Instead of the associate targets (and matched
controls), the visual targets paired with each experimental sequence were the
feature-denoting words and matched controls used in Tabossi (1988a),as illus-
trated in the following example:
Priming sequence Water bush ploughed famous travel pond

Target STILL (dominant related)
SOFT (subordinaterelated)
PAGE (unrelatedcontrol)
Participants were faster at deciding that a target was a word when it was
related to the dominant (M = 570 ms, SD = 62) or the subordinate (M = 570 ms,
SD = 84)meaning of the ambiguous word than when it was an unrelated con-
trol (M = 612 ms, SD = 100).Response latencies did not reliably differ from each
other.
Taken together, these findings suggest that in Tabossi (1988a) the selec-
tive effects observed after the constraining contexts were not produced by indi-
vidual words associated with the dominant meaning of the ambiguity and cor-
roborate the hypothesis of a genuine effect of context. If individual words in the
constraining contexts did not prime the dominant meanings of the ambiguities
in Tabossi (1988a),it is still possible that they primed the visual targets related
to those meanings, speedingup responses to them. We have already pointed out
some of the difficulties faced by this hypothesis. We might also add that the
selective effects produced by contexts constraining the dominant meaning of an
ambiguity have been obtained with two sets of targets-associate and feature-
denoting words-and it is difficult to see how the same words could equally well
prime two different sets of targets. Irrespective of these observations, we de-
vised two additional experiments to test whether indeed there were words in
the constraining contexts that primed the dominant-related visual targets. Ac-
cordingly, in Experiment 3, we selected from each of the constraining sentences
used in Tabossi (1988a)the word most strongly associated to the dominant re-
lated associated target, yielding a total of 9 pairs (Tabossi’s pairs: e.g., water-
FROG). In addition, we selected 9 new pairs in which prime and target were
strongly associated (new pairs: e.g., salt-PEPPER) and 18 filler pairs in which
the prime was a word and the target a legal pseudoword. We then constructed
two experimental lists, each of which contained all the filler pairs and all the
experimental materials. However, for the experimental materials, half of the
targets were preceded by their associated primes in one list and were preceded
by unrelated primes in the other list. The reverse was true for the remaining
half of the experimental targets. Participants were randomly assigned to one
list. They listened to a prime word immediately followed by a visual target, on
which they performed a lexical decision task.
The results indicate that with the new pairs participants were faster in the
associated (M = 510 ms, SD = 32) than in the unrelated (M = 560 ms, SD = 56)
condition. However, no such difference was observed in Tabossi’s pairs (related
M = 539 ms, SD = 46; unrelatedM = 546 ms, SD = 29). Comparable results were
obtained in Experiment 4. In this experiment, the rationale, design, and par-
ticipants’ task were the same as in Experiment 3. Materials, however, were
different. In Tabossi’s pairs, the targets were the feature-denoting targets used
in Tabossi (1988a)and the primes were the words in the constraining contexts
most highly associated with them (e.g., calm-STILL). A new set of associated
pairs was also selected to match the frequency and length characteristics of the
feature targets and their primes (e.g., blood-RED). Participants’ responses were
faster in the associated (M = 551 ms, SD = 41) than in the unrelated (M = 630
ms, SD = 61) condition for the new pairs, whereas no such difference was ob-
tained in Tabossi’s pairs (related M = 616 ms, SD = 55; unrelated M = 634 ms,
SD = 87). Taken together, Experiments 3 and 4 rule out the possibility that the
findings in Tabossi (1988a)may result from individual items in the prior con-
text directly priming the dominant related targets.
The study we conducted intended to provide empirical evidence in response
to two of the most common criticisms raised to a context-dependentinterpreta-
tion of selective results by those who strongly favor a completely autonomous
view of lexical access. Our findings suggest that in Tabossi (1988a),an intralexical
interpretation of the data is not likely. More generally, there are findings in the
literature that suggest effects of contexts in the early phases of lexical access
and cannot be reduced to lexical phenomena.
Conclusion
Over the years, the notion that access may not be an entirely autonomous pro-
cess has gathered increasing consensus, and the growing body of evidence run-
ning against a strictly modular hypothesis of access, although not always incon-
trovertible, has led some who were originally in favor of radically autonomous
views to reconsider the issue with a more flexible attitude. The result of this
change of perspective, along with the undisputable force of the evidence sug-
gesting a high degree of independence of lexical processing, has allowed most
researchers to converge on a hybrid view according to which dominance and
context both influence the process of lexical access, whose outcome depends
crucially on the relative strength of these factors.
Another important change that has taken place in the field of lexical ambi-
guity resolution is that early models implicitly assumed, as did most contempo-
rary models of lexical processes, that access is a discrete phenomenon that oc-
curs at one point during the processing of an ambiguous word. Subsequently,
however, access to the lexicon has come to be viewed as a continuous event that
is accomplished when semantic information about a word is sufficiently acti-
vated to be integrated, if appropriate,into prior discourse (Marslen-Wilson,1987).
Current models of lexical ambiguity resolution are accordingly expressed in
terms of time course of activation of the different meanings of an ambiguous
word. Simpson and Burgess (19851, for instance, presented their participants
with an ambiguous word followed by a target that was related either to the
dominant or to the subordinate meaning of the preceding ambiguity, or else
was a control. The participants in their study performed a lexical decision on

the target. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between prime and target
ranged from 16 to 750 ms. The results indicated that at the shortest and longest
SOA only the dominant-related target was facilitated, whereas both related
targets were facilitated with respect to the controls at intermediate SOAs.
Simpson and Burgess concluded that, in isolation, the activation of the domi-
nant meaning of an ambiguous word is stronger, faster, and longer lasting than
the activation of the subordinate meaning. We extended this view with respect
t o the effects of context, assuming that the pattern of activation observed in

isolation is not altered by the occurrence of the ambiguity in a context that is
not sufficiently constraining. However, a constraining context does produce ef-
fects, strengthening and speeding up the activation of the congruent meaning.
When the contextually congruent meaning is the dominant one, the subordi-
nate meaning, which is already slower and weaker in isolation, receives some
activation from the perceptual input but may never reach a level of activation
sufficiently high to be detected with most current methodologies. In contrast,
when context constrains the subordinate meaning, the activation received from
the perceptual input is still sufficient to render it detectable, so that both mean-
ings will be activated (Tabossi & Zardon, 1993).
This view fits very well with current models of word recognition, particu-
larly spoken word recognition. Although several aspects of the processes in-
volved in the identification of a word in discourse are still under debate, re-
searchers agree that spoken word recognition is a fast process that takes place
while a person is listening to the to-be-recognized word. In fact, the recognition
process begins soon after the initial fragment of the word has been heard and
may terminate before its physical ending (Marslen-Wilson,1987).It is also widely
accepted that initial word fragments activate a set of lexical candidates, that is,
those words that are compatible with the fragments. Using the cross-modal
paradigm, Zwitserlood (1989)presented her participants with increasinglylonger
fragments of unambiguous words (e.g., captain) in sentential contexts. At the
different positions during the prime word, the listeners were visually presented
with target words on which they performed a lexical decision task. The results
showed that the initial fragment (e.g., cap) primed targets associated not only
with the actual word (e.g.,captain-SHIP), but also with words sharing with it
the same onset (e.g., capital-GOLD). Later in the process, however, when the
fragment ceased to be ambiguous, only activation for the appropriate word was
found. Similar results were also obtained when the fragment was still ambigu-
ous but occurred in a context that biased the appropriate word (e.g.,With damp-
ened spirits the men stood around the grave. They mourned the loss of their
cap 1. In this perspective, all words are temporarily ambiguous, and homo-
phones are only the extreme case of a general phenomenon. The language com-
prehension mechanism deals with lexical ambiguity by means of a process that
is initially context insensitive and relies on acoustic/phonetic information to
activate a number of lexical candidates. Later on, contextual information may
come into play allowing the early selection of the appropriate word. In this
process, frequency clearly plays a role, as more frequent candidates and more
frequent meanings of an ambiguity are activated more strongly and sooner than
less frequent ones (Bradley & Forster, 1987; Simpson & Burgess, 1985).
Many years ago, psycholinguists believed that ambiguous words were some
kind of anomaly in a system in which most words were unambiguous. They
later discovered that ambiguity is in fact a very common phenomenon that there-
fore needs to be explained. They still maintained, however, that different mecha-
nisms might be required for the processing of ambiguous and unambiguous
words. This attitude, which occasionally was explicitly expressed (Potter &
Faulconer, 19791, more often manifested itself in the division of labor: Research
on lexical ambiguity resolution and research on unambiguous word recognition
were conducted for the most part independently from one another, and the pos-
sibility of integration was only a promise:
a n attempt was made to fit the ambiguity results to several contemporary

models of word recognition. . . . Use of some of the . . . predictions derived
from them to guide further research should lead to an understanding of lexi-
cal ambiguity processing that is not possible as long as it is considered inde-
pendently of the larger processes of which it is part. (Simpson, 1984, p. 337)
Intensive research on both lexical ambiguity resolution and word recogni-

tion has made real the convergence Simpson hoped for. We now know that in
the spoken domain all words-for shorter or longer periods of time-are am-
biguous, and the language system recognizes them all through mechanisms of
activation and selection that are influenced by a number of factors, including
frequency and context. Many aspects remain unclear, but if we consider how we
conceived lexical ambiguity resolution and word recognition 20 years ago and
how we conceive them now, it is not difficult to appreciate the progress that has
been made and to look with some (cautious) optimism at future research.

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2

Methodological Issues in the Study of

Patrizia Tabossi and Silvia Sbisa

In one of Derek Jarman’s most fascinating films, Wittgenstein, Maynard Keynes

(Foss, Bever, & Silver, 1968; Garrett, 1970; MacKay, 1966).

a single output without appealing to extramodular information (Frazier, 1987).

Issues and theories

1. The housewife’s face literally lit up as the plumber extracted her

Sentence 1biases the dominant meaning of ring, whereas Sentence 2 bi-

exhaustive hypothesis, this model is modular, as it assumes no effects of con-

At the offset of the ambiguous word, the participants performed a lexical

In a subsequent study, Tabossi (1988a)compared the dominant constraining

From a different theoretical perspective, using the modified Stroop para-

The Temporal Dimension of Lexical Ambiguity

of controls is difficult to establish. Moreover, as for phoneme monitoring, read-

In a similar vein, some eye-tracking studies seem to lend support to an

Krueger, 1991).They have also been obtained in cross-modalstudies that intro-

Different Types of Sentential Contexts

As cogent as the above considerationsmay be, they are unlikely to convince

Priming sequence Water bush ploughed famous travel pond

Participants listened to a list of sequences. At the offset of each sequence,

607 ms, SD = 40).Response latencies to targets associated with the dominant

Priming sequence Water bush ploughed famous travel pond

was a control. The participants in their study performed a lexical decision on

t o the effects of context, assuming that the pattern of activation observed in

a n attempt was made to fit the ambiguity results to several contemporary

Intensive research on both lexical ambiguity resolution and word recogni-

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