Medeiros, J.*, & Armstrong, B. C.* (accepted). Semantic ambiguity
effects: A matter of time? Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference
of the Cognitive Science Society.
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Abstract
Are different amounts of semantic processing
associated with different semantic ambiguity effects? Could this explain some
discrepant ambiguity effects observed between and across tasks? Armstrong and Plaut (2016) provided an initial
set of neural network simulations indicating this is indeed the case. However,
their empirical findings using a lexical decision task were not clear-cut. Here, we use improved methods and five
different experimental manipulations to slow responding---and the presumed
amount of semantic processing---to evaluate their account more rigorously. We also expanded the empirical horizon to
another language: Spanish. The results are partially consistent with the
predictions of the neural network and differ in several important ways from English
data. Potential causes of these
discrepancies are discussed in relation to theories of ambiguity resolution and
cross-linguistic differences.
Keywords: semantic ambiguity; slow vs. fast lexical decision; semantic settling dynamics, neural networks
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