Acta Psychologica Sinica

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to examine the role of meaning frequency and the effects of prior and posterior context in processing of ambiguous Chinese sentences. In the first experiment, each ambiguous Chinese sentence had two possible meanings. In order to distinguish these two meanings, a group of students who would not take part in the final trails in the expermient was asked to identify which meaning was used most frequently. Meaning-Frequency (dominant, subordinate), Context (prior, posterior), Reaction-Type (yes, no) were used as within subject factors. The tasks for the subjects were to decide whether the meaning of a target sentence was similar to that of the last previous stimulus. Both Reaction Times and Rate of Reaction were recorded. The results indicated: (1) Effects of prior context that provide subjects with predictive information upon resolution of sentence ambiguity are more than posterior context; (2) The dominant meaning of an ambiguous sentence is more speedily accessed than the subordinate meaning of an ambiguous sentence under the same contextual conditions. The second experiment aimed at examining the effects of meaning frequency and time course of meaning activation. There were three possible interpretations of each experimental Chinese sentence. The meaning frequency was also scaled before the experiment. lhe task was the same with the first experiment, but there was no context with ambiguous Chinese sentence. The within subject factor was Meaning-Frequency (dominant, subordinate). The first interpretation of an ambiguous sentence was Dominant and the third one was as Subordinate. Interval (100ms, 1000ms) between the stimulus and the target was as between subject factors.Ibe result suggested: The time-course in activation of multiple possible meanings of an ambiguous sentence is assessed. The dominant meaning of ambiguity can be activated under short interval between stimulus and target sentence, but activating subordinate meaning needs longer time.

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