Ambiguity Advantage Revisited: Two Meanings are Better than One When Accessing Chinese Nouns

• Published in: Journal of psycholinguistic research Vol. 39; no. 1; pp. 1 - 19
• Main Authors: Lin, Chien-Jer Charles, Ahrens, Kathleen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.02.2010; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Ambiguity; Ambiguity (Semantics); Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Chinese; Cognitive Psychology; Competition; Female; Figurative Language; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Language; Language Tests; Linguistics; Male; Mass Media; Metaphor; Models, Psychological; Nouns; Probability; Production and perception of written language; Psycholinguistics; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reaction Time; Reading Comprehension; Recognition (Psychology); Semantics; Semiotics; Surveys and Questionnaires; Task Performance and Analysis; Vocabulary; Word Recognition; Hong Kong China; China; Taiwan; Ambiguity advantage; Homonymy; Metaphor and metonymy; Polysemy; Lexical decision; Human; Recognition memory; Word; Memory; Cognition; Experimental study; Metaphor; Language; Metonymy; Chinese; Lexical access; Ambiguity; Noun
• ISSN: 0090-6905; 1573-6555
• DOI: 10.1007/s10936-009-9120-8

This paper revisits the effect of lexical ambiguity in word recognition, which has been controversial as previous research reported advantage, disadvantage, and null effects. We discuss factors that were not consistently treated in previous research (e.g., the level of lexical ambiguity investigated, parts of speech of the experimental stimuli, and the choice of non-words) and report on a lexical decision experiment with Chinese nouns in which ambiguous nouns with homonymic and/or metaphorical meanings were contrasted with unambiguous nouns. An ambiguity advantage effect was obtained—Chinese nouns with multiple meanings were recognized faster than those with only one meaning. The results suggested that both homonymic and metaphorical meanings are psychologically salient semantic levels actively represented in the mental lexicon. The results supported a probability-based model of random lexical access with multiple meanings represented by separate semantic nodes. We further discuss these results in terms of lexical semantic representation and how different experimental paradigms result in different ambiguity effects in lexical access.