Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

How meaning similarity influences ambiguous word processing: the current state of the literature

  • Theoretical Review
  • Published:
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The majority of words in the English language do not correspond to a single meaning, but rather correspond to two or more unrelated meanings (i.e., are homonyms) or multiple related senses (i.e., are polysemes). It has been proposed that the different types of "semantically-ambiguous words" (i.e., words with more than one meaning) are processed and represented differently in the human mind. Several review papers and books have been written on the subject of semantic ambiguity (e.g., Adriaens, Small, Cottrell, & Tanenhaus, 1988; Burgess & Simpson, 1988; Degani & Tokowicz, 2010; Gorfein, 1989, 2001; Simpson, 1984). However, several more recent studies (e.g., Klein & Murphy, 2001; Klepousniotou, 2002; Klepousniotou & Baum, 2007; Rodd, Gaskell, & Marslen-Wilson, 2002) have investigated the role of the semantic similarity between the multiple meanings of ambiguous words on processing and representation, whereas this was not the emphasis of previous reviews of the literature. In this review, we focus on the current state of the semantic ambiguity literature that examines how different types of ambiguous words influence processing and representation. We analyze the consistent and inconsistent findings reported in the literature and how factors such as semantic similarity, meaning/sense frequency, task, timing, and modality affect ambiguous word processing. We discuss the findings with respect to recent parallel distributed processing (PDP) models of ambiguity processing (Armstrong & Plaut, 2008, 2011; Rodd, Gaskell, & Marslen-Wilson, 2004). Finally, we discuss how experience/instance-based models (e.g., Hintzman, 1986; Reichle & Perfetti, 2003) can inform a comprehensive understanding of semantic ambiguity resolution.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Adriaens, G., Small, S. L., Cottrell, G. W., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (1988). Lexical ambiguity resolution: perspectives from psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, B. C. (2012). The Temporal dynamics of word comprehension and response selection: Computational and behavioral studies. (Doctor of Philosophy), Carnegie Mellon University.

  • Armstrong, B. C., & Plaut, D. C. (2008). Settling dynamics in distributed networks explain task differences in semantic ambiguity effects: Computational and behavioral evidence. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

  • Armstrong, B. C., & Plaut, D. C. (2011). Inducing homonymy effects via stimulus quality and (not) nonword difficulty: Implications for models of semantic ambiguity and word recognition. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

  • Azuma, T., & Van Orden, G. C. (1997). Why SAFE Is Better Than FAST: The Relatedness of a Word's Meanings Affects Lexical Decision Times. Journal of Memory and Language, 36(4), 484–504. doi:10.1006/jmla.1997.2502

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beretta, A., Fiorentino, R., & Poeppel, D. (2005). The effects of homonymy and polysemy on lexical access: an MEG study. Cognitive Brain Research, 24(1), 57–65. doi:10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2004.12.006

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Binder, K. S., & Rayner, K. (1998). Contextual strength does not modulate the subordinate bias effect: Evidence from eye fixations and self-paced reading. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 5(2), 271–276. doi:10.3758/BF03212950

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Borowsky, R., & Masson, M. E. J. (1996). Semantic ambiguity effects in word identification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22(1), 63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, S. W. (2008). Polysemy and the mental lexicon. Colorado Research in Linguistics, 21, 1–12.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burgess, C., & Simpson, G. B. (1988). Neuropsychology of lexical ambiguity resolution: The contribution of divided visual field studies. In G. Adriaens, S. L. Small, G. W. Cottrell, & M. K. Tanenhaus (Eds.), Lexical ambiguity resolution: Perspectives from psycholinguistics, neuropsychology, and artificial intelligence (pp. 411–430). San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Collins, A. M., & Loftus, E. F. (1975). A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review, 82(6), 407–428. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.82.6.407

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Degani, T., & Tokowicz, N. (2010). Semantic ambiguity within and across languages: an integrative review. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63(7), 1266–1303. doi:10.1080/17470210903377372

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duffy, S. A., Morris, R. K., & Rayner, K. (1988). Lexical ambiguity and fixation times in reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 429–446.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duffy, S. A., Kambe, G., & Rayner, K. (2001). The effect of prior disambiguating context on the comprehension of ambiguous words: Evidence from eye movements. In D. S. Gorfein (Ed.), On the consequences of meaning selection: Perspectives on resolving lexical ambiguity (pp. 27–43). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Ferreira, F., Bailey, K. G. D., & Ferraro, V. (2002). Good-enough representations in language comprehension. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(1), 11–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foraker, S., & Murphy, G. L. (2012). Polysemy in sentence comprehension: Effects of meaning dominance. Journal of Memory and Language, 67(4), 407–425. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2012.07.010

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Frazier, L., & Rayner, K. (1990). Taking on semantic commitments: Processing multiple meanings vs. multiple senses. Journal of Memory and Language, 29(2), 181–200. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(90)90071-7

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frisson, S., & Pickering, M. J. (2001). Obtaining a figurative interpretation of a word: Support for underspecification. Metaphor and Symbol, 16(3–4), 149–171.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gorfein, D. S. (1989). Resolving semantic ambiguity. New York: Springer-Verlag.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gorfein, D. S. (2001). On the consequences of meaning selection: perspectives on resolving lexical ambiguity. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hargreaves, I. S., Pexman, P. M., Pittman, D. J., & Goodyear, B. G. (2011). Tolerating ambiguity: Ambiguous words recruit the left inferior frontal gyrus in absence of a behavioral effect. Experimental Psychology, 58, 19–30.

  • Hino, Y., & Lupker, S. J. (1996). Effects of polysemy in lexical decision and naming: An alternative to lexical access accounts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 22(6), 1331.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hino, Y., Lupker, S. J., & Pexman, P. M. (2002). Ambiguity and synonymy effects in lexical decision, naming, and semantic categorization tasks: Interactions between orthography, phonology, and semantics. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 28(4), 686–713. doi:10.1037//0278-7393.28.4.686

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hino, Y., Pexman, P. M., & Lupker, S. J. (2006). Ambiguity and relatedness effects in semantic tasks: Are they due to semantic coding? Journal of Memory and Language, 55(2), 247–273. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2006.04.001

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hino, Y., Kusunose, Y., & Lupker, S. J. (2010). The relatedness-of-meaning effect for ambiguous words in lexical-decision tasks: when does relatedness matter? Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(3), 180–196. doi:10.1037/a0020475

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hintzman, D. L. (1986). "Schema Abstraction" in a Multiple-Trace Memory Model. Psychological Review, 93(4), 411–428. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.93.4.411

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hogaboam, T. W., & Perfetti, C. A. (1975). Lexical ambiguity and sentence comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 14, 265–274.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Klein, D. E., & Murphy, G. L. (2001). The Representation of polysemous words. Journal of Memory and Language, 45(2), 259–282. doi:10.1006/jmla.2001.2779

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Klepousniotou, E. (2002). The processing of lexical ambiguity: homonymy and polysemy in the mental lexicon. Brain and Language, 81(1–3), 205–223. doi:10.1006/brln.2001.2518

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Klepousniotou, E., & Baum, S. R. (2007). Disambiguating the ambiguity advantage effect in word recognition: An advantage for polysemous but not homonymous words. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 20(1), 1–24. doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2006.02.001

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Klepousniotou, E., Titone, D., & Romero, C. (2008). Making sense of word senses: the comprehension of polysemy depends on sense overlap. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34(6), 1534–1543. doi:10.1037/a0013012

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Klepousniotou, E., Pike, G. B., Steinhauer, K., & Gracco, V. (2012). Not all ambiguous words are created equal: An EEG investigation of homonymy and polysemy. Brain and Language, 123(1), 11–21. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2012.06.007

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar (Vol. 1 & 2). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, C., & Federmeier, K. D. (2009). Wave-ering: An ERP study of syntactic and semantic context effects on ambiguity resolution for noun/verb homographs. Journal of Memory and Language, 61, 538–555.

  • Lin, C. J., & Ahrens, K. (2010). Ambiguity advantage revisited: two meanings are better than one when accessing Chinese nouns. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 39(1), 1–19. doi:10.1007/s10936-009-9120-8

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Martin, C., Vu, H., Kellas, G., & Metcalf, K. (1999). Strength of discourse context as a determinant of the subordinate bias effect. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A: Human Experimental Psychology, 52A(4), 813–839.

  • McElree, B., Frisson, S., & Pickering, M. J. (2006). Deferred interpretations: Why starting Dickens is taxing but reading Dickens isn't. Cognitive Science, 30(1), 181–192.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • McLaughlin, J., Osterhout, L., & Kim, A. (2004). Neural correlates of second-language word meaning: Minimal instruction produces rapid change. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 703–704.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mirman, D., Strauss, T., Dixon, J., & Magnuson, J. (2010). Effect of representational distance between meanings on recognition of ambiguous spoken words. Cognitive Science, 34, 161–173.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neely, J. H. (1991). Semantic priming effects in visual word recognition: A selective review of current findings and theories. In D. B. G. W. Humphreys (Ed.), Basic processes in reading: Visual word recognition (pp. 264–336). Hillsdale, NJ, England: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nunberg, G. (1979). The Non-uniqueness of semantic solutions: Polysemy. Linguistics and Philosophy, 3(2), 143–184.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Onifer, W., & Swinney, D. A. (1981). Accessing lexical ambiguities during sentence comprehension: effects of frequency of meaning and contextual bias. Memory & Cognition, 9, 225–236.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pexman, P. M., & Lupker, S. J. (1999). Ambiguity and visual word recognition: can feedback explain both homophone and polysemy effects? Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 53(4), 323–334. doi:10.1037/h0087320

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pexman, P. M., Hino, Y., & Lupker, S. J. (2004). Semantic ambiguity and the process of generating meaning from print. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30(6), 1252–1270. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.30.6.1252

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pustejovsky, J. (1995). The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pylkkänen, L., Llina, R., & Murphy, G. L. (2006). The Representation of Polysemy: MEG Evidence. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18(1), 97–109. doi:10.1162/089892906775250003

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Rabagliati, H., & Snedeker, J. (2013). The truth about chickens and bats: Ambiguity avoidance distinguishes types of polysemy. Psychological Science, 24(7), 1356–1360. doi:10.1177/0956797612472205

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reichle, E. D., & Perfetti, C. A. (2003). Morphology in Word Identification: A Word-Experience Model that Accounts for Morpheme Frequency Effects. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7(3), 219–237. doi:10.1207/S1532799XSSR0703_2

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rodd, J., Gaskell, G., & Marslen-Wilson, W. (2002). Making Sense of Semantic Ambiguity: Semantic Competition in Lexical Access. Journal of Memory and Language, 46(2), 245–266. doi:10.1006/jmla.2001.2810

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rodd, J., Gaskell, G., & Marslen-Wilson, W. (2004). Modeling the effects of semantic ambiguity in word recognition. Cognitive Science, 28(1), 89–104. doi:10.1016/j.cogsci.2003.08.002

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rodd J. M., Longe O. A., Randall, B., & Tyler, L. K. (2010). The functional organization of the fronto-temporal language system: evidence from syntactic and semantic ambiguity. Neuropsychologia, 48, 1324–35.

  • Rodd, J. M., Berriman, R., Landau, M., Lee, T., Ho, C., Gaskell, M. G., et al. (2012). Learning new meanings for old words: effects of semantic relatedness. Memory & Cognition, 40(7), 1095–1108. doi:10.3758/s13421-012-0209-1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rodd, J. M., Lopez Cutrin, B., Kirsch, H., Millar, A., & Davis, M. H. (2013). Long-term priming of the meanings of ambiguous words. Journal of Memory and Language, 68(2), 180–198. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2012.08.002

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sereno, S. C., O'Donnell, P. J., & Rayner, K. (2006). Eye movements and lexical ambiguity resolution: Investigating the subordinate-bias effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 32(2), 335.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Simpson, G. B. (1981). Meaning dominance and semantic context in the processing of lexical ambiguity. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 20, 120–136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simpson, G. B. (1984). Lexical ambiguity and its role in models of word recognition. Psychological Bulletin, 96(2), 316–340. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.96.2.316

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Simpson, G. B. (1994). Context and the processing of ambiguous words. Handbook of psycholinguistics, 22, 359–374.

    Google Scholar 

  • Srinivasan, M., & Snedeker, J. (2011). Judging a book by its cover and its contents: the representation of polysemous and homophonous meanings in four-year-old children. Cognitive Psychology, 62(4), 245–272. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2011.03.002

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Vu, H., Kellas, G., & Paul, S. T. (1998). Sources of sentence constraint on lexical ambiguity resolution. Memory & Cognition, 26, 979–1001.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author Note

Charles M. Eddington, Department of Psychology and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh. Natasha Tokowicz, Departments of Psychology and Linguistics, the Learning Research and Development Center, and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, University of Pittsburgh. We thank Michael W. Dickey, Erik D. Reichle, Alba Tuninetti, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript. CME was funded by NIH RO1 HD053639-01 A1 and NT was funded by NIH R01 HD075800 during the writing of this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, 3939 O′Hara St., Room 634, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA

    Natasha Tokowicz

  2. Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, 3939 O′Hara St., Room 651, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA

    Charles M. Eddington

Authors
  1. Charles M. Eddington
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Natasha Tokowicz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Natasha Tokowicz.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Eddington, C.M., Tokowicz, N. How meaning similarity influences ambiguous word processing: the current state of the literature. Psychon Bull Rev 22, 13–37 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0665-7

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0665-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation