EFFECTS OF PRIOR ENCOUNTER AND GLOBAL DISCOURSE BIAS ON THE PROCESSING OF LEXICALLY AMBIGUOUS WORDS - EVIDENCE FROM EYE FIXATIONS

Readers' gaze durations are longer on biased homographs (those having one highly dominant meaning) than on unambiguous control words when th e preceding context instantiates the homograph's subordinate meaning. In two experiments, we attempted to eliminate this subordinate bias ef fect by increasing the contextual bias in favor of the homograph's sub ordinate meaning. In both experiments, subjects' eye movements were re corded as they read target sentences containing biased homographs in w hich immediate prior context instantiated the subordinate meaning of t he word. In the first experiment, subjects were familiarized with the subordinate sense of the critical homograph via a paired-associate tas k prior to reading the target sentence. In the second experiment, the target sentence formed the last line of an extended passage whose glob al discourse biased the subordinate meaning of the critical homograph. In addition, the presence or absence of a prior instance of the criti cal homograph (instantiated in its subordinate sense) at an earlier lo cation in the passage was manipulated. In neither experiment did the i ncrease in contextual bias result in a reduction of the subordinate bi as effect. We argue that these results are inconsistent with a selecti ve account of lexical access. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.