Global context effects on processing lexically ambiguous words: Evidence from eye fixations

Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read biased ambiguous target words in the context of a short paragraph. Two aspects of context were mani pulated. The global context was presented in the topic sentence of the para graph and instantiated either the dominant or the subordinate meaning of bi ased ambiguous target words (those with highly dominant meanings). Local co ntextual information either preceded or followed the target word and was al ways consistent with the subordinate interpretation. Consistent with prior research, we obtained a subordinate bias effect wherein readers looked long er at the ambiguous words than control words when the preceding context ins tantiated the subordinate meaning. More importantly, the magnitude of the s ubordinate bias effect was the same when global context alone, local contex t alone, or local and global context combined were consistent with the subo rdinate meaning of the ambiguous word. The results of this study indicate t hat global contextual information(l) has an immediate impact on lexical amb iguity resolution when no local disambiguating information is available, (2 ) has no additional effect when it is consistent with local information, bu t (3) does have a slightly delayed effect when inconsistent with local info rmation.