Speaker-Specific Cues Influence Semantic Disambiguation.

Addressees use information from specific speakers' previous discourse to make predictions about incoming linguistic material and to restrict the choice of potential interpretations. In this way, speaker specificity has been shown to be an influential factor in language processing across several domains e.g.

Disambiguating the ambiguity disadvantage effect: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for semantic competition.

Semantic ambiguity has been shown to slow comprehension, although it is unclear whether this ambiguity disadvantage is attributable to competition in semantic activation or difficulties in response selection. We tested the two accounts by examining semantic relatedness decisions to homonyms, or words with multiple unrelated meanings (e.g.

Transcranial alternating current stimulation at 10 Hz modulates response bias in the Somatic Signal Detection Task.

Ongoing, pre-stimulus oscillatory activity in the 8-13 Hz alpha range has been shown to correlate with both true and false reports of peri-threshold somatosensory stimuli. However, to directly test the role of such oscillatory activity in behaviour, it is necessary to manipulate it. Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) offers a method of directly manipulating oscillatory brain activity using a sinusoidal current passed to the scalp.

Pre-stimulus alpha oscillations over somatosensory cortex predict tactile misperceptions.

Fluctuations of pre-stimulus oscillatory activity in the somatosensory alpha band (8-14Hz) observed using human EEG and MEG have been shown to influence the detection of supra- and peri-threshold somatosensory stimuli. However, some reports of touch occur even without a stimulus. We investigated the possibility that pre-stimulus alpha oscillations might also influence these false reports of touch - known as tactile misperceptions.

Representational deficit or processing effect? An electrophysiological study of noun-noun compound processing by very advanced L2 speakers of English.

The processing of English noun-noun compounds (NNCs) was investigated to identify the extent and nature of differences between the performance of native speakers of English and advanced Spanish and German non-native speakers of English. The study sought to establish whether the word order of the equivalent structure in the non-native speakers' mothertongue (L1) had an influence on their processing of NNCs in their second language (L2), and whether this influence was due to differences in grammatical representation (i.e.

Sustained meaning activation for polysemous but not homonymous words: evidence from EEG.

Theoretical linguistic accounts of lexical ambiguity distinguish between homonymy, where words that share a lexical form have unrelated meanings, and polysemy, where the meanings are related. The present study explored the psychological reality of this theoretical assumption by asking whether there is evidence that homonyms and polysemes are represented and processed differently in the brain. We investigated the time-course of meaning activation of different types of ambiguous words using EEG.

Pathways to lexical ambiguity: fMRI evidence for bilateral fronto-parietal involvement in language processing.

Numerous functional neuroimaging studies reported increased activity in the pars opercularis and the pars triangularis (Brodmann's areas 44 and 45) of the left hemisphere during the performance of linguistic tasks. The role of these areas in the right hemisphere in language processing is not understood and, although there is evidence from lesion studies that the right hemisphere is involved in the appreciation of semantic relations, no specific anatomical substrate has yet been identified. This event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study compared brain activity during the performance of language processing trials in which either dominant or subordinate meaning activation of ambiguous words was required.

Not all ambiguous words are created equal: an EEG investigation of homonymy and polysemy.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the time-course of meaning activation of different types of ambiguous words. Unbalanced homonymous ("pen"), balanced homonymous ("panel"), metaphorically polysemous ("lip"), and metonymically polysemous words ("rabbit") were used in a visual single-word priming delayed lexical decision task. The theoretical distinction between homonymy and polysemy was reflected in the N400 component.

Comprehension of lexical ambiguity in healthy aging, mild cognitive impairment, and mild Alzheimer's disease.

Two experiments examined processing of lexical ambiguity in healthy older control (HC), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) participants. In Experiment 1, groups of HC, MCI and AD participants took part in an ERP study in which they read lexically ambiguous items presented in a subordinate context and primed by the same item presented in a dominant context. Ambiguous items were homonyms (e.

Making sense of word senses: the comprehension of polysemy depends on sense overlap.

Studies of polysemy are few in number and are contradictory. Some have found differences between polysemy and homonymy (L. Frazier & K.

Processing homonymy and polysemy: effects of sentential context and time-course following unilateral brain damage.

The present study investigated the abilities of left-hemisphere-damaged (LHD) non-fluent aphasic, right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD), and normal control individuals to access, in sentential biasing contexts, the multiple meanings of three types of ambiguous words, namely homonyms (e.g., "punch"), metonymies (e.

Unilateral brain damage effects on processing homonymous and polysemous words.

Using an auditory semantic priming paradigm, the present study investigated the abilities of left-hemisphere-damaged (LHD) non-fluent aphasic, right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD) and normal control individuals to access, out of context, the multiple meanings of three types of ambiguous words, namely homonyms (e.g., "punch"), metonymies (e.

The processing of lexical ambiguity: homonymy and polysemy in the mental lexicon.

Under the theoretical assumption that lexical ambiguity is not a homogeneous phenomenon, but rather that it is subdivided into two distinct types, namely homonymy and polysemy, the present study investigated whether these different types of lexical ambiguity are psychologically real. Four types of ambiguous words, homonymous words (e.g.