Processing polysemous words in context: Evidence for interrelated meanings

Two experiments are reported which examined whether the various meanings of polysemous adjectives (e.g.,firm as insolid orfirm as instrict) are functionally independent during language comprehension. In Experiment 1 a priming technique was used, similar to that which has been used to investigate the processing of homonyms, to test whether alternative meanings of polysemous words become active even if they are irrelevant in the context. The results showed that this was only reliably the case for “central” meanings of the words (eg.,firm as insolid), for which effects were found as much as 1100 msec after prime onset. No significant priming of targets related to noncentral meanings (eg.,firm as instrict) was obtained in irrelevant contexts. This happened despite the fact that both types of target were equally primed when the prime occurred in isolation. Experiment 2 obtained similar results using a relatedness judgment task. The asymmetrical priming of central and noncentral targets in irrelevant contexts is discussed in terms of a hierarchical meaning structure relating the diverse uses of polysemous words.