THE EFFECT OF MEANING FREQUENCY ON PROCESSING LEXICALLY AMBIGUOUS WORDS - EVIDENCE FROM EYE FIXATIONS

Subjects read sentences containing lexically ambiguous words while their eye movements were monitored. Biased ambiguous words (those that have one highly dominant sense) were used in sentences containing a prior context that instantiated their subordinate sense. Control words were matched in frequency both to the dominant and to the subordinate meaning of the ambiguous word (high- and low-frequency controls). Subjects fixated longer on both the ambiguous word and the low-frequency control than on the high-frequency control. When the target was ambiguous, however, the duration of posttarget fixations was longer and the likelihood of making a regression to the target was greater than when the target was an unambiguous control. The results are discussed in relation to current models of lexical ambiguity resolution.