Abstract
Psycholinguistic research demonstrates that representational distance between meanings influences recognition of ambiguous words. Our goal was to investigate whether the neural correlates of ambiguity are also modulated by representational distance as a function of syntactic similarity (i.e., grammatical class) and meaning dominance. In an event-related fMRI experiment, participants completed a visual lexical decision task that included balanced and unbalanced noun-noun and noun-verb homonyms, unambiguous words, and nonwords. Syntactic similarity effects were observed in left inferior frontal regions, with greater activation for noun-verb than noun-noun homonyms. Meaning dominance effects were observed in left middle and superior temporal regions, with greater activation for balanced than unbalanced homonyms. These findings indicate that the behavioral cost associated with processing ambiguous word meanings, modulated by syntactic similarity and meaning dominance, is reflected in the neural systems underlying ambiguity processing, as frontal and temporal regions are recruited by increased competition as a function of representational distance.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 23-35 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Brain and Language |
Volume | 139 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 1 2014 |
Keywords
- FMRI
- Grammatical class
- Inferior frontal gyrus
- Lexical ambiguity
- Meaning dominance
- Middle temporal gyrus
- Representational distance
- Superior temporal gyrus
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Language and Linguistics
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- Linguistics and Language
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Speech and Hearing