The processing of ambiguous words: A comparison of highly anxious subjects and less anxious subjects

The relation between the anxiety related phenomenon of attentional bias and two psycholinguistic models of ambiguity resolution was examined. The effectiveness of the priming paradigm for its usefulness in this type and similar cognitive-clinical concerns was also considered. Homophones with both a threat and non-threat related meaning were presented auditorily (ambiguously) to two groups of subjects--high and low trait anxiety subjects. Three inter-stimulus-intervals between the homophone-primes and their semantically related targets and matched controls were used to examine whether anxiety would affect the automaticity of lexical access. Two models were proposed: the anxiety induced restrictive access model and the two stage model of ambiguity resolution. Null results were obtained for data from 96 subjects. Results were interpreted in terms of methodological/technical concerns rather than theoretical/paradigmatic faults. Considerations for future research using the auditory priming paradigm are given.