| A great deal of previous eye-tracking research investigating semantic ambiguity has found support for the reordered access model, which posits that both frequency of meaning and context can affect meaning activation of homophonic homographs (e.g., DIGIT) during sentence processing, but that frequency of meaning is more influential than context (Binder & Rayner, 1998; Dopkins, Morris, & Rayner, 1992; Duffy, Morris, & Rayner, 1988; Rayner, Pacht, & Duffy, 1994; Sereno, 1995). The purpose of the present research was to investigate whether frequency of meaning and predictability of context can affect phonological ambiguity in sentence processing. Biased heterophonic homographs (e.g., SEWER) and biased homophonic homographs were presented after context that was strongly biasing, moderately biasing, or weakly biasing in relation to the subordinate meaning. Results showed that neither frequency of meaning nor predictability of context affected phonological ambiguity, but that predictability of context did eliminate the competition created by semantic ambiguity. |
