ERIC Number: EJ1105697
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Jul
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
EISSN: N/A
The Time Course of Familiar Metonymy
Bott, Lewis; Rees, Alice; Frisson, Steven
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v42 n7 p1160-1170 Jul 2016
Metonymic words have multiple related meanings, such as "college", as in the building ("John walked into the college") or the educational institution ("John was promoted by the college"). Most researchers have found support for direct access models of metonymy but one recent study, Lowder and Gordon (2013), found delayed reading times for metonymic sentences relative to literal controls, in support of an indirect access account. We conducted a speed-accuracy-tradeoff experiment to test whether their result was caused by lower retrieval probabilities, consistent with direct or indirect access models of metonymy, or slower retrieval dynamics, consistent only with indirect access accounts. We found lower retrieval probabilities for the metonymic sentences but no difference in the dynamics parameters. These results therefore suggest that literal senses do not have priority during processing and that established metonymic senses can be accessed directly.
Descriptors: Reading Processes, Reading Rate, Ambiguity (Semantics), Accuracy, Pragmatics, Reading Comprehension, College Students, Foreign Countries, Models, Prediction, Statistical Analysis, Goodness of Fit, Probability
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United Kingdom (Wales)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A