INFLUENCE OF SEMANTIC PRIMING AND WORD FREQUENCY
ON HOMOGRAPH PROCESSING
Authors: Tran Ba Tien
Vinh University Journal of sciences
: 49/2B : 117-125
Publishing year: 10/2020
Abstract: Semantic priming and word frequency effects have been actively
researched to provide insights into the cognitive process, attention, memory, and
applications in computational models for translation. This paper investigated the
influence of semantic priming and word frequency on visual word recognition by native
speakers of English. Three experiments were conducted to throw light on the mechanism
of meaning activation based on how the homographs were processed in isolation and in
contexts with semantic priming. The homographs used in the present study were ones
with the same spellings, but with different pronunciation and meanings. Thus, the
reading of the words would give clues to which meaning was activated. The findings
suggest that the word frequency and personal familiarity have more influence on the
choice of meaning activation of homographs than semantic priming.
Keywords: Semantic priming; word frequency; visual word recognition; homographs; meaning activation