A cross-sectional study about meaning access processes for homographs

A cross-sectional study examined the effect of meaning frequency, referred to as “dominance” in the semantic priming paradigm, where ambiguous words (primes) were processed in isolation. Participants made lexical decisions to target words that were associates of the more frequent (dominant) or less frequent (subordinate) meaning of a homograph prime. Participants were selected from 5th grade of primary school up to first year at university. We studied the difference between dominant and subordinate meaning frequency, called ‘polarity’. The SOA (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony) was 250 ms, implying only automatic processes. In younger students (5th and 8th graders), semantic priming was absent, whereas it was present in older ones (1st and 3rd year of Secondary, and 1st year University). Polarity was significant only in the 3rd year of secondary school. The influence of the missing semantic priming effect in the reading process, as seen in younger children, is discussed. © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.