A context constructivist account of contextual diversity

Shaorong Yan, Francis Mollica, Michael K. Tanenhaus

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract / Description of output

Word frequency effects have long served as an empirical and theoretical test bed for theories of language processing. A number of recent studies have suggested that Contextual Diversity (CD) is a better metric of retrieval processes than word frequency. Motivated by these findings, we sketch an active account of lexical access during sentence processing: language users store statistics about contextualized lexical representations and use lexical-contextual relations to both construct context and predict words given the context. In line with our account, we provide evidence from a frequency judgment experiment suggesting that words are not stored independently of their contexts of use. To further examine CD effects in reading, we analyzed reading times in self-paced reading and eye-tracking corpora. We demonstrate that as context is constructed, the role of CD in lexical retrieval is attenuated, reflecting a trade-off between context construction and contextualized word prediction.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2018)
Subtitle of host publicationChanging/Minds
PublisherAustin TX: Cognitive Science Society
Pages1205-1210
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)978-0-9911967-8-4
ISBN (Print)9781510872059
Publication statusPublished - 28 Jul 2018
Event40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society - Madison, United States
Duration: 25 Jul 201828 Jul 2018
http://www.cognitivesciencesociety.org/conference/cogsci-2018/

Conference

Conference40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Abbreviated titleCogSci 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityMadison
Period25/07/1828/07/18
Internet address

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A context constructivist account of contextual diversity'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this