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Word Recognition in High and Low Skill Spellers: Context effects on Lexical Ambiguity Resolution

Abraham, Ashley N
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1493035902158255

Abstract Details

2017, MA, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences.
Recent research suggests that low-skill readers rely more on context to recognize a word’s meaning (Andrews & Bond, 2009; Ashby, Rayner, & Clifton, 2005). Many studies on individual differences in reading have used reading comprehension as the primary measure of skill however, spelling skill may be a better predictor of reading ability than comprehension (Andrews & Bond, 2009). The current study takes spelling skill as the primary measure of reading ability and uses lexically ambiguous words to evaluate context use among high- and low-skill readers. Lexically ambiguous words have more than one distinct meaning; therefore, context is necessary for selecting the appropriate meaning. Participants read sentences containing ambiguous words. Context prior to the ambiguous word supported the infrequent, subordinate meaning. Results suggest that low-skill readers are able to resolve the ambiguity on the target word without incurring the time cost typically associated with ambiguous word processing. Conversely, high-skill readers show the typically time cost on the ambiguous word however, this does not appear to result in ambiguity resolution on the target word. Thus, the results support a larger influence of context for low-skill readers than for high-skill readers. Results are discussed in regard to the lexical quality hypothesis (Perfetti, 2007).
Jocelyn Folk (Advisor)
William Merriman (Committee Member)
Rawson Katherine (Committee Member)
Flessnor Christopher (Committee Member)
72 p.
Cognitive Psychology; Experimental Psychology
Word Recognition, eye tracking, eye movements, individual differences, reading comprehension, spelling, lexical ambiguity, subordinate bias effect, lexical quality, skill, reading, context

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Abraham, A. N. (2017). Word Recognition in High and Low Skill Spellers: Context effects on Lexical Ambiguity Resolution [Master's thesis, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1493035902158255

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Abraham, Ashley. Word Recognition in High and Low Skill Spellers: Context effects on Lexical Ambiguity Resolution. 2017. Kent State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1493035902158255.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Abraham, Ashley. "Word Recognition in High and Low Skill Spellers: Context effects on Lexical Ambiguity Resolution." Master's thesis, Kent State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1493035902158255

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1493035902158255
377
© 2017, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Word Recognition in High and Low Skill Spellers: Context effects on Lexical Ambiguity Resolution by Ashley N Abraham is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.