Discusses three experiments which investigated the role of convention and context in understanding indirect requests. Experiments 1 and 2 showed the wide variety of conventions used and how context determines conventionality. Experiment 3 showed how conventional requests take less time to process than nonconventional ones. (Author/PJM)

An experiment is reported which shows that with identical preceding context, the same initial phoneme targets contained in high transitional probability words were responded to significantly faster than those in low transitional probability words. The result argues for the importance of transitional probability as an independent variable in…

Experiments demonstrating that perceptual identification and recognition memory both rely on memory for single prior processing episodes, contrary to common assumption, are reported. The balance between data-driven and conceptually-driven processing in reading is explored, and the effects of changing the subject's reliance on one or the other…

The question of what constitutes a minimal appropriate context for understanding a metaphor is examined through the relative effectiveness of three types of contextual priming for metaphor comprehension. All three produced immediate and automatic metaphor comprehension. The use of context to disambiguate both literal and nonliteral speech messages…

Discusses three experiments investigating the development of word-by-word comprehension in 5-, 7-, and 10-year olds. Subjects monitored for target words in a sentence. Variable included types of monitoring tasks and distribution and context of target words. Results are discussed in terms of the types of comprehension processes various tasks…

Discusses a sequential, three-stage model of how nonliteral expressions are understood, as proposed in recent linguistic, philosophical, and psychological studies. Testing the model's implication that nonliteral meanings of sentences are ignored whenever literal meanings are plausible, finds evidence that both meanings are processed simultaneously…

The validity of using phoneme monitoring techniques to measure syntactic processing in French was validated by two experiments. Significant differences in the reaction times of 80 French-speaking academic professionals to phonemes immediately following reversible subject relative clauses and those following object relative clauses demonstrate the…

Two experiments tested for effects of intralist cues upon recognition probability. Categorized and random lists were each tested, with targets appearing with zero, one or three intralist cues. Experiments showed substantial effects of trials and list type, but not of intralist context. (CHK)

Two experiments are described in which reaction times for understanding target sentences or phrases in terms of a preceding context were measured. It is argued that both experiments can be accounted for in terms of contextually generated expectations. (Author/RM)

Three experiments investigated whether abstract as well as concrete sentences can be processed in a holistic manner. Results suggest that the processing of both types of sentences involves construction of particularized, holistic mental representations that contain information and inferences based on context and knowledge of language and the…

Reports two experiments which support the hypothesis that reaction time is faster to phonemes when the phonetic context matches the listener's expectation than when the vowel context is different. Reaction time to syllable targets is equal to phoneme, matched context targets. (PMJ)

Experiments were conducted to determine the effects of sentence contexts on word recognition and reading. The questions of whether context is predominantly facilitating or inhibiting and how automatic the influence of contexts is on word retrieval were investigated. (SW)

Two experiments are reported testing bilinguals' recall of words presented in one of two languages and under several conditions. Performance was best when the individuals had seen the word itself, less good when they had seen the other language's equivalent, and equally or least good when they had seen neither. (MSE)

The early and continued use of semantic, syntactic and contextual clues in recognizing mispronounced words was demonstrated in an experiment involving preschoolers, grade school students and college students. Errors in highly predictable words and contexts were most easily recognized by all regardless of reading ability. (PMJ)