RECOGNITION AND PROCESSING OF AMBIGUOUS WORDS IN THAI : A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC STUDY

Abstract

This work investigates recognition and processing of different types of ambiguous wordsin Thai within a psycholinguitic framework. During test sesseions, each of which lasted about 30minutes, data were individually collected from 40 Thai adults using Direct RT (reaction time)software. A lexical decision task was carried out where participant s saw each test word (whitetext on black background) appearing on a computer screen and quickly decided whether theword exists in the language (i.e., real word) by typing on the keyboard. Responses were thenanalysed and statistical analysis was performed.Overall, the results show that ambiguous words of different types require differentrecognition and processing. Participants responded fastest to polysemies, followed byunambiguous words, and homonyms. Moreover, polysemies with many senses (four or more) andhomonyms with different degrees of familiarity have a positive effect (i.e., faster) on the wordrecognition and processing.Key word : Ambiguous Words, Psycholinguitic, Recognition