Pupil Size Tracks the Effects of Global Context and Semantic Ambiguity on Word-Meaning Processing.

ABSTRACT: Processing word meaning often appears effortless, yet the language system must frequently resolve ambiguity by integrating broad contextual information to ensure comprehension. Understanding the mechanisms underlying the facilitation of global semantic context on word-meaning access remains a key challenge in cognitive neuroscience. In this study, we explore whether global semantic context -specifically, the thematic content of a visually presented short text- reduces the cognitive demands of word-meaning processing. Using pupillometry, we examined the contributions of context congruency and semantic ambiguity across two tasks: a word-association task (Experiment 1) and a semantic relatedness task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, global context congruence biased word associations toward co

SUBMITTER: Laurino J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12315691 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature