Ambiguity Advantage or Disadvantage? Lexical Access to Second Language Homonymy

Recent first language (L1) psycholinguistic research (e.g., Rodd et al. 2002) has challenged a robust finding known as ambiguity advantage effect, in which words having multiple meanings are accessed faster than counterparts having a single meaning. This paper investigates whether second language (L2) learners shows the ambiguity advantage effect when comparing words having multiple meanings and few senses (e.g., bat) with words that have a single meaning and few senses (e.g., boy). In a visual lexical decision task, an L1 group and an L2 group showed opposite patterns in processing semantically ambiguous words. The L1 group processed ambiguous words slower than unambiguous words (i.e., ambiguity disadvantage effect) whereas the L2 group accessed ambiguous words faster than unambiguous words (i.e., ambiguity advantage effect). The findings are discussed in relation to the possible differences in the architecture of the L1 and the L2 mental lexicons.