Which of the following statements about Swinney's 1979 experiment is FALSE?

Correct answer: D. It turned out that there was differential advantage (priming) for different sense of the word when there was a delay before the second stimulus depending on the meaning so context appeared to affect initial sense selection

• A. Participants were presented with spoken passage like these; (a) Mary needed to buy some presents, so she went to the bank;(b) Mary found the river cold ,so she swam to the bank
• B. immediately after the presentation of the ambiguous word, Swinney presented a single letter string on a screen participants had to decide whether the letter string was a world or not(a lexical decision)
• C. When the string was a word, it could either be related to the intended sense of the ambiguous word(e.g) money') related to the other sense (e.g mud), or unrelated to other
• D. It turned out that there was differential advantage (priming) for different sense of the word when there was a delay before the second stimulus depending on the meaning so context appeared to affect initial sense selection

Last updated 16 September 2026