Contextual Learning of New Meanings for Familiar Words: Perturbation of Original Meanings Occurs Without Deliberate Study

The present study investigated learning new meanings of known words from reading, following Hulme et al.’s (2018) study. English speakers read four short stories containing 16 critical words (i.e., familiar word forms assigned invented secondary meanings). Contextual exposure to the critical words was manipulated within participants and items as low (two and four occurrences) or high (six and eight occurrences). Cued meaning and form recall posttests assessed the mapping of new meanings onto existing word forms; a semantic relatedness judgment task under time pressure measured new meaning integration. High exposure resulted in greater meaning recall than low exposure immediately after learning and one week later. Slower relatedness judgments involving original meanings of the critical words, immediately after learning, indexed semantic competition from the weakly learned new meanings. These findings show initial integration of new meanings into learners’ lexical semantic networks can occur without deliberate study or retrieval practice.