Understanding Without Words

To understand a sentence, the meanings of the words in the sentence must be retrieved and combined. Are these meanings represented within the language system (the lexical hypothesis) or are they represented in a general conceptual system that is not restricted to language (the conceptual hypothesis)? To erraluate these hypotheses, sentences were presented in which a pictued object replaced a word (rebus sentences). Previous research has showu that isolated pictures and words are processed equally rapidly in conceptual tasls, but that pictures are markedly slower than words in usks requiring ledcal access. The lexical hypothesis would therefore lead one to expect that rebus sentences will be relatively difrcult, whereas the conceptual hypothesis would predia that rebus sentences would be rather easy. Sentences were shown using rapid serial visuai presentation (RSVP) at a rate of l0 or 12 words per second. With one set of materials (Experiments I ard 2), readers took longer tojudge the plausibility ofrebus sentences than all-word sentences, although the accuraca ofjudgment and of recall were similar for the two formats. With two neq/ sets of materiais (Experiments 3 and 5), rebus and all-word sentences were virtually equivalent except in one sircumstance: when a picture replaced the noun in a familiar phrase such as seedless grapes. In contrast, when the task required overt naming ofthe rebus picture in a sentence contexq latency to name the picture was markedly longer than to name the corresponding word, and the appropriateness ofthe sentence context affected picture naming but not word naming (Experiment 4). The results fail to support theories that place word meanings in a specialized lexical entry. Instead, the results suggest that the lexical representation of a noun or flamiliar noun phrase provides a pointer to a nonlinguistic conceptual system, and it is in that system that the mganiqg ofa sentence is constructed.