Norms for 68 German homophonic homographs were collected in a normal population comprising 100 subjects. Frequency and polarity as well as U-scores (index of ambiguity) are presented. 49 of the words revealed a clear dominance for only one meaning. 7 homophonic homographs were balanced, and for 12 words less than 5% of all associations were given for each of the inferior meanings. Studies 2a and 2b are a replication of previous findings on the resolution of semantic ambiguity. Inhibition effects were revealed for discordant triplet conditions which contained a long interstimulus interval between homograph and target, whereas an (insignificant) facilitation effect occurred for trials with a shorter interval. Results of study 2 are in line with context-sensitive models which claim that after the initial activation of all meanings of a homograph a context-guided process leads to a suppression of context-irrelevant homograph information.
