Terminating and exhaustive search in lexical access

Two experiments which test predictions derived from the assumption that lexical access involves a search process are reported. In the first experiment, test items must be classified as ambiguous or unambiguous, and in the second experiment, they are classified according to their syntactic properties. In both experiments, it is shown that when the target of the search is a nonexistent entry, an exhaustive search is involved, even though the test items are words. Further, in these conditions, frequency of occurrence is no longer related to decision time, as it is in lexical decision experiments. It is concluded that the search model adequately explains the procedure whereby the most common meaning of a homograph is accessed, but that the less common meaning is accessed in some completely different manner.