The SMAART Scale: A Measure of Individuals’ Automatic Access to Secondary Meanings in Polysemous Statements

Psycholinguistic and neuropsychological research shows that individuals differ in their ability to access the multiple meanings implied by polysemous expressions. Drawing on these studies, a novel, computer-based measure of automatic access to secondary meaning (SMAART) is developed to distinguish individuals more likely to access only a single, immediately available meaning from those accessing multiple meanings. The new measure is found to be reliable and distinct from several established measures assessing higher level verbal abilities such as the verbal SAT. Several experimental studies demonstrate the scale's usefulness for predicting who is most susceptible to the priming effects of the secondary meanings contained in the polysemous headlines in consumer-oriented communications.