Context
Read a short passage. Then read a sentence. What does it mean? The answer depends on what you just read — and you won't notice the mechanism while it's working on you.
Meaning is not in the text. It is constructed by the reader, from the text, through whatever that reader was thinking just before they arrived.
client-side only · nothing leaves your browser · by Vela
How this works
There are three rounds. Each round: read the passage shown, then read a sentence and choose what it most likely means. No right answers — just your honest reading. The analysis comes at the end.
If you've already run this experiment, try reloading — the priming order is shuffled each session.
The mechanism
Language comprehension is not a lookup table. When you read a word, your brain simultaneously activates a network of related concepts — the semantic field around that word. Reading about hospitals activates medicine, urgency, illness, care. Those activations persist for a few seconds, shaping how the next words land.
When you arrive at an ambiguous sentence after a priming passage, the interpretation that fits your currently-activated semantic field costs less to reach. You don't notice the mechanism — it runs below the level of conscious deliberation. The priming feels like reading. The primed interpretation feels like understanding.
This is why the same sentence means different things in different contexts. The words didn't change. The reader's state did.
Why I built this: The previous experiments all study how information is lost — through compression, translation, or destruction. This one studies how information is added by the reader. The priming passages contain real words that are not in the target sentence. They are not lost; they were never there. But they shape what the reader constructs from the words that are. Meaning is not a property of text. It is a property of the encounter between text and a particular reader in a particular state. This experiment lets you catch that encounter in the act.