PSY 369: Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics
Review for Exam 1 (1 week from today)
Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5
Lectures weeks 1, 2, 3, 4
Week 1
-
What is language?
-
-
Compared to communication
Do animals use language
What is psycholinguistics?
Week 1 & Chapter 1 terms and concepts
Cognitive science
Linguistics
Semantics
Syntax
Phonology
Pragmatics
Wilhelm Wundt
Behaviorism
B. F. Skinner
Roger Brown
Noam Chomsky
Associative chain theory
Rationalism
Empiricism
Tacit knowledge
Explicit knowledge
Communication
Charles Hockett’s features of
language
Animals and Language
Language features
Week 2
-
Crash course in linguistics
-
Different levels of analyses
-
The parts and the rules
Week 2 & Chapter 2 terms and concepts
Word order
Phonology
Duality of patterning
Phones & phonemes
Minimal pairs
Distinctive features
Categorical perception
Morphology
Free and bound morphemes
Derivational & inflectional
rules
Wug test
Syntax & Grammar
Linguistic productivity
Phrase structure rules
Noam Chomsky
Recursive rules
Arbitrariness
Observational adequacy
Descriptive adequacy
Explanatory adequacy
Syntactic ambiguity
Deep structure
Surface structure
Transformational rules
Psychological reality of
grammar
Derivational theory of
complexity
Centrality of syntax
Semantics
Sense and Reference
Pragmatics
Lexical semantics
Compositional semantics
allomorphs
Week 3
-
Crash course in cognitive psychology
-
Mental structures and processes
Week 3 & Chapter 3 terms and concepts
Atkinsin & Shiffrin model
Sensory stores
Short term memory
Working memory
Long term memory
Declarative memory
Procedural memory
Attention
Top down processing
Bottom up processing
Automatic processing
Controlled processing
Semantic memory
Episodic memory
Serial processing
Parallel processing
Modularity
Cognitive psychology
The mind as a computer
analogy
George Sperling
George Miller
Chunking
Limited resources theory
Feature integration theory
Working memory capacity
Ebbinghaus
Bahrick
Dual task procedure
Visual Search exps
Week 4
-
Representing Language
-
What and how are properties of language mentally represented?
Week 4 & Chapter 5 terms and concepts
Internal (mental) lexicon
Lexical access
Tip-of-the-tongue
Syntactic category
Inflectional morphemes
Derivation morphemes
Sense and reference
Synonym
Hyponymy & hypernymy
Semantic network
Hierarchical network
Collins and Quillian model Lexical decision task
Collins and Loftus model
Word frequency
Spreading activation models Semantic priming
Intersection search
Lexical ambiguity
Semantic verification
Lexical primatives
Cognitive economy
Lexical organization
Typicality effect
Speech errors
Forster search model
Prior context effects
Morton Logogen model
Marslen-Wilson cohort model
Recognition point
Psycholinguistics : A brief history
1900
10
20
50
60
70
80
90
2000
Multidisciplinary origins
• philosophy (e.g., theories of meaning)
• physiology (e.g., brain trauma effects on language)
• linguistics (e.g., historical vs. descriptive, Noam Chomsky)
• psychology (e.g., behaviorist vs. cognitive approaches)
• computer science (e.g., artificial intelligence)
What is communication?

Any means by which two (or more) individuals
exchange information

Paralinguistic techniques – non-verbal communication



Non-linguistic communication - that do involve
vocalization


Hand signals, facial expressions, body language, nods, smiles,
winks, etc.
Also includes things like tone of voice, tempo, volume, etc.
Grunts, groans, snorts, sighs, whimpers, etc.
Not all produced sounds are intended to convey
messages, so they aren’t communication

e.g., snoring
Features of Language (Hockett, 1960)






Arbitrariness
Displacement
Productivity
Discreteness
Semanticity
Duality of patterning
“dog”
“labrador”
“perro”
“hund”
Last week my dog escaped the backyard and dug in the neighbor’s garden.
- Four legged animal
- Common pet
- Fur
- Chases cats
- Barks
- Etc.
“dog”
“dog”
Meaning
No meaning
“dog”
Words and morphemes
Phonomes
“dog”
/d/ /o/ /g/
Hockett (1960) is available for download in the ‘optional readings’ on Blackboard
Animals and language?
Parrot
Dog
Bird
song
Arbitrariness
Displacement
Productivity
Discreteness
Semanticity
Duality of
patterning
?
?
?
?
?
Bee
dance
Human
Language
What is language?

Some generally agreed upon conclusions

Symbolic


Voluntary


Language use is under our individual control
Language is systematic


Elements are used to represent something other than itself
There is hierarchical structure that organizes linguistic
elements
Modalities


Spoken, written, signed (sign language)
Assumed primacy of speech - it came first
Week 2
-
Crash course in linguistics
-
Different levels of analyses
-
The parts and the rules
Week 2 & Chapter 2 terms and concepts
Word order
Phonology
Duality of patterning
Phones & phonemes
Minimal pairs
Distinctive features
Categorical perception
Morphology
Free and bound morphemes
Derivational & inflectional
rules
Wug test
Syntax & Grammar
Linguistic productivity
Phrase structure rules
Noam Chomsky
Recursive rules
Arbitrariness
Observational adequacy
Descriptive adequacy
Explanatory adequacy
Syntactic ambiguity
Deep structure
Surface structure
Transformational rules
Psychological reality of
grammar
Derivational theory of
complexity
Centrality of syntax
Semantics
Sense and Reference
Pragmatics
Lexical semantics
Compositional semantics
allomorphs
Levels of analysis
language





Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
structure
medium of
transmission
phonetics
grammar
phonology morphology syntax
pragmatics
use
meaning
(semantics)
lexicon discourse
Phonology

The sounds of a language

Phonemes, allophones & phones

Phonemes - abstract (mental) representations of the sound units in a
language





Minimal pairs: pie, buy, tie, die, sigh, lie, my, guy, why, shy
Articulatory features
Allophones - different sounds that get categorized as the same
phoneme
Phones - a general term for the sounds used in languages
Rules about how to put the sounds together
‘Spill’ vs. ‘Pill’ Rule: If /p/ is used in word initial position you add
aspiration (a puff of air), if word internal don’t aspirate
Morphology

Morpheme – smallest unit that conveys meaning



Productivity
 Free morphemes: can stand alone as words
 Bound morphemes: can not stand alone as words
 Inflectional rules
 used to express grammatical contrasts in sentences
 Derivational rules
 Construction of new words, or change grammatical class
Allomorphs: different variations of the same morpheme (e.g.,
plural morpheme in English)
Language differences
 Isolating, Inflecting, Agglutinating languages
Psychological reality of Morphology

Speech errors




Stranding errors: The free morpheme typically moves, but the bound
morpheme stays in the same location (“they are Turking talkish”)
Morpheme substitutions: (“Where's the fire distinguisher?”)
Morpheme shift: (“I haven't satten down and writ__ it”)
Wug test (Gleason, 1958)
Here is a wug.
Now there are two of them.
There are two _______.
Syntax: the ordering of the words
• The underlying structural position, rather
than surface linear position matters.
S
S
NP
a
dog
VP
NP
V
bites
NP
a
a
man
VP
V
bites
man
Subject
position
Object
position
NP
a
dog
Syntax: the ordering of the words
• Not just the linear ordering
• It is the underlying set of syntactic rules
VP
VP
V
NP
an elephant
NP
PP
P
shot
NP
V
P
NP
in my pajamas
PP
shot
an elephant
NP
in my pajamas
Generative Grammar

(wiki)
The pieces:
– Grammatical features of words
– Phrase structure rules - these tell us how to build
legal structures
• S --> NP VP
Recursion: you can embed structures within
structures
NP --> (A) (ADJ) N (PP)
PP --> Prep NP
The result is an infinite number of syntactic
structures from a finite set of pieces
Chomsky’s Linguistics


Chomsky proposed that grammars could be evaluated at three levels:
 Observational adequacy
 Descriptive adequacy
 Explanatory adequacy
Transformational grammar

Two stages phrase structures for a sentence
 Build Deep Structure
 Convert to Surface Structure
Psychological reality of syntax

Derivational theory of complexity

The more transformations, the more complex




Evidence for (trace)


The boy was bitten by the wolf
The boy was bitten. (involves deletion)
No evidence for more processing of the second sentence
Some recent evidence or reactivation of moved constituent at
the trace position
Evidence for syntax

Syntactic priming
Syntactic priming
Bock (1986), Task: If you hear a sentence, repeat it, if you see a
picture describe it

a: The ghost sold the werewolf a flower
b: The ghost sold a flower to the werewolf
a: The girl gave the teacher the flowers
b: The girl gave the flowers to the teacher
Semantics

The study of meaning

Arbitrariness
“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Words are not the same as meaning


Words are symbols linked to mental representations of meaning
(concepts)
Even if we changed the name of a rose, we wouldn’t change
the concept of what a rose is
Separation of word and meaning

Concepts and words are different things

Translation argument

Every language has words without meaning, and
meanings without words


Imperfect mapping

Multiple meanings of words


e.g., transmogrify, wheedle, scalawag
e.g., ball, bank, bear
Elasticity of meaning

Meanings of words can change with context

e.g., newspaper
Semantics

Philosophy of meaning

Sense and reference



“The world’s most famous athlete.”
“The athlete making the most endorsement income.”
2 distinct senses, 1 reference
Now

Over time the senses
typically stay the
same, while the
references may
change
In the 90’s
Semantics

Two levels of analysis (and two traditions of
psycholinguistic research)

Word level (lexical semantics)





How do we store words?
How are they organized?
What is meaning?
How do words relate to meaning?
Sentence level (compositional semantics)


How do we construct higher order meaning?
How do word meanings and syntax interact?
Lexical Semantics

Word level

The (mental) lexicon: the words we know


The average person knows ~60,000 words
How are these words represented and
organized?




Dictionary definitions?
Necessary and sufficient features?
Lists of features?
Networks?
Lexical Ambiguity

What happens when we use ambiguous
words in our utterances?
“Oh no, Lois has been
hypnotized and is jumping
off the bank!”
Money
“bank”
River
“bank”
Lexical Ambiguity

Psycholinguistic evidence suggests that
multiple meanings are considered

Debate: how do we decide which meaning is
correct

‘bank’ usually means
Based on: frequency,Hmm…
context
the financial institution, but
Lois was going fishing with
Jimmy today …
Compositional Semantics

Phrase and sentence level

Some of the theories


Truth conditional semantics: meaning is a logical
relationship between an utterance and a state of
affairs in the world
Jackendoff’s semantics



Concepts are lists of features, images, and procedural
knowledge
Conceptual formation rules
Cognitive grammar

Mental models - mental simulations of the world
Pragmatics

Sentences do more than just state facts,
instead they are uttered to perform actions




How to do things with words (J. L. Austin, 1955
lectures)
Using registers
Conversational implicatures
Speech acts
Pragmatics

Registers: How we modify conversation
when addressing different listeners

Determine our choice of wording or
interpretation based on different contexts and
situations

Speech directed at babies, at friends, at bosses, at
foreigners
Pragmatics

Conversational implicatures

Speakers are cooperative

Grice’s conversational maxims




Quantity: say only as much as is needed
Quality: say only what you know is true
Relation: say only relevant things
Manner: Avoid ambiguity, be as clear as possible
Pragmatics

Speech acts: How language is used to accomplish various
ends

Direct speech acts



Indirect speech acts



Open the window please.
Clean up your room!
“It is hot in here”
“Your room is a complete mess!”
Non-literal language use

e.g., Metaphors and idioms
Pyscholinguistics and
pragmatics

Three-stage theory


Stage 1: compute the literal interpretation of the
utterance
Stage 2: evaluate the interpretation against
assumptions


Grice’s conversational maxims
Stage 3: if interpretation doesn’t seem correct,
derive (or retrieve) non-literal interpretation
Pyscholinguistics and
pragmatics

One stage approaches


Evaluate utterance at multiple levels
simultaneously and select the appropriate one
Use context to derive the single most-likely
interpretation
Week 3
-
Crash course in cognitive psychology
-
Mental structures and processes
Week 3 & Chapter 3 terms and concepts
Atkinsin & Shiffrin model
Sensory stores
Short term memory
Working memory
Long term memory
Declarative memory
Procedural memory
Attention
Top down processing
Bottom up processing
Automatic processing
Controlled processing
Semantic memory
Episodic memory
Serial processing
Parallel processing
Modularity
Cognitive psychology
The mind as a computer
analogy
George Sperling
George Miller
Chunking
Limited resources theory
Feature integration theory
Working memory capacity
Ebbinghaus
Bahrick
Dual task procedure
Visual Search exps
Mind as computer analogy

Limitations of the analogy
Computers
Minds (Brains??)





fast
serial (mostly)
digital
few connections
(relatively)




slow
parallel
analog
trillions of
connections
Other analogies out there:


Mind as a brain (Connectionism)
Mind as a body (Embodied Cognition)
The ‘standard model’
The Multistore Model
Information ‘flows’ from one memory buffer to the next
The sensory store


George Sperling’s full and partial report
experiments
Properties



sensory specific - one for vision, one for
audition, etc.
high capacity
extremely fast decay
Short Term Memory


Serial position recall experiments (e.g., Peterson
& Peterson), STM span experiments, chunking
Properties



rapid access (about 35 milliseconds per item)
limited capacity (7+/- 2 chunks; George Miller, 1956)
fast decay, about 12 seconds (longer if rehearsed or
elaborated)
Working Memory
Allocate attentional resources to the
subcomponents
 Directs elaboration/manipulation of
information



Working memory instead of STM
Store and manipulate visual and spatial
information
 Directly from perception
 Indirectly from imagery



Phonological rehearsal mechanism
Phonological store
Very limited capacity
 Rehearsal maintains information
in the store
Long term memory

Properties



Capacity: Unlimited?
Duration: Decay/interference, retrieval difficulty
Organization


Multiple subsystems for type of memory
Associative networks (more on these next week)
Long term memory: Capacity

How much can we remember?


Lots, no known limits to how much memory storage we
have.
More important issue concerns questions about
encoding and retrieval

Encoding - getting memories into LTM what gets in?



Rehearsal
Depth of processing – organization, distinctiveness, effort, elaboration
Retrieval - getting memories out of LTM what gets out? exact
memories or reconstructed memories?
Long term memory: Duration


How long do our memories last?
Ebbinghaus (1885/1913)



He memorized non-sense
syllables.
Memorize them until perfect
performance,
Test to relearn the lists
perfectly.

This was called the
"savings."

Bahrick (1984)

He has done a number of
studies asking people about
memories for things (e.g.,
Spanish, faces of classmates,
etc.) that they learned over 50
years past. He has found
evidence that at least some
memories stick around a really
long time.
Long term memory: Organization


This theory suggests that there
are different memory
components, each storing
different kinds of information.
Declarative



The Multiple Memory
Stores Theory
Declarative

episodic
episodic - memories about
events
semantic - knowledge of facts
Procedural - memories about
how to do things (e.g., the thing
that makes you improve at
riding a bike with practice.
Procedural

semantic
Attention

Major tool of the central executive

Limited capacity resource

Filtering capabilities

Integration function
Attention: Limited resource

Only have so much ‘energy’ to make things go,
so need to divide it and allocate it to processes

Single pool (e.g., Kahneman, 1973)


Multiple pools (e.g., Navon & Gopher, 1979)


Central bank of resources available to all tasks that need it
Several banks of specialized resources – divided up in terms
of input/output modalities, stages of info processing
(perception, memory, response output)
Dual task experiments
Attention: An information filter

Information bottleneck. There is so much info,
only some is let through, while the rest is filtered
out


Early selection (e.g., Broadbent, 1958, Triesman, 1964)
Late filters (Deutsch & Deutsch)


Everything gets in, bottleneck comes at response level (can only
respond to limited number of things)
Cocktail party effect, dichotic listening
Attention: Integration

Attention is used to ‘glue’ features together

Feature integration theory & Visual search exps
Where’s Waldo
Find the X
X
X
X
X
XX XX
XX
X
XX
Pop out
X
O
OO XO
XO
O
XX
Slow
search
X
X
O
X
O X
Attention: How do we control it?



Attention as a ‘spotlight’
Move it around, make it
focused or diffuse
Is it ‘aimed’ or ‘pulled’
Automaticity

Controlled processes




Require resources
Under some volitional direction
Slow, effortful
Automatic processes



Require little attention
Obligatory
Fast
Bottom-up & Top-down

Terms come from computer science


Bottom up (data driven) relies upon evidence that is
physically present, building larger units based on
smaller ones
Top down (knowledge driven), using higher-level
information to support lower-level processes
T
C
E
FROG
T
Doing the laundry story
Week 4
-
Representing Language
-
What and how are properties of language mentally represented?
Week 4 & Chapter 5 terms and concepts
Internal (mental) lexicon
Lexical access
Tip-of-the-tongue
Syntactic category
Inflectional morphemes
Derivation morphemes
Sense and reference
Synonym
Hyponymy & hypernymy
Semantic network
Hierarchical network
Collins and Quillian model Lexical decision task
Collins and Loftus model
Word frequency
Spreading activation models Semantic priming
Intersection search
Lexical ambiguity
Semantic verification
Lexical primatives
Cognitive economy
Lexical organization
Typicality effect
Speech errors
Forster search model
Prior context effects
Morton Logogen model
Marslen-Wilson cohort model
Recognition point
Storing linguistic information

Tale of the tape:


High capacity: 40,000 – 60,000 words
Fast: Recognition in as little as 200ms (often before word ends)

How do we search that many, that fast!? – suggests that there is a high amount
of organization

Or something much
more complex
“The world’s largest data bank of examples
in context is dwarfed by the collection
we all carry around subconsciously in
our heads.”
E. Lenneberg (1967)
Excellent reading: Words in the Mind, Aitchison (1987, 2003)
Lexical primitives

Word primitives



horse
horses
Need a lot of representations
Fast retrieval
Morpheme primitives horse


barn
barns
-s
barn
Economical - fewer representations
Slow retrieval - some assembly required


Decomposition during comprehension
Composition during production
Lexical primitives

Lexical Decision task (e.g.,
Taft, 1981)


See a string of letters
As fast as you can
determine if it is a real
English word or not



“yes” if it is
“no” if it isn’t
Typically speed and
accuracy are the dependent
measures
table
vanue
daughter
tasp
cofef
hunter
Yes
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
Lexical primitives

Lexical Decision task

This evidence supports the morphemes
as primitives view
daughter Pseudo-suffixed
daught -er
Takes longer
hunter
Multimorphemic
hunt -er
Lexical primitives

May depend on other factors

What kind of morpheme



Inflectional (e.g., singular/plural, past/present tense)
Derivational (e.g., drink --> drinkable, infect --> disinfect)
Frequency of usage

High frequency multimorphemic (in particular if derivational
morphology) may get represented as a single unit


e.g., impossible vs. imperceptible
Compound words

Semantically transparent


Buttonhole
Semantically opaque

butterfly
Lexical organization

Factors that affect organization





Phonology
Frequency
Imageability, concreteness, abstractness
Grammatical class
Semantics
Lexical organization

Phonology

Words that sound alike may be stored “close together”

Brown and McNeill (1966) Tip of the tongue phenomenon (TOT)
What word means to formally renounce the
throne?
abdicate
Look at what words they think of but aren’t right
e.g, “abstract,” “abide,” “truncate”
Lexical organization
Phonology

Words that sound alike may be stored “close together”

Brown and McNeill (1966) Tip of the tongue phenomenon (TOT)
% of matches

50
Similar-sounding
words
40
30
Similar-meaning
words
20
10
1
Letters at


2
3
Word
beginning
3
2
1
Word
end
More likely to approximate target words with similar sounding words
than similar meanings
The “Bathtub Effect” - Sounds at the beginnings and ends of words
are remembered best (Aitchison, 2003)
Lexical organization

Frequency

Typically the more common a word, the faster (and
more accurately) it is named and recognized


Typical interpretation: easier to retrieve (or activate)
However, Balota and Chumbley (1984)

Frequency effects depend on task



Lexcial decision - big effect
Naming - small effect
Category verifcation - no effect
 A canary is a bird.
T/F
Lexical organization

Imageability, concreteness, abstractness
Umbrella
Lantern
Freedom
Apple
Knowledge
Evil


More easily
remembered
More easily
accessed
Lexical organization

Grammatical class

Grammatical class constraint on substitution errors
“she was my strongest propeller” (proponent)
“the nation’s dictator has been exposed” (deposed)

Word association tasks

Associate is typically of same grammatical class
Lexical organization

Grammatical class

Open class words


Content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)
Closed class words

Function words (determiners, prepositions, …)
Lexical organization

Semantics

Free associations (see the “cat” demo in earlier lecture)


Most associates are semantically related (rather than
phonologically for example)
Semantic Priming task

For the following letter strings, decide whether it is or is not
an English word
Lexical organization

Related
Semantic Priming task
nurse
doctor
Unrelated shoes
doctor
Responded to faster
“Priming effect”
Lexical organization

Another possibility is that there are multiple levels of representation,
with different organizations at each level
Meaning based representations
Grammatical based representations
Sound based representations
Semantic Networks

Semantic Networks

Words can be represented as an interconnected network
of sense relations

Each word is a particular node

Connections among nodes represent semantic relationships
Collins and Quillian (1969)
Animal
Lexical entry
Bird

has feathers
can fly
has wings
Semantic
Features
has skin
can move around
breathes
Fish
has fins
can swim
has gills
Collins and Quillian Hierarchical Network model


Lexical entries stored in a hierarchy
Representation permits cognitive economy

Reduce redundancy of semantic features
Collins and Quillian (1969)

Testing the model

Semantic verification task

An A is a B
True/False
An apple has teeth
Use time on verification tasks to map out the
structure of the lexicon.
Collins and Quillian (1969)
has skin
can move around
breathes
Animal
Bird
Robin
has feathers
can fly
has wings
Robins have skin

Testing the model
Sentence
Robins eat worms
Robins have feathers
Robins have skin
Verification time
1310 msecs
1380 msecs
1470 msecs
eats worms

has a red breast
Participants do an intersection search
Collins and Quillian (1969)

Problems with the model

Effect may be due to frequency of association


“A robin breathes” is less frequent than “A robin eats
worms”
Assumption that all lexical entries at the same
level are equal

The Typicality Effect


A whale is a fish vs. A horse is a fish
Which is a more typical bird? Ostrich or Robin.
Collins and Quillian (1969)
Animal
Robin and Ostrich occupy the
same relationship with bird.
Bird
Robin
has feathers
can fly
has wings
eats worms Ostrich
has a red breast
has skin
can move around
breathes
Fish
has fins
can swim
has gills
has long legs
is fast
Verification times:
can’t fly “a robin is a bird” faster than
“an ostrich is a bird”
Semantic Networks

Alternative account: store feature information with
most “prototypical” instance (Eleanor Rosch, 1975)
Rate on a scale of 1 to 7 if
these are good examples
of category: Furniture
TV
bed
chair
table
refrigerator
couc
h
desk
1) chair
1) sofa
2) couch
3) table
:
:
12) desk
13) bed
:
:
42) TV
54) refrigerator
Semantic Networks

Alternative account: store feature information with
most “prototypical” instance (Eleanor Rosch, 1975)

Prototypes:

Some members of a category are better instances of the
category than others


Fruit: apple vs. pomegranate
What makes a prototype?


More central semantic features
 What type of dog is a prototypical dog?
 What are the features of it?
We are faster at retrieving prototypes of a category than other
members of the category
Spreading Activation Models

Collins & Loftus (1975)
street

vehicle
car
truck
house
orange
blue
Fire
engine
fire
red

pear
roses
flowers


apple
tulips

bus
Words represented in
lexicon as a network of
relationships
Organization is a web of
interconnected nodes in
which connections can
represent:
fruit
categorical relations
degree of association
typicality
Spreading Activation Models

Collins & Loftus (1975)
street


vehicle

car
bus
truck
blue

house
orange
Fire
engine
fire
red
apple
tulips
pear
roses
flowers
Retrieval of information
fruit
Spreading activation
Limited amount of
activation to spread
Verification times depend
on closeness of two
concepts in a network
Spreading Activation Models

Advantages of Collins and Loftus model



Recognizes diversity of information in a semantic
network
Captures complexity of our semantic
representation (at least some of it)
Consistent with results from priming studies
Spreading Activation Models

More recent spreading activation models


Probably the dominant class of models currently
used
Typically have multiple levels of representations
Activate
Retrieval
Lexical access


Up until this point we’ve focused on structure of
lexicon
But the evidence is all inferred from usage


Speech errors, priming studies, verification, lexical
decision
While structure is important, so are the processes
that may be involved in activating and retrieval the
information

We’ve seen this already a little with intersection searches
and spreading activation
Activate
Retrieval
Lexical access

How do we retrieve the linguistic
information from Long-term memory?


What factors are involved in accessing
(activating and/or retrieving?) information from
the lexicon?
Models of lexical access
Recognizing a word
Recognizing a word
Input
Search for a match
cat
cat
dog
cap
wolf
tree
yarn
cat
claw
fur
hat
Select
word
Retrieve
lexical
information
Cat
cat
noun
Animal, pet,
Meows, furry,
Purrs, etc.
Lexical access

Factors affecting lexical access






Frequency
Semantic priming
Role of prior context
Phonological structure
Morphological structure
Lexical ambiguity
Role of prior context

Swinney (1979)


Hear: “Rumor had it that, for years, the government
building has been plagued with problems. The man was
not surprised when he found several spiders, roaches and
other bugs in the corner of his room.”
Lexical Decision task
Context related:
Context inappropriate:
Context unrelated sew

ant
spy
Results and conclusions


Within 400 msecs of hearing "bugs", both ant and spy are
primed
After 700 msecs, only ant is primed
Morphological structure

Snodgrass and Jarvell (1972)


Do we strip off the prefixes and suffixes of a word
for lexical access?
Lexical Decision Task:


Response times greater for affixed words than words
without affixes
Evidence suggests that there is a stage where prefixes
are stripped.
Models of lexical access

Serial comparison models


Search model (Forster, 1976, 1979, 1987, 1989)
Parallel comparison models


Logogen model (Morton, 1969)
Cohort model (Marslen-Wilson, 1987, 1990)
Logogen model (Morton 1969)
Context
system
Auditory
stimuli
Visual
stimuli
Auditory
analysis
Visual
analysis
Semantic
Attributes
Logogen
system
Available Responses
Output
buffer
Responses
Logogen model



The lexical entry for each word comes with a
logogen
The lexical entry only becomes available
once the logogen ‘fires’
When does a logogen fire?

When you read/hear the word
Think of a logogen as being like a
‘strength-o-meter’ at a fairground
When the bell rings, the
logogen has ‘fired’
‘cat’
[kæt]
• What makes the logogen fire?
– seeing/hearing the word
• What happens once the logogen has fired?
– access to lexical entry!
‘cat’
[kæt]
• So how does this
help us to explain the
frequency effect?
– High frequency
words have a lower
threshold for firing
–e.g., cat vs. cot
‘cot’
[kot]
Low
freq
takes
longer
‘doctor’
[doktə]
• Spreading activation
from doctor lowers the
threshold for nurse to
fire
– So nurse take less
time to fire
doctor
‘nurse’
[nə:s]
Spreading
activation
network
doctor nurse
nurse
Search model
Visual input
Pointers
Decreasing frequency
Entries in order of
Access
codes
Auditory input
/kat/
cat
Mental lexicon mat
cat
mouse
Cohort model

Three stages of word recognition
1) Activate a set of possible candidates
2) Narrow the search to one candidate

Recognition point (uniqueness point) - point at which a word is
unambiguously different from other words and can be
recognized
3) Integrate single candidate into semantic and syntactic context


Specifically for auditory word recognition
Speakers can recognize a word very rapidly

Usually within 200-250 msec
Cohort model

Prior context: “I took the car for a …”
/s/
/sp/
…
soap
spinach
psychologist
spin
spit
sun
spank
…
spinach
spin
spit
spank
…
time
/spi/
spinach
spin
spit
…
/spin/
spin
Comparing the models

Each model can account for major findings (e.g.,
frequency, semantic priming, context), but they do so in
different ways.
 Search model is serial and bottom-up
 Logogen is parallel and interactive (information flows
up and down)
 Cohort is bottom-up but parallel initially, but then
interactive at a later stage