Models of lexical access

Question 1

“Logogen” model (Morton)

Answer 1

PARALLEL ACCESS, BOTTOM-UP

• Logogens can receive inputs simultaneously from either spoken words (activating auditory analysis), written words or preceding context (activate logogens based on semantic attributes).
• Each known word is represented by a logogen so words are recognized when the activation levels exceed some threshold.
• No direct connections between logogens themselves
• Repetition priming effects: once a logogen has been activated, its threshold for activation in temporarily lowered
• Frequency effects: repeated exposure lowers the threshold

Question 2

Frequency ordered bin search model (Forster)

Answer 2

SERIAL SEARCH, BOTTOM UP

• From auditory system
• Lexical representations are organized into bins according to word frequency
• Words are organized in the bins according to word frequency

Question 3

Connectionist model Trace (McClelland and Elman)

Answer 3

PARALLEL AXIS: BOTTOM-UP, TOP-DOWN

• Highly interactive, can take either visual or auditory input.

Composed by multiple simple units that are connected between them and organized in 3 processing levels:
- Auditory: 1st level, analysis by phonological trait
- Phonemes: 2nd level, integrates traits
- Words: superior level, meaning

Within each level, connections are inhibitory and between levels they are excitatory

Question 4

Cohort model (Marslen-Wilson)

Answer 4

PARALLEL AXIS: BOTTOM-UP, TOP-DOWN

Multiple cohort competitors become active immediately after the beginning of the word is detected and are gradually winnowed down to a single candidate as additional acoustic info is taken in.
- Sentence context limits initial cohort (top-down)
- Candidates are dismissed as more phonological info is taken in (bottom-up)

-Uniqueness point
-Incremental language processing: hearers begin to generate hypotheses about the meaning of the incoming speech on the basis of partial acoustic information, refining and revising these hypotheses.

Question 5

Factors influencing word access and word organization

Answer 5

• Uniqueness point
• Frequency
• Age-of-acquisition effect: younger-processed more efficiently
• Lexicality: to say if a word or not, if a word faster than pseudoword. But if pseudoword is a possible word, takes longer
• Phonemic neighbourhood: more difficult if phonologically similar
• Context (priming): semantic, phonological, associative, of repetition or affective
• Imagineability and concreteness and abstractness: high-imaginery= concrete
• Semantics: similarity in meaning, grammatical class or completion of a pair