Unit 2 (September 12)

Word processing - lexical access, processing and word recognition.

Modularity and Context Effects

A word is what I take it to mean; nothing more, nothing less. (Paraphrase from Through the Looking Glass)

Orienting Questions:

Whatís in a word?

Whatís in a concept or idea?

How are the two related?

Do words have absolute meanings or are all word meanings relative? Is absolute more true for some words than for some others? What kinds might it be more true for? Less true for? In other words are all words ambiguous, but some more so than others?

How is the internal lexicon organized? What are the implications of different lexical organizations for cognitive processes of word recognition? Is the organization of the mental lexicon different for persons who are multilingual as compared to unilingual?

Readings

Everyone should read the * readings. Then choose to read either McClelland or Simpson.

Balota, D.A. (1994). Visual Word recognition: The journey from features to meaning. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistic research (pp. 303-358). NY: Academic Press. (pdf)

Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1998). The mapping between the mental and the public lexicon. In P. Carruthers & J. Boucher (Eds.), Language and thought: Interdisciplinary themes (pp. 184-200). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (pdf)

On the Modularity Issue:

McClelland, J. L. (1987). The case for interactionism in language processing. In M.

Coltheart (Ed.), Attention and Performance XII: The psychology of reading (pp. 3-36A). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. (pdf)

Simpson, G. B., (1994). Context and the processing of ambiguous words. In M. A. Gernsbacher (ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 359 ó 374). NY: Academic Press. (pdf)

Additional Readings:

On multiple senses of word meanings:

Anderson, R. C., & Ortony, A. (1975). On putting apples into bottles: A problem of polysemy. Cognitive Psychology, 7, 167-180.

The mental lexicon in speakers of multiple languages:

Paivio, A. (1991). Mental representation in bilinguals. In A. G. Reynolds (Ed.), Bilingualism, multiculturalism, and second language learning (pp. 113-126). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.