Lexical Semantic Organization in Visually Challenged and Neurotypical Children

Abstract

The words in the lexicon are arranged in a specific pattern. The words belonging to the same lexical category is assumed to be arranged together and this notion is termed as taxonomic arrangement, while the second view believes that the words, which share a common theme, are arranged together, and this kind is arrangement is termed as thematic. Typically, developing children show a developmental trend and this trend as proven by earlier studies is known to shift from taxonomic to thematic. The present study was carried out with the aim of determining lexical semantic organization in visually impaired and typically developing children. Thirty visually impaired children 30 typically developing children in the age range of 6–10 years served as participants. Discrete word association task was employed where participants had to give out five responses after hearing each of the target words. The responses produced by typically developing children had more thematic inclination while the responses produced by visually impaired children showed more of taxonomic dominance. Keywords: Taxonomy, thematic, shift, evoked responses Cite this Article Abhishek B.P., Navya Belpu, Brunda Raj, et al. Lexical Semantic Organization in Visually Challenged and Neurotypical Children. Research & Reviews: A Journal of Bioinformatics . 2018; 5(3): 37–41p.