A comprehensive command of vocabulary is fundamental to second language development, as lexical knowledge underpins all receptive and productive skills and is therefore a key predictor of academic performance across age groups. Beyond its communicative value in enabling precise expression of ideas, emotions, and arguments, vocabulary depth supports learners’ ability to interpret meaning, negotiate ambiguity, and engage effectively in both oral and written discourse. Within this broader lexical landscape, paradigmatic lexical relations particularly synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, polysemy, and homonymy play a crucial role in structuring the mental lexicon and shaping learners’ semantic awareness. This study examines homonymy through the lens of paradigmatic relations in EFL contexts, exploring the theoretical significance of lexical ambiguity as well as the pedagogical challenges it presents in classroom practice. Drawing on survey data from 140 primary and secondary Albanian learners of English, the findings reveal a consistent pattern of difficulty: students encounter homonyms infrequently in their lessons, perceive them as highly challenging, and show limited confidence in distinguishing and using homonymous forms. These patterns reflect a convergence of limited instructional exposure, insufficient use of multimodal teaching aids, and low learner autonomy, all of which hinder the development of deeper lexical understanding and the ability to resolve semantic ambiguity. The results underscore the need for more explicit, systematic, and context rich pedagogical approaches to homonymy within EFL instruction in order to better support learners’ lexical growth and overall communicative competence.

Transformer‐based large language models (LLMs) have recently demonstrated exceptional performance in a variety of linguistic tasks. LLMs primarily combine information across words in a sentence using the attention mechanism, implemented by “attention heads:” these components assign numerical weights linking different words in the input to one another, capturing different relationships between these words. Some attention heads automatically learn to assign weights that accurately encode meaningful linguistic features including, importantly, heads that appear specialized for identifying particular syntactic dependencies. Are syntactic computations in such heads “encapsulated”, i.e., impenetrable to the influence of non‐syntactic information? Such encapsulated computations would be strikingly different from those of the human mind, where non‐syntactic information sources (e.g., semantics) influence parsing from the earliest moments of online processing, and where syntax and semantics are tightly linked in the mental lexicon. Here, we tested whether the activity of “syntax‐specialized” attention heads in transformer‐based LLMs is modulated by one type of semantic information: plausibility. In each of three LLMs (BERT, GPT‐2, and Llama 2), we first identified attention heads specialized for various dependency types; in nearly all cases tested, we then found that implausible semantic information reduces attention between the words that constitute the dependency for which a head is specialized. These results demonstrate that, even in attention heads that are the best a‐priori candidates for syntactic encapsulation, syntactic information is penetrable to semantics. These data are broadly consistent with the integration of syntax and semantics in human minds.

ABSTRACT I compare Adam Toon’s pretense-theoretic mental fictionalism – which views folk psychology (FP) as reliant on indispensable metaphors of an ‘inner world’ – with Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind, interpreted therapeutically. First, I argue Toon’s theory presents a challenge to Wittgenstein. If FP metaphors are essential, as Toon claims, Wittgenstein’s therapeutic goal of eliminating misleading ‘pictures’ seems problematic. I propose a modified Wittgensteinian approach, ‘numbers to leave numbers’, suggesting therapeutic techniques can still be effective even if the problematic metaphors cannot be fully discarded. This involves cultivating a habit of focusing on behavioral criteria to transcend certain philosophical puzzles, irrespective of whether the underlying metaphors are optional. Second, I present a Wittgensteinian critique of Toon’s fictionalism. By examining debates in cognitive psychology, such as the status of the ‘mental lexicon’, I question whether Toon’s theory can adequately distinguish between harmless metaphorical pretense in FP and potentially problematic reifications in empirical science. I suggest that Toon’s account might struggle to define when extensions of folk metaphors become ‘too serious’. Alternative mental fictionalisms are briefly considered in this light.

ABSTRACT In recent years, much research has focused on what happens in the human brain when a perceptual stimulus, such as a picture, is converted into linguistic content, a word. This process is commonly referred to as object naming and is considered a crucial aspect of language processing, production, and cognition. It refers to the identification of an object with a word or phrase, as well as the psychometric method of investigating this human behavior to obtain insights into different aspects of human cognition and language, such as the organization of the mental lexicon, language acquisition, disorders, or cognitive aging. The ability to name objects is considered a fundamental skill in interpersonal communication and has long been studied in numerous disciplines, such as cognitive science, psycholinguistics, psychology, and, more recently, in computer vision and research on language and vision. In the latter two, object naming has become an extremely powerful tool, especially in the development and fine‐tuning of multi‐modal models, facilitating tasks such as visual question answering, image captioning tasks, object detection, or visual scene understanding. Our comprehensive, cross‐linguistic review explores the key findings, commonly cited, and prominent datasets and their applications that establish object naming both in the past and now, as well as discusses its chances and challenges in future work.

ABSTRACT According to Levelt, W. J., Roelofs, A., and Meyer, A. S. [(1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(1), 1–38.] theory of lexical access, word production begins with the selection of a lemma, which gives access to the syntactic properties of the word. The notion of the lemma is well motivated on theoretical grounds and within Roelofs’ computational model WEAVER++, which captures central aspects of the theory [Roelofs, A. (1992). A spreading-activation theory of lemma retrieval in speaking. Cognition, 42(1–3), 107–142.; Roelofs, A. (2014). A dorsal-pathway account of aphasic language production: The WEAVER++/ARC model. Cortex, 59, 33–48.]. But what is the evidence for access to syntactic word representations? The author provides a comprehensive review of the relevant experimental evidence and concludes that, in spite of much research effort, it is still unknown whether or not speakers access abstract syntactic information during single-word access, and that further work within the established research paradigms is unlikely to change this picture. A fruitful way forward may be to broaden the perspective and explore how the syntactic properties of lexical items are retrieved when speakers produce longer utterances, where access to syntactic information is mandatory.

Abstract Features and structures of mental lexicon representation are fundamental in psycholinguistics. However, previous investigations into third language acquisition have varied widely in their results and have seldom involved Mandarin as the L3 of participants. In addition, explorations into how mental lexicon representation develops are far from sufficient. In light of the above, this study investigates 72 Dutch-English-Mandarin trilinguals with beginner and advanced Mandarin levels and combines questionnaires, interviews, and priming experiments to explore the dynamic and static features of L3 lexical representations. Results suggest that lexical representations of their three languages are separate to some extent. Links among the three lexical stores seem to exist, with differing strengths. The link between L2 (the instructional language) and L3 may possibly be slightly stronger than that between L1 and L3 for participants of both Mandarin levels. As trilinguals improve their L3 level, the L1-L3 link strengthens, and the asymmetry may gradually diminish.

Semantic memory network resilience in aging: The role of abstract and semantically diverse words.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients experience cognitive decline due to the deposition of beta-amyloid, which particularly affects their ability to retrieve words in language tasks. A mind map is an activity that involves freely associating and retrieving words related to a given category, providing an integrated assessment of cognitive and linguistic abilities. This study aimed to identify the various characteristics observed during the performance of a digital mind map task in patients with AD pathology, with beta-amyloid deposition confirmed by positron emission tomography imaging. The study involved 48 adults aged 50 and over (30 patients with AD pathology and 18 healthy controls, HC). Participants completed a mind map task where they generated and retrieved words related to specific keywords (travel, family and food). Performance was analysed and compared across three main aspects: (1) keyword responses (number of blanks filled, number of words written), (2) performance time (preparation time for retrieval, writing time, total task time), and (3) word diversity (number of unique words, number of repeated words). First, in terms of keyword responses, there was no significant difference between groups in the number of blanks filled; however, the AD pathology group wrote fewer words than HC. Error analysis revealed that the AD patients were more likely to provide elaborations and non-words compared to HC. Second, regarding performance time, the AD pathology group took longer to prepare for word retrieval and to write the words. Third, in terms of word diversity, the AD pathology group generated fewer unique words and tended to repeat words more often than HC. The study confirms that patients with AD pathology experience difficulties in using their mental lexicon to activate and select appropriate words for retrieval due to damage in the temporal-parietal regions caused by beta-amyloid deposition. This study highlights the potential of digital mind maps as a novel word retrieval task for early differentiation of cognitive impairment in AD. What is already known on the subject Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder marked by beta-amyloid(Aβ) plaques and tau tangles, leading to neuronal loss in memory-related regions. Aβ disrupts neural connectivity, especially in the temporal and parietal lobes, impairing memory and language. Traditional language tasks, such as naming and verbal fluency, are used to detect early cognitive changes but often fail to reliably distinguish mild cognitive impairment from early AD due to pathological diversity. Mind mapping, which requires associative word retrieval and integrates executive, semantic, and lexical processes, may provide a more comprehensive assessment, but its diagnostic value in AD pathology group not yet well studied. What this paper adds to the existing knowledge This study is the first to apply a digital mind mapping task to patients with AD pathology who have objectively confirmed Aβ deposition, directly linking pathological biomarkers to cognitive-linguistic performance. The findings demonstrate that patients with AD pathology, compared to healthy controls, exhibit significant deficits in mind mapping: they write fewer words, produce more circumlocutory and non-word responses, require longer preparation and writing times, and generate less diverse vocabulary. By employing a digital platform, the study provides objective, quantitative measurements of word retrieval, response time, and word diversity, offering a novel approach to assessing the multifaceted cognitive-linguistic deficits associated with AD pathology. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The digital mind mapping task offers a sensitive and ecologically valid tool for detecting early cognitive-linguistic impairment in AD, especially in patients with confirmed Aβ pathology. The multifactorial assessment of word retrieval, timing, and diversity may enhance early differentiation of AD from normal aging and other cognitive disorders, supporting earlier intervention and more precise monitoring of disease progression. Integrating digital mind mapping into clinical practice could improve the identification of subtle language deficits not captured by traditional tasks, contributing to more comprehensive cognitive screening and tailored therapeutic strategies for individuals at risk of or with AD.

This entry introduces an integrated model of reading that situates the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (LQH) within the Reading Systems Framework (RSF). The LQH posits that skilled reading depends on high-quality lexical representations—precise and flexible mappings of orthographic, phonological, morpho-syntactic, and semantic features—stored in the mental lexicon. These representations facilitate automatic word identification, accurate meaning retrieval, and efficient word-to-text integration (WTI), forming the foundation of text comprehension. Extending this micro-level perspective, the RSF positions lexical quality (LQ) within a macro-level cognitive architecture where the lexicon bridges word identification and reading comprehension systems. The RSF integrates multiple knowledge systems (linguistic, orthographic, and general world knowledge) with higher-order processes (sentence parsing, inference generation, comprehension monitoring, and situation model construction), emphasizing the bidirectional interactions between lower-level lexical knowledge and higher-order text comprehension. Central to this model is WTI, a dynamic mechanism through which lexical representations are incrementally incorporated into a coherent mental model of the text. This integrated model carries important implications for theory refinement, empirical investigation, and evidence-based instructional practices.

ABSTRACT Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) often have difficulties with spelling. Orthographic knowledge, which can be separated into general and specific orthographic knowledge, is a key source of information in long term memory children draw upon to make accurate spelling attempts. This paper reports findings from a study aimed to assess whether children’s orthographic knowledge is associated with spelling when vocabulary and working memory have been considered. Forty-three children with DLD and forty-three typically developing children matched for chronological age took part in the study, completing a battery of measures assessing working memory, vocabulary, orthographic knowledge, spelling (real word and pseudoword spelling). Regression analyses were conducted to measure the variation that individual differences in orthographic knowledge accounted for in spelling outcome measures. Results suggest that children with DLD relied more on working memory when making spelling attempts. Typically, developing children were able to utilise orthographic awareness or draw more from their mental lexicon. The results align with an account where children with DLD either have less well specified orthographic knowledge or are less able to access this knowledge when making spelling attempts.

ABSTRACT This study investigates the mental representation and processing of the two types of metaphorical senses in Russian polysemous verbs and adjectives using eye-tracking, sensicality judgment, and semantic clustering tasks. The metaphorical senses under study differ in their semantic proximity to the literal sense, with “proximal” metaphors (e.g. “raise prices”) retaining more semantic components, and “distal” metaphors being semantically bleached (e.g. “raise alarm”). Metaphors differed in their mental representations and processing patterns based on semantic proximity and part of speech. In semantic clustering, proximal metaphors were miscategorized with literal senses more often than distal metaphors. Proximal metaphors in adjectives were more often miscategorized with literal senses, while in verbs they were miscategorized with distal metaphors. In sensicality judgment, verbs showed longer reaction times for proximal metaphors, while adjectives demonstrated higher accuracy for distal metaphors compared to literal senses. In eye-tracking, adjectival distal metaphors triggered more regressions on disambiguating nouns than literal senses. Our findings suggest that distal metaphors are stored and processed as distinct, non-compositional units, while proximal metaphors overlap with literal senses and are processed compositionally. Proximal metaphors in adjectives are closer to literal senses, while in verbs they are closer to distal metaphors, explained by different semantic derivation mechanisms.

Learn what is detectable, detect what is useful: acquisition of German plural as a classification problem.

The scientific and methodological article focuses on approaches to teaching students the theoretical foundations and practical skills required to administer a free association test as part of the Psycholinguistics course. The study employed empirical and experimental research methods, the semantic differential technique, the method of controlled associations, and descriptive data analysis. Together with students, we involved 124 participants of different age groups to take part in the free association test. The general procedure was as follows: participants were asked to choose stimulus words from a closed list and then name the first words (response words) that came to mind and were associated with those stimuli. In this type of test, the number of associations was limited, but no restrictions were imposed on the part of speech or syntactic structure of the responses. Analysis of the results showed that the nature of associations depends on gender, age, and the participants’ level of text comprehension. The findings made it possible to assess the degree of originality and unconventionality of individual thinking. Each person’s associative field is unique, both in the composition of its elements and in the strength of the connections among them. The responses also varied depending on situational factors. Education, life experience, exposure to historical events, and the influence of mass media all have a significant impact on a person’s mental lexicon. Processing the responses made it possible to identify the participants’ psychological state at the moment of testing.

This study investigates how English Education students experience and resolve Tip-of-the-Tongue (TOT) states during English word retrieval. The research uses a qualitative descriptive design to explore students’ natural responses and strategies when they temporarily cannot recall a word. Fifteen seventh-semester students from an English Education Department in Medan participated in individual observation sessions. The data were collected using a PowerPoint presentation containing twenty visual stimuli designed to trigger TOT moments and were analyzed through transcription, coding, and triangulation. The findings show that proper nouns were the most common triggers of TOT states, followed by uncommon concrete and abstract nouns. Five main types of retrieval strategies were identified, including phonological, semantic, gestural, interlingual, and associative strategies. Among them, phonological strategies were most frequently used, followed by semantic strategies, suggesting that learners rely heavily on sound and meaning cues to retrieve words. These results highlight how English learners manage lexical difficulties and show that TOT experiences can provide useful insight into mental lexicon functioning. The study also implies that raising awareness of retrieval strategies may help teachers design speaking and vocabulary activities that support faster word recall and reduce hesitation in communication.

This systematic review synthesises the evolving landscape of lexical availability and semantic network studies across various languages, with a focus on L1 and L2 contexts. Originating from the need to enhance language acquisition efficiency, this research area has expanded to explore the intricate cognitive processes underlying lexical selection and organisation. Utilising the PRISMA guidelines for methodical rigour, this review critically assesses the contributions of 31 studies conducted globally, employing diverse methodologies and focusing on a wide array of populations and linguistic contexts. Key findings highlight the dynamic nature of lexical networks, influenced significantly by factors such as language, age, proficiency, educational stages, and the sociocultural milieu. Innovations in computational tools like DispoGrafo, LexMath, and LexPro have propelled forward our understanding of semantic networks, offering sophisticated analyses of how lexical items interconnect within the mental lexicon. Despite these advances, the review identifies methodological limitations, including the need for consistent participant numbers across comparative studies and consideration of the impact of prompt variability on lexical activation. The move towards online lexical availability tests, while a milestone, warrants cautious implementation to ensure methodological integrity. The review advocates for broader and more in-depth analyses of semantic networks and encourages extending research beyond the predominantly examined languages to enhance our understanding of lexical processing across different linguistic and cultural landscapes. This comprehensive examination not only highlights the significance of lexical availability research in cognitive linguistics and language education, but also outlines pathways for future inquiry, emphasising the potential for technological innovations to unravel the complexities of the human lexicon.

Neural network modeling has played a central role in psycholinguistic studies of lexical processing, but the recent advent of large language models (LLMs) offers a different approach that may yield new insights into the mental lexicon. Four LLMs were prompted across three experiments to test how they generate psycholinguistic ratings of words in comparison with humans. LLM ratings, averaged across varying list contexts, were found to be highly correlated with human ratings, and differences in correlation strengths were partly explained by differences in rating ambiguity. LLM context manipulations strengthened correlations with human ratings through better calibration, and variability in LLM ratings was correlated with human inter-rater variability. Additional results from testing LLM generation of word naming latencies showed functional deviations from factors that underlie human word naming, indicating that lexical function assembly in LLMs is currently limited by patterns of co-occurrence in textual data. Patterns at finer-grained timescales are needed in the training data to model online lexical processes. We conclude that LLMs used context to guide the assembly of generalized lexical functions, rather than recalling ratings and latencies from training data.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13428-025-02898-7.

Lexical retrieval is commonly impaired in many persons with aphasia (PWA). Verbal fluency tasks are often used to assess lexical retrieval ability. However, common methods of analyzing verbal fluency data (e.g., total number of appropriate responses, clustering and switching) fail to adequately capture the underlying organization of the mental lexicon. To better understand the nature of lexical-semantic organization in aphasia, this study applied a semantic network approach to verbal fluency data obtained from 120 healthy controls and 127 PWA (64 fluent and 63 nonfluent). Participants named as many animal category members as they could in 1 min, and their responses were converted into semantic networks. Global network metrics were computed for each group, including average shortest path length, clustering coefficient, and modularity. Compared to the healthy control network, the PWA network was less integrated and more fragmented, reflected by longer average shortest path lengths, reduced clustering, and higher modularity. These disruptions were especially evident in the nonfluent PWA network compared to the fluent PWA network. Complementary spreading activation and percolation analyses demonstrated that PWA networks were both less efficient and less resilient to disruption. Our results demonstrate that network-based analyses of verbal fluency provide a sensitive measure of lexical-semantic organization in aphasia, revealing structural disruptions that are not fully captured by traditional analyses. More broadly, this approach highlights how network science can advance theories of lexical-semantic organization and inform the development of individualized clinical assessments and treatment strategies.

Speakers in conversation have access to word frequency information stored in the mental lexicon. This article examines whether word frequencies play a role as a turn-completion cue in conversation. Based on the Freiburg Multimodal Interaction Corpus (FreMIC), frequencies and frequency-related measures are compared in turn-constructional units (TCUs) from two types of action/turns that are systematically complementary with regard to turn transition: question TCUs, which exert pressure for the next speaker to take over, and storytelling TCUs, which largely resist transition. Based on these systematic tendencies, the focus is on question TCUs that result in speaker change and story TCUs that result in speaker continuation, thereby tying turn-transition inevitably to social action. We address two research questions: RQ #1 - Do word frequencies in the TCUs follow an S-shaped pattern? and RQ #2 - Which frequency-related measures predict that a TCU will be followed by a turn transition or continuation? To address RQ #1, a mixed effects model showed the same S-shape found in prior research in large corpora. To address RQ #2, a mixed-effects model was computed, with turn transition (TT) as a binary outcome variable. The model suggested that turn finality in question TCUs co-occurs with a more pronounced drop in word frequency toward the TCU end than in story TCUs. A follow-up analysis revealed a more asymmetrical (right-leaning) distribution of nouns in turn-final question TCUs. Information extracted from word frequencies may hence serve listeners in conversation as cues to anticipate turn completion in questions as opposed to turn continuation in stories.

The available lexicon collected from Mexican immigrants in Granada, Spain, offers an opportunity to explore not only the lexical influence exerted by the host variety (Granadan) on the vernacular variety (Mexican), but also the close relationships between geolectal synonyms in certain centers of interest. Among these, the center of interest of clothing has proved to be the most prone to generating such associations. The sociodemographic variable of family cohabitation influences both the maintenance and the weakening of relationships between some synonymous pairs. Likewise, as the length of stay of the informants increases, certain associations become weaker, and there is a marked tendency to adopt the most common variant of the host variety. The results obtained provide a deeper understanding of how the mental lexicon of the Mexican community in Granada is organized when in contact with another variety. This situation is of particular interest, since Mexican immigrants face the choice of either maintaining the lexicon of their vernacular variety—considered prestigious within the Spanish-speaking world—or adapting to the host variety, which tends to remain faithful to the Andalusian vernacular while also aligning with the national standard.

Teachers beware: L3 cognates may be difficult to learn. Spelling errors and the multilingual mental lexicon