Models Of Lexical Access Research Articles

The influence of familiarisation and item repetition on the name agreement effect in picture naming.

Name agreement (NA) refers to the degree to which speakers agree on a picture's name. A robust finding is that speakers are faster to name pictures with high agreement (HA) than those with low agreement (LA). This NA effect is thought to occur because LA pictures strongly activate several names, so speakers need time to select one. HA pictures, in contrast, strongly activate a single name, so there is no need to select one name out of several alternatives. Recent models of lexical access suggest that the structure of the mental lexicon changes with experience. Thus, speakers should consider a range of names when naming LA pictures, but the extent to which they consider each of these names should change with experience. We tested these hypotheses in two picture-naming experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were faster to name LA than HA pictures when they named each picture once. Importantly, they were faster to produce modal names (provided by most participants) than alternative names for LA pictures, consistent with the view that speakers activate multiple names for LA pictures. In Experiment 2, participants were familiarised with the modal name before the experiment and named each picture three times. Although there was still an NA effect when participants named the pictures the first time, it was reduced in comparison to Experiment 1 and was further reduced with each picture repetition. Thus, familiarisation and repetition reduced the NA effect but did not eliminate it, suggesting speakers activate a range of plausible names.

The role of word form in gender processing during lexical access: A theoretical review and novel proposal in language comprehension.

In contrast to language production, there are few comprehension models of the representation and use of grammatical gender in long-term memory. To bridge this gap, we conducted a systematic review of empirical studies on the role of gender-form regularities in the recognition of nouns in isolation and within sentences. The results of a final sample of 40 studies suggest that there are two routes for the retrieval of gender during real-time comprehension: a form-based route and a lexical-based route. Our review indicates that the use of these routes depends on the degree of gender transparency of the language and the degree of overtness of the experimental paradigm. To accommodate these findings, we incorporate a dual-route mechanism within a general model of lexical access in comprehension, the AUSTRAL (Activation Using Structurally Tiered Representations and Lemmas) model, and identify directions for future research.

Picture naming test: Linguistic challenges of the method and ways to solve them

The paper considers benefits and drawbacks of the Picture Naming Test (PNT) as a diagnostic method suggesting the ways to improve its diagnostic and research validity. Although this test is popular in both national and international neuropsychological assessment and research practice, its use is largely due to tradition and practical convenience. However, theoretical underpinnings for its effectiveness are not sufficiently represented in the pertinent literature, which determines the relevance of the study. The major objective of the paper is to consider the PNT as a research technique from the point of view of psycholinguistics, cognitive science, and corpus linguistics and to propose integrated approaches for the further development of these tests. The material comprises picture naming tests developed for the Russian and English languages. The study sets the following aims: 1) to define the main features of PNT and the principles of its application viewed from a historical perspective; 2) to identify the theoretical foundations (linguistic and neuropsychological) for its use as a diagnostic tool; 3) to highlight the problematic aspects of the method; 4) to suggest possible ways to eliminate them. To accomplish these tasks, various methods of corpus linguistics are applied throughout the article. The historical outline of PNT development suggests that the current design might stem from earlier contexts of use. A review of existing models of lexical access provides a theoretical basis for the test in its current form and suggests possible avenues for its development grounded in experimental research, advances in linguistics and big data analysis. A separate section of the article presents critique of the most popular tests. Finally, the analysis of the existing English and Russian tests through the corpus-based methodology clearly demonstrates the need for more detailed norming and stimuli selection. By way of conclusion the authors outline the principles of designing Picture Naming Tests for specific purposes and put forward a step-by-step algorithm that enables careful selection of the necessary indicators and parameters.

Profiles of word-finding difficulties in school-aged children.

Current understanding of word-finding (WF) difficulties in children and their underlying language processing deficit is poor. Authors have proposed that different underlying deficits may result in different profiles. The current study aimed to better understand WF difficulties by identifying difficult tasks for children with WF difficulties and by focusing on semantic vs. phonological profiles. Twenty-four French-speaking children with WF difficulties and 22 children without WF difficulties, all aged 7- to 12-years-old, participated. They were compared on a range of measures to cover the overall mechanism of WF and the quality of semantic and phonological representations. The largest differences were found on a parent questionnaire and a word definition task. Cluster analyses revealed "high performance" and "low performance" clusters, with intermediary groups. These clusters did not match the expected semantic vs. phonological profiles derived from models of lexical access, suggesting that WF difficulties may be linked to both semantic and phonological deficits.

The activation of embedded (pseudo-)stems in auditory lexical processing: implications for models of spoken word recognition

ABSTRACT A large literature on visual word recognition has examined the role of (apparent) morphological structure by comparing suffixed (such as treatment), pseudo-suffixed (pigment), and non-suffixed (dogma) words with respect to their embeddings (treat, pig, dog). We examined the processing of these word types, as well as semantic controls, in an auditory primed lexical decision paradigm. The results show significant priming in all conditions relative to an unrelated baseline, with larger priming effects for truly suffixed words than for pseudo-suffixed and non-suffixed words. The results suggest that initial embeddings are activated in spoken word processing, and remain active in ways that do not depend on (apparent) morphological structure. We discuss the implications of these findings for models of lexical access that predict inhibition of disfavoured competitors and models that hold that attempted decomposition is driven by meaning relatedness between the carrier word and its possible embedded stem(s).

Modeling Bilingualism as a Dynamic Phenomenon in Healthy and Neurologically Affected Speakers Across the Lifespan: A Commentary on "Computational Modeling of Bilingual Language Learning: Current Models and Future Directions".

Modeling Bilingualism as a Dynamic Phenomenon in Healthy and Neurologically Affected Speakers Across the Lifespan: A Commentary on "Computational Modeling of Bilingual Language Learning: Current Models and Future Directions".

Acoustic cues to features for Italian vowels as a function of lexical stress and tonal prominence

This study investigated how acoustic cues to features in Italian vowels are affected by lexical stress and tonal prominence. One aspect of an analysis on the LaMIT (Lexical Access Model for Italian) project, this study analyzed the impact of prosodic environment on acoustic cues to features. The LaMIT corpus consists of 100 unique sentences uttered twice by four native Italian speakers [Di Benedetto et al., “Speech recognition of spoken Italian based on detection of landmarks and other acoustic cues to distinctive features,” in 179th ASA Meeting (2020)]. This preliminary experiment focused on vowel /a/. Duration, F0, height, and frontness (measured by F1 and F2 formant frequencies) were estimated for 1098 /a/ instantiations. Every sentence was also annotated for tonal prominence with TOBI (DeCaprio et al., “Using TOBI labels to document patterns of prosodic prominence and their acoustic effects in the LaMIT database,” in 181st ASA Meeting (2021)]. Preliminary results show that lexical stress and tonal prominence of /a/ generally have a measurable impact on the vowel’s acoustic realization. Specifically, F1 values of stressed /a/ are greater than those of unstressed /a/; likewise, F1 values of tonally prominent /a/ (always stressed) are greater than those of their stressed but non-prominent counterparts.

Using tone and break indices labelling to document patterns of prosodic prominence and their acoustic effects in a database of spoken Italian sentences

This study examined how tonal prominence impacts the acoustic cues to features of Italian vowels. It was one aspect of an analysis of the LaMIT (Lexical Access Model for Italian) project [Di Benedetto et al., “Speech recognition of spoken Italian based on detection of landmarks and other acoustic cues to distinctive features,” in 179th ASA Meeting, Chicago, IL, 8–12 December (2020)]. We strove to understand and systematize the quantitative changes to vowel quality provoked by prosodic and lexical stress, using the LaMIT corpus (100 Italian sentences recited twice by four speakers). Prominent vowels were classified with the TOBI (Tones and Break Indices) labelling method. Accents deemed tonally prominent, known as “pitch accents,” were starred and given a label that reflected their F0 contours. Labels were limited to those put forth by Avesani (“ToBIt: Un sistema di trascrizione per l’intonazione italiana,” in Atti 5e Giornate di Studio del Gruppo di Fonetica Sperimentale, Povo, Italy, pp. 85–98) as constitutive of the prosody of standard Italian. Labels also marked silences, elisions, and spaces between words. Results will clarify if prominence in Italian induces enhanced vowel sonority, or instead a “hyperarticulation” of distinctive segments, contributing to an ongoing debate on the subject.

Unveiling the nature of interaction between semantics and phonology in lexical access based on multilayer networks

An essential aspect of human communication is the ability to access and retrieve information from ones’ ‘mental lexicon’. This lexical access activates phonological and semantic components of concepts, yet the question whether and how these two components relate to each other remains widely debated. We harness tools from network science to construct a large-scale linguistic multilayer network comprising of phonological and semantic layers. We find that the links in the two layers are highly similar to each other and that adding information from one layer to the other increases efficiency by decreasing the network overall distances, but specifically affecting shorter distances. Finally, we show how a multilayer architecture demonstrates the highest efficiency, and how this efficiency relates to weak semantic relations between cue words in the network. Thus, investigating the interaction between the layers and the unique benefit of a linguistic multilayer architecture allows us to quantify theoretical cognitive models of lexical access.

Bilingual Lexical Representation and Its Access

The purpose of this paper is to explore the terminology, concepts and access to bilingual lexical representation. The core problem of linguistic cognitive structure is linguistic representation which is the reflection of individual psychology on linguistic knowledge. In terms of linguistic representation, the research and experiments on the evidence of lexical representation in modern psycholinguistic period are reviewed. Psycholinguistic studies attempt to apply elucidate language theories and model systems to operate and interpret representational data. We recognize that the use of the concept of lexical representation may contribute to the search for "psychological grammar" .Moreover, we present the original intention of studying bilingual representation and three approaches of the bilingual lexical representation: lexical meaning, direct representation of reality, functional representations. Our focuses are models of lexical access, variables that influence lexical access and appraising models of lexical access. Then we represent models of lexical access, which are influenced by variety of factors, including the frequency of a word, its phonological structure, its syntactic category, its morphological structure, the presence of semantically related words, and the existence of alternative meaning of the word. It is concluded that bilingual lexical representation access is influenced by a variety of factors.

Speech perception in a second language: Hearing is believing-seeing is not.

This study examined the effects of the speaker's face and accent on second language (L2) speech perception. Forty-two Chinese speakers of English immersed in the L2 environment were instructed to perform a cross-modal semantic judgement task. They saw an Asian or Caucasian face on the screen and heard word pairs in L2 in a native English accent or a Chinese accent, and were asked to judge whether the word pairs were related to each other in meaning or not. Results showed that for words presented in the native accent, there was a semantic effect in both reaction time and accuracy, irrespective of the face shown. For words presented in the non-native accent, the RT data showed a semantic effect, whereas the accuracy revealed a reversed semantic effect. The speed-accuracy trade-off suggests a relatively weak semantic effect. These patterns were not modulated by the faces accompanying the word pairs. These results suggest that the cue of accent plays an important role during bilinguals' speech perception in L2, such that non-native accent hampers speech perception, even when it matches bilinguals' first language. In contrast, bilinguals do not seem to depend on the social indexical cue of the face when it is not reliable. The present findings hold implications for the Bilingual Model of Lexical Access (BIMOLA) of bilingual speech perception and the monolingual models of social speech perception.

Can machines classify picture naming errors? Evidence from Dell’s model

Can machines classify picture naming errors? Evidence from Dell’s model

The shape of things to come in speech production: Visual form interference during lexical access.

Naming a picture is slower in categorically related compared with unrelated contexts, an effect termed semantic interference. This effect has informed the development of all contemporary models of lexical access in speech production. However, category members typically share visual features, so semantic interference might in part reflect this confound. Surprisingly, little work has addressed this issue, and the relative absence of evidence for visual form interference has been proposed to be problematic for production models implementing competitive lexical selection mechanisms. In a series of five experiments using two different naming paradigms, we demonstrate a reliable visual form interference effect in the absence of a category relation and show the effect is more likely to originate during lexical or later response selection than during perceptual/conceptual processing. We conclude visual form interference in naming is a significant complicating factor for studies of semantic interference effects and discuss the implications for current accounts of lexical access in spoken word production.

Baseball fans don't like lumpy batters: Influence of domain knowledge on the access of subordinate meanings.

Two experiments investigated the effects of domain knowledge on the resolution of ambiguous words with dominant meanings related to baseball. When placed in a sentence context that strongly biased toward the non-baseball meaning (positive evidence), or excluded the baseball meaning (negative evidence), baseball experts had more difficulty than non-experts resolving the ambiguity. Sentence contexts containing positive evidence supported earlier resolution than did the negative evidence condition for both experts and non-experts. These experiments extend prior findings, and can be seen as support for the reordered access model of lexical access, where both prior knowledge and discourse context influence the availability of word meanings.

Activation of dominant hemisphere association cortex during naming as a function of cognitive performance in mild traumatic brain injury: Insights into mechanisms of lexical access.

Patients with a history of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and objective cognitive deficits frequently experience word finding difficulties in normal conversation. We sought to improve our understanding of this phenomenon by determining if the scores on standardized cognitive testing are correlated with measures of brain activity evoked in a word retrieval task (confrontational picture naming). The study participants (n = 57) were military service members with a history of mTBI. The General Memory Index (GMI) determined after administration of the Rivermead Behavioral Memory Test, Third Edition, was used to assign subjects to three groups: low cognitive performance (Group 1: GMI ≤ 87, n = 18), intermediate cognitive performance (Group 2: 88 ≤ GMI ≤ 99, n = 18), and high cognitive performance (Group 3: GMI ≥ 100, n = 21). Magnetoencephalography data were recorded while participants named eighty pictures of common objects. Group differences in evoked cortical activity were observed relatively early (within 200 ms from picture onset) over a distributed network of left hemisphere cortical regions including the fusiform gyrus, the entorhinal and parahippocampal cortex, the supramarginal gyrus and posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus, and the inferior frontal and rostral middle frontal gyri. Differences were also present in bilateral cingulate cortex and paracentral lobule, and in the right fusiform gyrus. All differences reflected a lower amplitude of the evoked responses for Group 1 relative to Groups 2 and 3. These findings may indicate weak afferent inputs to and within an extended cortical network including association cortex of the dominant hemisphere in patients with low cognitive performance. The association between word finding difficulties and low cognitive performance may therefore be the result of a diffuse pathophysiological process affecting distributed neuronal networks serving a wide range of cognitive processes. These findings also provide support for a parallel processing model of lexical access.

Do Bilinguals Automatically Activate Their Native Language When They Are Not Using It?

Most models of lexical access assume that bilingual speakers activate their two languages even when they are in a context in which only one language is used. A critical piece of evidence used to support this notion is the observation that a given word automatically activates its translation equivalent in the other language. Here, we argue that these findings are compatible with a different account, in which bilinguals "carry over" the structure of their native language to the non-native language during learning, and where there is no activation of translation equivalents. To demonstrate this, we describe a model in which language learning involves mapping native language phonological relationships to the non-native language, and we show how it can explain the results attributed to automatic activation of translation equivalents.

Facilitation effects of cueing techniques in two Sesotho speakers with anomia

Aphasiologists developing treatments for anomia should closely align therapy methods with the typological and morphological characteristics of the language in question. The lead author initiated this study to develop more defensible interventions for speakers of Sesotho, a South African language. Prefix-based cueing (our alternative name for initial phoneme cueing that describes these cues in Sesotho-oriented terms) was compared to a novel technique, root-based cueing (RBC). While prefix-based cues are described in the literature, we hypothesized root-based cues would be more appropriate in this context since they were thought to be more consonant with the linguistic parameters of Sesotho. Two speakers with aphasia, who demonstrated significant anomic symptoms, served as participants. We used a multiple-baseline, single case study design. Two 144-item word lists were developed with every item represented by a photograph. Each of the two word lists was associated with one of the two cueing techniques investigated. After baseline measurements were obtained, each participant attended eight facilitation sessions for each cueing condition, resulting in eight data points per condition and participant. For both participants, RBC resulted in greater naming performance than cueing by means of initial phonemes. Our explanation of these results is based on the Interactive Lexical Network model of lexical access; root-based cues may be more effective because they more efficiently constrain the number of lemmas activated after a cue is provided. We argue that a confluence of factors (word-retrieval processes and the character of Sesotho morphosyntax) gave rise to the noted differences in naming facilitation.

Phonological facilitation effects on naming latencies and viewing times during noun and verb naming in agrammatic and anomic aphasia

Background: Phonological priming has been shown to facilitate naming in individuals with aphasia, as well as healthy speakers, resulting in faster naming latencies. However, the mechanisms of phonological facilitation (PF) in aphasia remain unclear.Aims: Within discrete vs. interactive models of lexical access, this study examined whether PF occurs via the sub-lexical or lexical route during noun and verb naming in agrammatic and anomic aphasia.Methods & Procedures: Thirteen participants with agrammatic aphasia and 10 participants with anomic aphasia and their young and age-matched controls (n = 20/each) were tested. Experiment 1 examined noun and verb naming deficit patterns in an off-line confrontation naming task. Experiment 2 examined PF effects on naming both word categories using eyetracking priming paradigm.Outcomes & Results: Results of Experiment 1 showed greater naming difficulty for verbs than for nouns in the agrammatic group, with no difference between the two word categories in the anomic group. For both participant groups, errors were dominated by semantic paraphasias, indicating impaired lexical selection. In the phonological priming task (Experiment 2), young and age-matched control groups showed PF in both noun and verb naming. Interestingly, the agrammatic group showed PF when naming verbs, but not nouns, whereas the anomic group showed PF for nouns only.Conclusions: Consistent with lexically mediated PF in interactive models of lexical access, selective PF for different word categories in our agrammatic and anomic groups suggest that phonological primes facilitate lexical selection via feedback activation, resulting in greater PF for more difficult (i.e., verbs in agrammatic and possibly nouns in anomic group) lexical items.

Ken Steven’s research and influence on automatic speech recognition

This talk will address Dr. Kenneth Steven’s considerable influence in the area of speech recognition. Central to Ken’s model of lexical access is the relationship between acoustics and articulation. Binary distinctive features are identified from the continuous signal based on acoustic cues that are tied to articulation. As such, variability in this parameterization is reduced from that seen in the physical signal. The acoustic features are then matched against the lexicon where there is generally only one representation for each word. This lexical representation consists of a bundle of distinctive features. In contrast, state-of-the-art recognizers use acoustic features that are not tied to articulation. Consequently, they are highly variable, resulting in the recognizer’s over-reliance on sophisticated machine-learning tools and statistical signal processing methodologies that are data intensive and often fail to generalize. Further, multiple lexical representations of each word in terms of acoustic units called tri-phones are needed to cope with pronunciation variability. While Ken’s model has not been fully realized, it has motivated research into extraction of the distinctive features, investigations of alternate articulation-based representations, and marrying these representations with well-established recognition back-ends to study gains in robustness. Examples from studies and their promise relative to state-of-the-art methods will be given.

With or without semantic mediation: retrieval of lexical representations in sign production.

How are lexical representations retrieved during sign production? Similar to spoken languages, lexical representation in sign language must be accessed through semantics when naming pictures. However, it remains an open issue whether lexical representations in sign language can be accessed via routes that bypass semantics when retrieval is elicited by written words. Here we address this issue by exploring under which circumstances sign retrieval is sensitive to semantic context. To this end we replicate in sign language production the cumulative semantic cost: The observation that naming latencies increase monotonically with each additional within-category item that is named in a sequence of pictures. In the experiment reported here, deaf participants signed sequences of pictures or signed sequences of Italian written words using Italian Sign Language. The results showed a cumulative semantic cost in picture naming but, strikingly, not in word naming. This suggests that only picture naming required access to semantics, whereas deaf signers accessed the sign language lexicon directly (i.e., bypassing semantics) when naming written words. The implications of these findings for the architecture of the sign production system are discussed in the context of current models of lexical access in spoken language production.