Mental Lexicon

Definition
• The mental lexicon is defined as a mental dictionary
that contains information regarding a word's
meaning, pronunciation, syntactic characteristics,
and so on.
• The mental lexicon is a construct used in linguistics
and psycholinguistics to refer to individual speakers'
lexical, or word, representations. However, not all
scientists agree as to the utility of the mental lexicon
as a scientific construct. Easier understanding mental
lexicon is a person's internalized knowledge of the
properties of words.
Method Inquiry
• Although the mental lexicon is often called a mental
"dictionary", in actuality, research suggests that it
differs greatly from a dictionary. For example, the
mental lexicon is not organized alphabetically like a
dictionary; rather, it seems to be organized in a
more complex manner, with links between
phonologically and semantically related lexical
items.[4] This is suggested by evidence of
phenomena such as slips of the tongue, which
showed that replacing words such as anecdote for
antidote.[4]
• Lexical decision tasks have been used for many
years to access how the mental lexicon is
structured. Participants in this task are required to
respond as quickly and accurately as possible to a
string of letters presented on a screen to say if the
string is a non-word or a real word.[6] Reaction
times from this task indicate that certain words are
more "active" in participants' minds after related
words have been presented.
Theories and perspectives
• One theory about the mental lexicon states that it
organizes our knowledge about words "in some sort
of dictionary."[7] Another states that the mental
lexicon is "a collection of highly complex neural
circuits".[7] The latter, semantic network theory,
proposes the idea of spreading activation, which is a
hypothetical mental process that takes place when
one of the nodes in the semantic network is activated,
and proposes three ways this is done: priming effects,
neighborhood effects, and frequency effects, which
have all been studied in depth over the years.
• Priming is a term used in lexical decision tasks that accounts for decreased reaction times
of related words. Interchangeable with the word "activation" in many cases, priming
refers to the ability to have related words assist in the reaction times of others. In the
example above, the word bread "primed" butter to be retrieved quicker.
• Neighborhood effects refer to the activation of all similar "neighbors" of a target word.
Neighbors are defined as items that are highly confusable with the target word due to
overlapping features of other words. An example of this would be that the word "game"
has the neighbors "came, dame, fame, lame, name, same, tame, gale, gape, gate, and
gave," giving it a neighborhood size of 11 because 11 new words can be constructed by
only changing 1 letter of "game". The neighborhood effect claims that words with larger
neighborhood sizes will have quicker reaction times in a lexical decision task suggesting
that neighbors facilitate the activation of other neighborhood words.
• Frequency effects suggest that words that are frequent in an individual's language are
recognized faster than words that are infrequent. Forster and Chambers, 1973, found
that high frequency words were named faster than low frequency ones, and Whaley,
1978 found that high frequency words were responded to faster than low frequency ones
in a lexical decision task.
Development
• First language development
• Average vocabulary size of an English-speaking child by age.
• One aspect of research on the development of the mental lexicon has
focused on vocabulary growth. Converging research suggests that at
least English children learn several words a day throughout
development. The figure at left illustrates the growth curve of a typical
English-speaking child's vocabulary size.[5]
• The words acquired in the early stages of language development tend
to be nouns or nounlike, and there are some similarities in first words
across children (e.g., mama, daddy, dog).[5] Fast mapping is the idea
that children may be able to gain at least partial information about the
meaning of a word from how it is used in a sentence, what words it is
contrasted with, as well as other factors. This allows the child to quickly
hypothesize about the meaning of a word.
• Bilingual development Edit
• The development of the mental lexicon in bilingual children has
increased in research over recent years, and has shown many
complexities including the notion that bilingual speakers contain
additional and separate mental lexicons for their other languages.
Selecting between two or more different lexicons has shown to have
benefits extending past language processes. Bilinguals significantly
outperform their monolingual counterparts on executive control
tasks. Researchers suggest that this enhanced cognitive ability
comes from continually choosing between L1 and L2 mental
lexicons.[18] Bilinguals have also shown resilience against the onset
of Alzheimer's disease, monolinguals being an average of 71.4 years
old and the bilinguals 75.5 years old when symptoms of dementia
were detected, a difference of 4.1 years.
Impaired access

• Anomic aphasia, aphasia (expressive + receptive aphasia) and Alzheimer's disease can all
affect recalling or retrieving words. Anomia renders a person completely unable to name
familiar objects, places and people,[21] a involves specific naming difficulties; sufferers of
anomia have difficulties recalling words.[21] Anomia is a lesser level of dysfunction, a
severe form of the "tip-of-the-tongue" phenomenon where the brain cannot recall the
desired word.[21] Stroke, head trauma and brain tumors can cause anomia.[21]
• Expressive and receptive aphasia are neurological language disorders.[22] Expressive
aphasia limits the ability to convey thoughts through the use of speech, language or
writing.[21] Receptive aphasia affects a person's ability to comprehend spoken words,
causing disordered sentences that have little or no meaning and which can include
addition of nonce words.[22]
• Harry Whitaker states that Alzheimer's disease patients are forgetful of proper names.
Patients have difficulty generating names, especially with phonological tasks such as words
starting with a certain letter.[23] They also have word-retrieval difficulties in spontaneous
speech but still have relatively preserved naming of presented stimuli.[23] Later, loss of
naming of low-frequency lexical items occurs. Eventually, the loss of ability to comprehend
and name the same lexical item indicates semantic loss of the lexical item.