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Modeling the Mental Lexicon as Part of Long-Term and Working Memory and Simulating Lexical Access in a Naming Task Including Semantic and Phonological Cues

BACKGROUND: To produce and understand words, humans access the mental lexicon. From a functional perspective, the long-term memory component of the mental lexicon is comprised of three levels: the concept level, the lemma level, and the phonological level. At each level, different kinds of word info...

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Autores principales: Stille, Catharina Marie, Bekolay, Trevor, Blouw, Peter, Kröger, Bernd J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7381331/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32774315
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01594
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author Stille, Catharina Marie
Bekolay, Trevor
Blouw, Peter
Kröger, Bernd J.
author_facet Stille, Catharina Marie
Bekolay, Trevor
Blouw, Peter
Kröger, Bernd J.
author_sort Stille, Catharina Marie
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: To produce and understand words, humans access the mental lexicon. From a functional perspective, the long-term memory component of the mental lexicon is comprised of three levels: the concept level, the lemma level, and the phonological level. At each level, different kinds of word information are stored. Semantic as well as phonological cues can help to facilitate word access during a naming task, especially when neural dysfunctions are present. The processing corresponding to word access occurs in specific parts of working memory. Neural models for simulating speech processing help to uncover the complex relationships that exist between neural dysfunctions and corresponding behavioral patterns. METHODS: The Neural Engineering Framework (NEF) and the Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA) are used to develop a quantitative neural model of the mental lexicon and its access during speech processing. By simulating a picture-naming task (WWT 6-10), the influence of cues is investigated by introducing neural dysfunctions within the neural model at different levels of the mental lexicon. RESULTS: First, the neural model is able to simulate the test behavior for normal children that exhibit no lexical dysfunction. Second, the model shows worse results in test performance as larger degrees of dysfunction are introduced. Third, if the severity of dysfunction is not too high, phonological and semantic cues are observed to lead to an increase in the number of correctly named words. Phonological cues are observed to be more effective than semantic cues. CONCLUSION: Our simulation results are in line with human experimental data. Specifically, phonological cues seem not only to activate phonologically similar items within the phonological level. Moreover, phonological cues support higher-level processing during access of the mental lexicon. Thus, the neural model introduced in this paper offers a promising approach to modeling the mental lexicon, and to incorporating the mental lexicon into a complex model of language processing.
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spelling pubmed-73813312020-08-06 Modeling the Mental Lexicon as Part of Long-Term and Working Memory and Simulating Lexical Access in a Naming Task Including Semantic and Phonological Cues Stille, Catharina Marie Bekolay, Trevor Blouw, Peter Kröger, Bernd J. Front Psychol Psychology BACKGROUND: To produce and understand words, humans access the mental lexicon. From a functional perspective, the long-term memory component of the mental lexicon is comprised of three levels: the concept level, the lemma level, and the phonological level. At each level, different kinds of word information are stored. Semantic as well as phonological cues can help to facilitate word access during a naming task, especially when neural dysfunctions are present. The processing corresponding to word access occurs in specific parts of working memory. Neural models for simulating speech processing help to uncover the complex relationships that exist between neural dysfunctions and corresponding behavioral patterns. METHODS: The Neural Engineering Framework (NEF) and the Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA) are used to develop a quantitative neural model of the mental lexicon and its access during speech processing. By simulating a picture-naming task (WWT 6-10), the influence of cues is investigated by introducing neural dysfunctions within the neural model at different levels of the mental lexicon. RESULTS: First, the neural model is able to simulate the test behavior for normal children that exhibit no lexical dysfunction. Second, the model shows worse results in test performance as larger degrees of dysfunction are introduced. Third, if the severity of dysfunction is not too high, phonological and semantic cues are observed to lead to an increase in the number of correctly named words. Phonological cues are observed to be more effective than semantic cues. CONCLUSION: Our simulation results are in line with human experimental data. Specifically, phonological cues seem not only to activate phonologically similar items within the phonological level. Moreover, phonological cues support higher-level processing during access of the mental lexicon. Thus, the neural model introduced in this paper offers a promising approach to modeling the mental lexicon, and to incorporating the mental lexicon into a complex model of language processing. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-07-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7381331/ /pubmed/32774315 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01594 Text en Copyright © 2020 Stille, Bekolay, Blouw and Kröger. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Stille, Catharina Marie
Bekolay, Trevor
Blouw, Peter
Kröger, Bernd J.
Modeling the Mental Lexicon as Part of Long-Term and Working Memory and Simulating Lexical Access in a Naming Task Including Semantic and Phonological Cues
title Modeling the Mental Lexicon as Part of Long-Term and Working Memory and Simulating Lexical Access in a Naming Task Including Semantic and Phonological Cues
title_full Modeling the Mental Lexicon as Part of Long-Term and Working Memory and Simulating Lexical Access in a Naming Task Including Semantic and Phonological Cues
title_fullStr Modeling the Mental Lexicon as Part of Long-Term and Working Memory and Simulating Lexical Access in a Naming Task Including Semantic and Phonological Cues
title_full_unstemmed Modeling the Mental Lexicon as Part of Long-Term and Working Memory and Simulating Lexical Access in a Naming Task Including Semantic and Phonological Cues
title_short Modeling the Mental Lexicon as Part of Long-Term and Working Memory and Simulating Lexical Access in a Naming Task Including Semantic and Phonological Cues
title_sort modeling the mental lexicon as part of long-term and working memory and simulating lexical access in a naming task including semantic and phonological cues
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7381331/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32774315
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01594
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