engleski

Reaction time as a way of exploring the organization of mental lexicon

The representation of words in the brain is fundamentally different from the representation of sentences, i.e. the knowledge of words is different from the knowledge of syntax. The ability to understand a sentence depends on the ability of the speaker to parse the incoming auditory or visual input into a syntactic structure. In contrast, the ability to understand a word depends on the speaker's ability to retrieve the word from storage, i.e. the mental lexicon. What is the content of the mental lexicon and how is it organized? The aim of this paper is to provide an insight into the principles that guide the organization of mental lexicon. A classical priming paradigm will be applied: the subject will be presented with two categories of words, one for animals and the other for hand tools. Every word will be primed with a picture of either an animal or a tool. It is presumed that the reaction time will be shorter for words that are primed with the paired semantic category (tool-tool or animal-animal). These results imply an organization of the mental lexicon that is based upon some features of the objects and gives ground for further imaging research that would search for different localization of words of different categories.

syntax; mental lexicon; reaction time

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