Mental lexicon

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 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. The mental lexicon differs from the lexicon in that it is not just a general collection of words; instead, it deals with how those words are activated, stored, processed, and retrieved by each speaker. An individual's mental lexicon changes and grows as new words are learned and is always developing, but there are several theorists that argue exactly how this occurs. Some theories about the mental lexicon include the spectrum theory, the dual-coding theory, Chomsky's nativist theory, as well as the semantic network theory. Scientists also study the areas of the brain involved in lexical representations. The following addresses some of the physiological, social, and linguistic aspects of the mental lexicon. Recent studies have also shown the possibility that the mental lexicon can shrink as an individual ages, limiting the number of words they can remember and learn. The development of a second mental lexicon (L2) in bilingual speakers has also emerged as a topic of interest, suggesting that a speaker's multiple languages are not stored together, but as separate entities that are actively chosen from in each linguistic situation. 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. This is suggested by evidence of phenomena such as slips of the tongue, which showed that replacing words such as anecdote for antidote. Also, while dictionaries contain a fixed number of words to be counted, and remain outdated as language is continually changing, the mental lexicon consistently updates itself with new words and word meanings, while getting rid of old, unused words. The active nature of the mental lexicon makes any dictionary comparison unhelpful. Research is continuing to identify the exact way that words are linked and accessed. A common method to analyze these connections is through a lexical decision task. 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. Reaction times from this task indicate that certain words are more 'active' in participants' minds after related words have been presented. An example of this would be to present the word 'bread' to the participant and then see an decreased reaction time later to the word 'butter'. Since the word 'bread' had activated all related words, including 'butter', this decreased reaction time demonstrates that related words are stored closely in the mental lexicon. By doing lexical decision tasks, researchers have been able to analyze what words are stored with what related counterparts, and what can activate these words. Not all linguists and psychologists believe in the mental lexicon's existence and there is much controversy over the concept. One theory about the mental lexicon states that it organizes our knowledge about words 'in some sort of dictionary.' Another states that the mental lexicon is 'a collection of highly complex neural circuits'. 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. In the spectrum theory, at one end 'each phonological form is connected to one complex semantic representation', at the opposite end, homonyms and polysemes have their 'own semantic representation'. The middle of the spectrum contains the theories that 'suggest that related senses share a general or core semantic representation'. The 'dual coding theory (DCT)' contrasts multiple and common coding theories. DCT is 'an internalized nonverbal system that directly represents the perceptual properties and affordances of nonverbal objects and events, and an internalized verbal system that deals directly with linguistic stimuli and responses'. Similarly, we do not observe words 'as elements in a data structure' that are 'retrieved from memory, but rather as stimuli that alter mental states'. Others work around Chomsky's theory that 'all syntactic and semantic features are included directly in the abstract mental representation of a lexical word'.