Project: Organisation of the input lexicon and the semantic system and their influence on visual word recognition.
01-JAN-00 – 31-OCT-02
Connectionis models seem to provide a good means to explain experimental results of visual word recognition. Nevertheless, many questions remain regarding the organisation of the input lexicon and the semantic system, and the nature of the organising principles within these systems. This project entails two independent yet highly interconnected research topics in which several experiments are planned to investigate tht two systems. A masked priming procedure with lexical neighbour words and a letter search task will be used to assess the hypothesis that the input lexicon is organised through other xublexicala representations than through letter specific locations. Current research led to the idea that besides other variables the order of acquiring new concepts ia a crucial factor for the semantic system. This will be tested within a semantic priming procedure and the semantic Simon paradigm. In addition the question of whether the semantic system is unitary or not will be adressed by means of manipulating the catagory membership of the stimuli.