Preprint: Models of Word Reading and Lexical Decision

[David Plaut]

The following preprint is available via anonymous ftp and the web:

		Structure and function in the lexical system:
    Insights from distributed models of word reading and lexical decision

			       David C. Plaut
 Departments of Psychology and Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University,
    and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh PA, USA

		To appear in Language and Cognitive Processes

The traditional view of the lexical system stipulates word-specific
representations and separate pathways for regular and exception words.  An
alternative approach views lexical knowledge as developing from general
learning principles applied to mappings among distributed representations of
written and spoken words and their meanings.  On this distributed account,
distinctions among words and between words and nonwords are not reified in
the structure of the system but reflect the sensitivity of learning to the
relative systematicity in the various mappings.  Two simulation experiments
address findings that have seemed problematic for the distributed approach.
Both involve a consideration of the role of semantics in normal and impaired
lexical processing.  The first experiment accounts for patients with impaired
comprehension but intact reading in terms of individual differences in the
division of labor between the semantic and phonological pathways.  The second
experiment demonstrates that a distributed network can reliably distinguish
words from nonwords based on a measure of familiarity defined over semantics.
The results underscore the importance of relating function to structure in
the lexical system within the context of an explicit computational framework.

    ftp-host:	cnbc.cmu.edu [128.2.244.1]
    ftp-file:	pub/user/plaut/papers/PlautINPRESSLCP.structure.ps.Z
			OR
		pub/user/plaut/papers/uncompressed/PlautINPRESSLCP.structure.ps
			
    ftp://cnbc.cmu.edu:/pub/user/plaut/papers/PlautINPRESSLCP.structure.ps.Z

    19 pages; 183Kb compressed; 498Kb uncompressed

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David Plaut <plaut at cmu.edu>      Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition and
Mellon Institute 115, CNBC     Departments of Psychology and Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University                  MI 115I, 412/268-5145 (fax -5060)  
4400 Fifth Ave., Pittsburgh PA 15213-2683      http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/~plaut
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one." -Voltaire
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