The word "lexicon" or lexicon has been used within the field of psycholinguisticsto refer to the "mental lexicon" of a speaker of a language. One of the central questions of contemporary psycholinguistics is the study of the acquisition of Lexical knowledge and how it is organized in a speaker's memory for access and use righ now. For many psycholinguists, the fact that a speaker can access a huge amount of vocabulary stored in her memory, both in production and comprehension processes, it is a proof sure that the mental lexicon is organized and structured in such a way as to allow access righ now.
Access Routes to the Lexicon.
For some authors, the level of processing at which the two processes converge is the lexical level. That is why the models from this perspective (Dual Path Hypothesis) speak of two independent systems of word recognition: A for spoken words, via the phonological path, and B for written words (via the direct path = orthographic representation or by the route
Other authors say that the convergence between auditory and visual recognition processes is done before accessing the lexicon. (Single path hypothesis). They postulate a prelexic code (phonological representation of the word, in reading it is necessary to "recode" the visual stimulus to its phonological description) common access for visual and auditory materials, that is why it has called the hypothesis of the phonological remodification, and is based on the fact that the perception of speech and the auditory recognition of language are universal processes, while that reading is not and that reading skills emerge after speech perception skills and are acquired through explicit instruction. Phonological recoding is mandatory and is done by graphemic-phonemic conversion rules.
Advantages and disadvantages of the single path hypothesis
Although the phonological code is essential to acquire reading, it does not seem "economic" since it gives more work to the perceptual processor. Furthermore, in languages with irregular spelling, the phonological path cannot account for the reading of spelling words. Equally unsuitable for ideographic languages such as Chinese. > Next: Some Empirical Evidence Relating to Access Routes
Empirical Tests Relative to the Access Routes to the lexicon.
Experimental evidence. Despite the theoretical inconsistencies, there is evidence of phonological medication written words:
- One proof is that irregularly spelled words take longer to be recognized. (It would not be so if both kinds of words were recognized interchangeably through the visual path.)
- In a well-known lexical recognition experiment (Lewis and Rubesnstein) readers took longer to reject "pseudo-homophones" (pseudo-words that are pronounced identically to the real word) that "pseudo-words". It was interpreted as an indication that it is identified from the pronunciation of the word.
- Mayor, Schvameveldt and Urdí asked the subjects to respond to pairs of stimuli, some formed by words of similar spelling that also rhymed and others with similar spelling but without rhyme.
The quickest lexical judgments were in the orthographically and phonologically similar pairs. These data (Garnham and Forster) have been judged as evidence showing phonological recoding only indirectly and circumstantial since the tasks to be carried out may include processes subsequent to the recognition process itself. Therefore, these data do not clearly demonstrate that recoding is a mandatory process to identify written words, (although it may be a support strategy when the visual access system fails and may play an important role in post-lexical comprehension processes of sentences, by allowing first a visual access and then a phonological one to the stimulus, avoiding constant backtracking in reading; Foster). On the other hand, and although the phonological path is supported, it does not exclude that there may be use of the visual path of access to the lexicon. The evidence in favor of the dual path (independence of the visual and phonological path of access to the lexicon) comes from two sources:
Experimental studies: Kleiman study with two simultaneous tasks:
- Classify words visually; sometimes say if two words had similar meanings or were semantically related and other times say if two words rhymed.
- While they were doing these tasks, they had to repeat aloud a sequence of numbers that they were listening to through headphones.
It was observed that the repetition of numbers (a task that probably requires phonological resources) interfered with rhyme judgments but not with rhyme judgments. semantic, indicating that access to the phonological code is necessary to effectively perform certain kinds of reading tasks but not all.
Other studies show that the differences in the recognition time of regular and irregular words disappear if they are high-frequency words (Seidenberg) and when subjects are induced to respond quickly (Stanovich and Baner); that is, when the supporting post-lexical processes that seem to be responsible for phonological recoding are hampered.
Neurological reading disorders. (dyslexias)
The symptoms of dyslexias originating from a local neurological lesion present highly selective and complementary patterns of deficit and conservation:
- Some appear to have disabled the visual pathway although the phonological pathway is practically intact (superficial dyslexia) and they are unable to read regular words correctly, get confused between homophone words and make spelling words regular irregular; but they read regular words and psudo-words without problems.
- Phonological dyslexia makes it difficult for them to read infrequent or unfamiliar words (which requires phonological analysis) while they normally read familiar words. It is said to be a selective phonological pathway disorder and only the visual pathway is used.
- Finally, profoundly dyslexic cannot read pseudo-words and certain types of words (verbs and words with abstract meaning) and they make semantic word-substitution errors. It is such a far-reaching disorder that it is not relevant to discriminate the access routes to the lexicon.
Most of the authors speak of the coexistence of two access paths, one lexical or visual and the other phonological (non-lexical) and the use of one or the other depends on several factors, both lexical and idiomatic;
As far as lexical factors are concerned, the most frequent words are recognized by the visual route and the less frequent or unknown by the phonological route. The irregular ones by the visual.
Regarding idiomatic factors and taking into account that there are orthographically transparent languages and opaque, we will point out that the more opaque and irregular the more easily it will be accessed by a direct route = visual and vice versa.
Finally, it is assumed that as the individual's reading skills increase, analytical strategies are abandoned. reading and the individual access processes to the lexical entries stored in memory are automated.
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