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Across languages, age of acquisition (AoA) is a critical psycholinguistic factor in lexical processing, reflecting the influence of learning experience. Early-acquired words tend to be processed more quickly and accurately than late-acquired words. Recently, an integrated view proposed that both the mappings between representations and the construction of semantic representations contribute to AoA effects, thus, predicting larger AoA effects for words with arbitrary mappings between representations as well as for tasks requiring greater semantic processing. We investigated how these predictions generalize to the Chinese language system that differs from alphabetic languages regarding the ease of mappings and semantic involvement in lexical processing. A cross-task investigation of differential psycholinguistic effects was conducted with large character naming and lexical decision datasets to establish the extent to which semantics is involved in the two tasks. We focused on examining the effect sizes of lexical-semantic variables and AoA, and the interaction between AoA and consistency. The results demonstrated that semantics influenced Chinese character naming more than lexical decision, which is in contrast with the findings related to English language, though, critically, AoA effects were more pronounced for character naming than for lexical decision. Additionally, an interaction between AoA and consistency was found in character naming. Our findings provide cross-linguistic evidence supporting the view of multiple origins of AoA effects in the language-processing system.

The looking-while-listening (LWL) paradigm is frequently used to measure toddlers’ lexical processing efficiency (LPE). Children's LPE is associated with vocabulary size, yet other linguistic, cognitive, or social skills contributing to LPE are not well understood. It also remains unclear whether LPE measures from two types of LWL trials (target-initial versus distractor-initial trials) are differentially associated with the abovementioned potential correlates of LPE. We tested 18- to 24-month-olds and found that children's word learning on a fast-mapping task was associated with LPE measures from all trials and distractor-initial trials but not target-initial trials. Children's vocabulary and pragmatic skills were both associated with their fast-mapping performance. Executive functions and pragmatic skills were associated with LPE measures from distractor-initial but not target-initial trials. Hence, LPE as measured by the LWL paradigm may reflect a constellation of skills important to language development. Methodological implications for future studies using the LWL paradigm are discussed.

Previous research has established that bilinguals automatically activate lexical items in both of their languages in a nonselectivemanner, even when processing linguistic information in the second language (L2) alone. However, whether this co-activation extends to the sub-lexical level remains debated. In this study, we investigate whether bilinguals access sub-lexical information while processing in their L2. Thirty-two Chinese–English bilinguals and thirty-one English monolinguals completed an EEG-based semantic relatedness task, during which they judged whether pairs of English words were related in meaning or not (±S). Unbeknownst to the participants, the form (±F) of the Chinese translations in half of the pairs shared a sub-lexical semantic radical. This leads to four conditions: +S+F, +S−F, −S+F, and −S−F. This design, along with the comparison to English monolinguals, allows us to examine if bilinguals’ native language is activated at the sub-lexical level when they are exposed only to L2. The results revealed that both groups showed sensitivity to semantic relatedness, as evidenced by a greater N400 for semantic unrelated pairs than related pairs, with monolinguals eliciting a more pronounced difference. Bilinguals, on the other hand, exhibited a greater P200 difference compared to monolinguals, indicating greater sensitivity to the hidden Chinese radical/form manipulation. These results suggest that highly proficient bilinguals automatically engage in lexical co-activation of their native language during L2 processing. Crucially, this co-activation extends to the sub-lexical semantic radical level.

This study investigates whether and, if so, how cognates facilitate lexical–semantic processing during early bilingual development. Additionally, we examine the interaction between the cognate facilitation effect (CFE) and bilingual experience factors, such as language proficiency, exposure, and age. We investigated language backgrounds and recorded event-related potentials during a semantic priming task in Dutch–German bilingual children. Most participants were Dutch-dominant, characterized by higher exposure and proficiency in Dutch. We compared the N400 response to target words preceded by semantically related cognate versus non-cognate primes. We found a reduced N400 effect (indexing cognate facilitation) only in the non-dominant language (nDL; German). Individual difference analyses further revealed that higher proficiency of nDL and increasing age attenuated the CFE. In contrast, higher cumulative exposure was associated with an amplified CFE. These findings suggest that cross-linguistic activation in lexical–semantic processing may benefit younger children with either lower proficiency or higher exposure to their non-dominant language during language processing. Together, the study offers direct neural evidence for bilingual cognate facilitation effects and highlights the importance of investigating interactions with external factors in early bilingualism. Future longitudinal research should examine whether cognate reliance serves as a temporary scaffolding mechanism for the acquisition of the non-dominant language.

For decades, scientists have been trying to solve the problem of dementia, with no cure currently available. Semantic–lexical impairment is well established as the early critical sign of dementia, although there are still gaps in knowledge that must be investigated. In this study, we used fMRI to observe the neural activity of 31 subjects, including 16 HC (Healthy Control) and 15 AD (Alzheimer’s Disease), who participated in the naming task. The neuropsychology profile of HC (Healthy Control) and AD (Alzheimer’s Disease) are discussed in this study. The involvement of FG (Fusiform Gyrus) and IFG (Inferior Frontal Gyrus) shows dominant activation in both of the groups. We observed a decrease in neural activity in the AD group, resulting in semantic deficit problems in this preliminary study. Furthermore, ROI analysis was performed and revealed both hyperactivation and hypoactivation in the AD group. The compensatory mechanism demonstrated during the task, due to the effort required to identify an animal’s name, represents the character profile of AD.

Lexical knowledge is complex, multidimensional, and difficult to pin down to a set of defined components. The development, organization, and use of lexical knowledge in the first and additional languages are studied in a number of neighbouring disciplines beyond second language acquisition and applied linguistics, including psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, computational linguistics, and language education. In this introduction, we highlight how the five articles in this special issue hone our understanding of different aspects of second language (L2) lexical knowledge, its acquisition, and use by adopting innovative research design, methods, and approaches to data collection and analysis from these distinct but related disciplines, affording new theoretical and empirical insights.

OCP-Place, a cross-linguistically well-attested constraint against pairs of consonants with shared [place], is psychologically real. Studies have shown that the processing of words violating OCP-Place is inhibited. Functionalists assume that OCP arises as a consequence of low-level perception: a consonant following another with the same [place] cannot be faithfully perceived as an independent unit. If functionalist theories were correct, then lexical access would be inhibited if two homorganic consonants conjoin at word boundaries—a problem that can only be solved with lexical feedback. Here, we experimentally challenge the functional account by showing that OCP-Place can be used as a speech segmentation cue during pre-lexical processing without lexical feedback, and that the use relates to distributions in the input. In Experiment 1, native listeners of Dutch located word boundaries between two labials when segmenting an artificial language. This indicates a use of OCP-Labial as a segmentation cue, implying a full perception of both labials. Experiment 2 shows that segmentation performance cannot solely be explained by well-formedness intuitions. Experiment 3 shows that knowledge of OCP-Place depends on language-specific input: in Dutch, co-occurrences of labials are under-represented, but co-occurrences of coronals are not. Accordingly, Dutch listeners fail to use OCP-Coronal for segmentation.

We introduce the blueprint of the Ontogenesis Model of the L2 Lexical Representation (OM) that focuses on the development of lexical representations. The OM has three dimensions: linguistic domains (phonological, orthographic, and semantic), mappings between domains, and networks of lexical representations. The model assumes that fuzziness is a pervasive property of the L2 lexicon: most L2 lexical representations are low resolution and the ontogenetic curve of their development does not reach the optimum (i.e., the ultimate stage of their attainment with optimal encoding) in one or more dimensions. We review the findings on lexical processing and vocabulary training to show that the OM has a potential to provide an interpretation for the results that have been treated separately and to move us forward in building a comprehensive model of L2 lexical acquisition and processing.

•Anterior inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) represents lexico-semantic information.•Sublexical processing involves posterior areas, like the supplementary motor area.•Anterior ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOTC) represents semantic information.•Areas posterior to the vOTC, like V3-V4, participate in sublexical representations.•Psycholinguistic and NLP models converge in ATL, anterior IFG and parahippocampus. While the neural underpinnings of semantic cognition have been extensively studied, the brain mechanisms that allow the extraction of meaning from the initially perceptual visual linguistic input are less understood. These mechanisms have typically been explored through the analysis of psycholinguistic properties that reflect key aspects of semantic processing (e.g., word frequency, familiarity or concreteness), and more recently, through natural language processing (NLP) models. However, both approaches lack a direct comparison of sublexical (i.e., phonological and orthographic) and lexico-semantic aspects of words, with NLP models. Understanding how sublexical and lexico-semantic systems interact and/or overlap is a current challenge in the field of neurobiology of language. In this fMRI study, 30 participants performed a lexical decision task in the MRI, where all aforementioned sublexical and lexico-semantic properties were carefully controlled. The resulting models reflected either sublexical, semantic, or NLP (word vector) relations, which were compared to multivariate brain patterns in representational similarity analysis. Our findings reveal that sublexical and lexico-semantic representations recruit different areas of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOTC). The anterior IFG and vOTC represented semantic models, while regions posterior to the IFG, like supplementary motor area (SMA), or to the vOTC, like areas V3-V4, showed representations of sublexical models. Importantly, both semantic and NLP models converged in semantic hubs, including the inferior anterior temporal lobe (ATL), parahippocampal gyrus, or anterior IFG. The implications of these results are discussed in line with the most recent neuroscientific evidence.

Word frequency is the most important variable in research on word processing and memory. Yet, the main criterion for selecting word frequency norms has been the availability of the measure, rather than its quality. As a result, much research is still based on the old Kučera and Francis frequency norms. By using the lexical decision times of recently published megastudies, we show how bad this measure is and what must be done to improve it. In particular, we investigated the size of the corpus, the language register on which the corpus is based, and the definition of the frequency measure. We observed that corpus size is of practical importance for small sizes (depending on the frequency of the word), but not for sizes above 16–30 million words. As for the language register, we found that frequencies based on television and film subtitles are better than frequencies based on written sources, certainly for the monosyllabic and bisyllabic words used in psycholinguistic research. Finally, we found that lemma frequencies are not superior to word form frequencies in English and that a measure of contextual diversity is better than a measure based on raw frequency of occurrence. Part of the superiority of the latter is due to the words that are frequently used as names. Assembling a new frequency norm on the basis of these considerations turned out to predict word processing times much better than did the existing norms (including Kučera & Francis and Celex). The new SUBTL frequency norms from the SUBTLEXUS corpus are freely available for research purposes from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental, as well as from the University of Ghent and Lexique Web sites.