Lexical access was examined in English-Spanish bilinguals by monitoring eye fixations on target and lexical competitors as participants followed spoken instructions in English to click on one of the objects presented on a computer (e.g., "Click on the beans"). Within-language lexical competitors had a phoneme onset in English that was shared with…

This study longitudinally investigated developmental changes in the frame of reference used by children in their gestures and speech. Fifteen children, between 4 and 6 years of age, were asked once a year to describe their route home from their nursery school. When the children were 4 years old, they tended to produce gestures that directly and…

Different models of spoken word production make different predictions regarding the extent of effects of certain word properties on the output of that model. This article examines these predictions with regard to the effect of these variables on the production of semantic and phonological errors by aphasic subjects. (60 references) (Author/CK)

Using data on the pattern of occurrence of words embedded in the polysyllabic words of the English vocabulary, argues that recognition and segmentation of continuous speech appear to be based on competition between lexical hypotheses. It is concluded that lexical competition is an essential component of models of continuous speech recognition. (53…

Reviews the logic of neuropsychological inference in the context of connectionist modeling, focusing on the inference from double dissociation to modularity of function. Argues that connectionism appears to create no additional problems for the traditional neuropsychological approach. (50 references) (MDM)

Discusses connectionist models of two subcomponents of the spelling process that, internally, blur modular boundaries, and that explain, rather than describe, the relevant neuropsychological evidence. The competitive queuing spelling model gives a promising account of the characteristics of graphemic buffer disorder. (76 references) (MDM)

Presents the gating paradigm as it is used in spoken word recognition research. In this task, a spoken-language stimulus is presented in segments of increasing duration and subjects are asked to propose the word being presented and to give a confidence rating after each segment. The advantages and problems associated with this task are discussed.…

Describes two variants of the form-priming paradigm (direct and mediated form priming) and summarizes the results obtained with each. With both variants, participants are presented with a target, to which a response is required, preceded by a prime. (28 references) (Author/CK)

Notes that phonemic restoration is a powerful auditory illusion. Points out that when part of an utterance is replaced by another sound, listeners perceptually restore the missing speech. Several paradigms measure this illusion and explore its bottom-up and top-down bases. Findings reveal that acoustic properties of the replacement sound strongly…

Notes that the primary use of sequence monitoring has been to determine which linguistic units are involved in word recognition and how these units might differ across languages. The task involves presenting subjects with targets either congruent or incongruent with a linguistic unit in the target-bearing item. The article focuses on the…

Discusses two naming experiments in which it was shown that response times for morphologically structured pseudowords are faster than those for orthographically matched controls. Argues that the results, which are consistent with those obtained in lexical decision tasks with morphologically structured pseudowords, provide support for compositional…

Discusses connectionist techniques that can be used for modeling perception, memory, and language processing, concentrating on a class of network with dual-weight connections in which each connection has both short- and long-term weight and describes a novel architecture in which the short- and long-term weights are independent. (45 references)…

Describes a new paradigm that may be appropriate for uncovering speech perceptual codes. Illusory words are detected by blending two dichotic stimuli. The paradigm's design allows for comparison of different speech units by the manipulation of the distribution of information between two inputs. (23 references) (Author/CK)

Describes the cross-modal semantic priming paradigm, including its underlying rationale and the different tasks with which it is combined. Introduces the type of stimuli used and the dependent and independent variables typically manipulated; discusses the paradigm's main advantages and drawbacks; and considers its most important areas of…

Reviews phoneme monitoring studies from 1969 to 1996 and groups them in terms of issues addressed with the task, including the contribution of the lexicon to speech perception, processing complexity, attention, contribution of prosodic information, and the basic unit of speech perception. Identifies and highlights task demands and artifactual…