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A STUDY OF IMPERFECTLY ACQUIRED VOCABULARY
Author(s) -
LOEWENTHAL KATE
Publication year - 1971
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1971.tb02032.x
Subject(s) - psychology , vocabulary , word (group theory) , lexical access , task (project management) , phonology , set (abstract data type) , linguistics , natural language processing , cognitive psychology , computer science , cognition , philosophy , management , neuroscience , economics , programming language
Three experiments examined behaviour with words which could be used and defined by the subjects, words which were simply ‘familiar’, and unknown words. Known and familiar words were recognized equally readily after brief tachistoscopic presentations; known words elicit semantically related responses, while familiar and unknown words usually elicit phonologically related or phonologically mediated responses. In a word‐selection task, the subjects had to choose the word most similar to the stimulus, from a set of four words: semantically related, phonologically related, phonologically mediated and unrelated. For familiar words a semantically related word was more likely to be recognized in this choice task than it was to be produced in the word‐association task. The same was true but to a lesser extent for unknown words. A simple scheme for word‐processing is proposed to fit the findings, in which there are separate stores for the surface‐structure (phonological/visual) features and dictionary entries of words. For known words there is ready access to entries in the surface‐structure stores, and ready access between surface‐structure and dictionary‐entry stores. Access to any entries which may exist is very limited in the case of unknown words. For familiar words, there is ready access to surface‐structure entries, but access to the dictionary‐entry store is limited.