Immediate lexical integration of novel word forms

Abstract

It is well known that familiar words inhibit each other during spoken word recognition. However, we do not know how and under what circumstances newly learned words become integrated with the lexicon in order to engage in this competition. Previous work on word learning has highlighted the importance of offline consolidation (Gaskell & Dumay, 2003) and meaning (Leach & Samuel, 2007) to establish this integration. In two experiments we test the necessity of these factors by examining the inhibition between newly learned items and familiar words immediately after learning. Participants learned a set of nonwords without meanings in active (Experiment 1) or passive (Experiment 2) exposure paradigms. After training, participants performed a visual world paradigm task to assess inhibition from these newly learned items. An analysis of participants' fixations suggested that the newly learned words were able to engage in competition with known words without any consolidation.

Keywords: Eye-tracking; Inter-lexical inhibition; Lexical engagement; Spoken word recognition; Visual world paradigm; Word learning.

Figure 1

Visualization of a multi-layer lexical network. Word form level representations are shown as localist for ease of depiction rather than a theoretical commitment to such representations.

Figure 2

Proportion of trials on which participant was fixating the target at each 4 ms time slice as a function of splice condition in Experiment 1.

Figure 3

Competition effect from newly learned words (untrained-nonword-splice minus trained-nonword-splice; grey line) and previously known words (untrained-nonword-splice minus other-word-splice; black line) in Experiment 1.

Figure 4

Proportion of trials on which participant was fixating the target at each 4 ms time slice as a function of splice condition in Experiment 2.

Figure 5

Competition effect from newly learned words (untrained-nonword-splice minus trained-nonword-splice; grey line) and previously known words (untrained-nonword-splice minus other-word-splice; black line) in Experiment 2.