In this paper we present a case of "word-meaning deafness," characterised by serious problems in the comprehension of spoken language, whilst repetition and writing words and non-words from dictation are preserved. This performance indicates the impossibility of correctly accessing phonological representation from the semantic representation of…

We report results of an experimental study with Dutch agrammatic aphasics that investigated their ability to interpret pronominal elements in transitive clauses and Exceptional Case Marking constructions (ECM). Using the obtained experimental results as a tool, we distinguish between three competing linguistic theories that aim at determining…

We examined the effect of perceptual training on a well-established hemispheric asymmetry in speech processing. Eighteen listeners were trained to use a within-category difference in voice onset time (VOT) to cue talker identity. Successful learners (n = 8) showed faster response times for stimuli presented only to the left ear than for those…

It is widely accepted that the cerebellar and basal ganglia control circuits contribute to the programming of movement. Converging evidence from neuroimaging, limb control, and neuropsychological studies suggests that (1) people with cerebellar disease have reduced ability to program movement sequences in advance of movement onset and (2) people…

This study investigates whether or not the representation of lexical stress information can be primed during speech production. In four experiments, we attempted to prime the stress position of bisyllabic target nouns (picture names) having initial and final stress with auditory prime words having either the same or different stress as the target…

Level ordering has proven inadequate as a morphological theory, leaving unexplained the experimental results taken to support it as a component of innate grammar-young children's acceptance of irregular plurals in English compounds. The present study demonstrates that these results can be explained by slower access to the grammatically preferred…

In the present study we have investigated the acquisition of the past participle of Italian verbs of the second (including mostly irregular verbs) and third (including mostly regular verbs) conjugations in school age children, and with simulations with an artificial neural network. We aimed to verify the extent to which children are sensitive to…

The experiment reported here investigated the sensitivity of concreteness effects to orthographic neighborhood density and frequency in the visual lexical decision task. The concreteness effect was replicated with a sample of concrete and abstract words that were not matched for orthographic neighborhood features and in which concrete words turned…

Computer modelling research has undermined the view that double dissociations in behaviour are sufficient to infer separability in the cognitive mechanisms underlying those behaviours. However, all these models employ "multi-modal" representational schemes, where functional specialisation of processing emerges from the training process.…

Microelectrode recordings of human sensori-motor subthalamic neuronal activity during spoken sentence and syllable-repetition tasks provided an opportunity to evaluate the relationship between changes in neuronal activities and specific aspects of these vocal behaviors. Observed patterns of neuronal activity included a build up of activity in…

Lukatela and Turvey (2000) demonstrated a phonological priming effect in the lexical decision task (LDT) with a 14-ms prime and concluded that phonology plays a central role in word meaning activation. In contrast, several other researchers reported that phonological priming is significant only at much longer prime durations (e.g., Ferrand &…

Models of speech production differ on whether phonological neighbourhoods should affect processing, and on whether effects should be facilitatory or inhibitory. Inhibitory effects of large neighbourhoods have been argued to underlie apparent anti-frequency effects, whereby high-frequency default features are more prone to mispronunciation errors…

This study investigates how speakers of Dutch compute and produce relative time expressions. Naming digital clocks (e.g., 2:45, say ''quarter to three'') requires conceptual operations on the minute and hour information for the correct relative time expression. The interplay of these conceptual operations was investigated using a repetition…

The problem of recognizing phonological variations in the speech input has triggered numerous treatments in speech processing models. Two areas of current controversy are the possibility of phonological underspecification in the mental lexicon and the nature of the mapping mechanism from the speech signal to the abstract lexical entry. We present…

In this paper, we show that both token and type-based effects in lexical processing can result from a single, token-based, system, and therefore, do not necessarily reflect different levels of processing. We report three Simple Recurrent Networks modeling Dutch past-tense formation. These networks show token-based frequency effects and type-based…