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Updated: May 5, 2026

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment
Published on: June 25, 2019
Insights into failed lexical retrieval from network science
Michael S Vitevitch1, Kit Ying Chan1, Rutherford Goldstein1
1Department of Psychology, University of Kansas, United States.
Abstract:
Previous network analyses of the phonological lexicon (Vitevitch, 2008) observed a web-like structure that exhibited assortative mixing by degree: words with dense phonological neighborhoods tend to have as neighbors words that also have dense phonological neighborhoods, and words with sparse phonological neighborhoods tend to have as neighbors words that also have sparse phonological neighborhoods. Given the role that assortative mixing by degree plays in network resilience, we examined instances of real and simulated lexical retrieval failures in computer simulations, analysis of a slips-of-the-ear corpus, and three psycholinguistic experiments for evidence of this network characteristic in human behavior. The results of the various analyses support the hypothesis that the structure of words in the mental lexicon influences lexical processing. The implications of network science for current models of spoken word recognition, language processing, and cognitive psychology more generally are discussed.
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