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The Influence of Closeness Centrality on Lexical Processing
Rutherford Goldstein1, Michael S Vitevitch1
1Department of Psychology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, United States.
Frontiers in Psychology
|October 12, 2017
Summary
Words with high closeness centrality, a network science measure, are processed faster in the mental lexicon. This effect was observed in an auditory lexical decision task, suggesting network structure impacts word recognition.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Network Science
Background:
- The mental lexicon organizes words based on their relationships.
- Network science offers tools to quantify these relationships, such as closeness centrality.
- Closeness centrality measures how close a word is to all other words in the lexical network.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the influence of closeness centrality on lexical processing.
- To determine if network structure affects the speed of word recognition.
Main Methods:
- Conducted two auditory lexical decision tasks (Experiments 1 and 2).
- Participants identified words presented auditorily.
- Varied stimulus characteristics, including word frequency and closeness centrality.
Main Results:
- Experiment 1: Faster reaction times for words with high closeness centrality.
- Experiment 2: No main effect of closeness centrality, but an interaction with word frequency on reaction times.
- Results suggest centrally located word forms in the phonological network are processed more efficiently.
Conclusions:
- Closeness centrality is a significant factor in lexical processing, particularly in relation to word frequency.
- The findings support models where partial activation strengthens over time for words central to the phonological network.
- Network structure plays a crucial role in the efficiency of word recognition.
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