Cognitive Models of Speech Processing A Special Issue of Language and Cognitive Processes

This collection of papers and abstracts stems from the third meeting in the series of Sperlonga workshops on Cognitive Models of Speech Processing. It presents current research on the structure and organization of the mental lexicon, and on the processes that access that lexicon. The volume starts with discussion of issues in acquisition and consideration of questions such as, 'What is the relationship between vocabulary growth and the acquisition of syntax?', and, 'How does prosodic information, concerning the melodies and rhythms of the language, influence the processes of lexical and syntactic acquisition?'. From acquisition, the papers move on to consider the manner in which contemporary models of spoken word recognition and production can map onto neural models of the recognition and production processes. The issue of exactly what is recognised, and when, is dealt with next - the empirical findings suggest that the function of something to which a word refers is accessed with a different time-course to the form of that something. This has considerable implications for the nature, and content, of lexical representations. Equally important are the findings from the studies of disordered lexical processing, and two papers in this volume address the implications of these disorders for models of lexical representation and process (borrowing from both empirical data and computational modelling). The final paper explores whether neural networks can successfully model certain lexical phenomena that have elsewhere been assumed to require rule-based processes.

E. Bates, J.C. Goodman, On the Inseparability of Grammar and the Lexicon: Evidence from Acquisition, Aphasia and Real-time Processing. A. Christophe, T. Guasti, M. Nespor, E. Dupoux, B. Van Ooyen, Reflections on Phonological Bootstrapping: Its Role in Lexical and Syntactic Acquisition. M.G. Gaskell, W.D. Marslen-Wilson, Integrating Form and Meaning: A Distributed Model of Speech Perception. A. Roelofs, Syllabification in Speech Production: Evaluation of WEAVER. H.E. Moss, S.F. McCormick, L.K. Tyler, The Time Course of Activation of Semantic Information During Spoken Word Recognition. G. Miceli, R. Capasso, Semantic Errors as Neuropsychological Evidence for the Independence and the Interaction of Orthographic and Phonological Word Forms. D.C. Plaut, Structure and Function in the Lexical System: Insights from Distributed Models of Word Reading and Lexical Decision. K. Plunkett, R.C. Nakisa, A Connectionist Model of the Arabic Plural System. Abstracts. A. Cutler, The Syllable's Role in the Segmentation of Stress Languages. J.D. Jescheniak, H. Schriefers Lexical Access in Speech Production: Serial or Cascaded Processing? C. McKee, Lexical Factors in Language Acquisition. A.S. Meyer, Conceptual Influences on Grammatical Planning Units. J.L. Miller, Internal Structure of Phonetic Categories. J. Morais, R. Kolinsky, P. Ventura, M. Cluytens, Levels of Processing in the Phonological Segmentation of Speech. E.M. Saffran, N. Martin, Effects of Structural Priming on Sentence Production in Aphasics. N. Sebastian, A. Costa, Metrical Information in Speech Segmentation in Spanish.