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Cognitive Neuropsychology
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The mental lexicon: An introduction

Michele Miozzo
a

a b

University of Cambridge , Cambridge, UK

John Hopkins University , Baltimore, MD, USA

Published online: 14 Aug 2008.

To cite this article: Michele Miozzo (2008) The mental lexicon: An introduction, Cognitive Neuropsychology,
25:4, 459-462, DOI: 10.1080/02643290802038113
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02643290802038113

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COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY, 2008, 25 (4), 459 462

The mental lexicon: An introduction

Michele Miozzo

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University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, and John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

Research on the mental lexicon has traditionally

focused on two questions: What are the mechanisms that allow fast and efficient access to information about familiar words in listening and
speaking? In what form is such information
represented in the mind and the brain of the
listener/speaker? The papers in this special issue
of Cognitive Neuropsychology shed light on both
of these questions, using experimental approaches
varying from neuropsychological testing, to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),
event-related potential (ERP), and computer
simulations.
Previous research has convincingly demonstrated that partially distinct mechanisms are
responsible for accessing the semantic, syntactic,
and phonological features of words (see Rapp &
Goldrick, 2006, for a review). The question is
then to define the nature of each of these mechanisms and what variables modulate their functioning.
Kittredge, Dell, Verkuilen, and Schwartz (2008 this
issue) address this question focusing on two variables: word frequency and the age at which words
are acquired. Both variables relate to the cumulative
experience with individual words across the life
span and have robust effects on a number of
linguistic tasks. It has proven to be particularly
difficult to disentangle the effects of each of these
variables, mainly because they are strongly correlatedhigh-frequency words tend to be acquired
early, while low-frequency words typically emerge

at a later age. Word frequency and age of acquisition have attracted much debate, in part because
each variable is compatible with only certain types
of lexical organization (e.g., see Ellis & Lambon
Ralph, 2000; Ghyselink, Lewis, & Brysbaert,
2004). Kittredge et al. analysed the errors made
by brain-damaged patients in picture naming and
observed that while frequency influenced all kinds
of errors, age of acquisition was only related to failures in retrieving word phonology. Their results
suggest that frequency plays a wider role than age
of acquisition in lexical access, affecting the mechanisms involved in the interface between semantics
and phonology. These results are consistent with
some of the previous findings and inconsistent
with others. The fact that Kittredge et al. examined
a considerably large set of errors and employed
sophisticated statistical analyses makes this an
important contribution in the long-standing
debate about the role played by frequency and age
of acquisition in lexical access.
Biegler, Crowther, and Martin (2008 this issue)
provide further evidence that elucidates the mechanisms implicated in the selection of semantic and
phonological information during word production. Their paper reports on two braindamaged patients who were remarkably accurate
in naming pictures in isolation but impaired in
naming series of semantically related pictures.
Several results indicate that their deficits involved
the selection of word phonology and that their

Correspondence should be addressed to Michele Miozzo, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge,
Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EB, UK (E-mail: mm584@cam.ac.uk).
# 2008 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
http://www.psypress.com/cogneuropsychology

459

DOI:10.1080/02643290802038113

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MIOZZO

errors were due to excessive activation of semantically related words, which prevented the selection
of the correct word, leading instead to choosing
an erroneous one. Biegler et al. attribute this excessive activation to a lack of inhibition that, under
normal circumstances, would quickly reduce the
activation of the phonological representations of
previously named words making it possible to
select the next word. One could view this form
of inhibition as a necessary design featureif not
even an obvious one. However, it may not be a
coincidence that it is the phonological representation that it is inhibited as opposed to the semantic representation. As argued by Biegler et al., a
speaker may need to keep a semantic representation in mind throughout a discourse and refer
to related concepts subsequently (p. 497). The
only viable choice left seems to suppress the
word sounds.
The neuropsychological data presented by
Biegler et al. (2008 this issue) and the neuroimaging data reported here by Berlingeri et al. (2008
this issue) both implicate the left inferior frontal
gyrus (LIFG), a brain structure that has recently
received ample attention in the literature. In a
series of influential papers, Thompson-Schill and
her collaborators have proposed that the LIFG is
associated with top-down mechanisms that modulate activation according to task demands
(Thompson-Schill, DEsposito, Aguirre, &
Farah, 1997). The data presented here by
Berlingeri et al. confirm, using linguistic tasks,
that the neural activity in LIFG is susceptible to
variations in task demands. However, Biegler
et al. discuss the possibility that the role of the
LIFG is more specific, being implicated only in
the selection of certain kinds of word representations (i.e., phonological).
Lexical mechanisms may be specific not only
for certain kinds of word information (e.g., semantic vs. phonological) but also for certain kinds of
words. This is the conclusion that one can draw
from the ERP investigation on compound words
that is reported in this issue by El Yagoubi et al.
(2008 this issue). Compound words are generally
formed by two words: the head, which carries
the bulk of the meaning, and the modifier,

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COGNITIVE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY, 2008, 25 (4)

which further refines the meaning of the whole

word. Thus, the English compound word doghouse,
which refers to a type of house, has house as its head
and dog as its modifier. In many languages, heads
are assigned fixed positionsfor example, within
English compounds, heads occur in the righthand side of the word. However, in Italian,
heads can take either initial or final word positions,
a feature exploited by El Yagoubi et al. to dissociate headedness from word position in their
ERP study on word reading. El Yagoubi and collaborators detected an ERP component (P300)
that responded differently to compound heads
than to modifiers and letter strings. This finding
indicates that compound components are recognized automatically and rapidly in word reading.
An interesting question for future research is
to determine whether ERP evidence of head/
modifier decomposition would also appear in
speech recognition and production.
Words vary not only in terms of their morphological structures but also for their meaning. As
Eleanor Rosch (1978) documented in her pioneering work, a major distinction relates to the specificity of word meaning, so that words can refer
to very specific objects (greyhound) or categories
with increasing levels of abstraction (dogs, pets,
animals). In their article, Crutch and Warrington
(2008 this issue) examined the recognition of
words varying for categorical level in patients
affected by different neuropathologies. As shown
in previous reports, patients with semantic dementia were more accurate at recognizing categorical
words (animal) than more specific words (dog).
In contrast, patients with language impairment
resulting from stroke performed relatively better
with more specific, subordinate words. This
deficit for superordinate terms is a novel (and surprising) observation. One can interpret this deficit
as resulting from a selective loss of superordinate
terms. But Crutch and Warrington consider an
alternative account, and probably one that is
more plausible: Patients have problems in
forming categories from critical features of the
subordinate exemplars. That is, patients may fail
to identify the features legs or tail as critical
for determining the category animal. This

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THE MENTAL LEXICON: AN INTRODUCTION

account emphasizes semantic processes and differs

from traditional accounts in cognitive neuropsychology that view semantic deficits as reflecting a
loss of knowledge of one sort of another. If the
alternative account offered by Crutch and
Warrington is correct, neuropsychological patients
would provide a rare opportunity to discern the
semantic processes underlying category formation
and make inferences about semantic features.
The descriptions of deficits selectively affecting
a variety of categories of knowledge have fuelled a
large body of research in the last two decades.
Kemmerer and Tranel (2008 this issue) contribute
to this literature with an investigation of body part
terms. There have been very few reports of patients
exhibiting problems with body part terms. The
study conducted by Kemmerer and Tranel on a
large group of patients with lesions distributed
throughout the telencephalon confirmed the
rarity of deficits for body part terms but also
revealed a handful of patients showing greater
difficulties in naming body parts than other categories of objects. The reasons for the appearance
of deficits selectively affecting body part terms are
not completely understood, but the neuroanatomical details of the brain damage responsible for
these deficits could offer a clue, as pointed out by
Kemmerer and Tranel. The damage appears to
involve the extrastriate body area (EBA),
located in a region posterior to the temporal
lobe, which is implicated in motor planning and
responds preferentially to visual stimuli of body
parts. This neuroanatomical evidence leads naturally to the hypothesis that the body part terms
are associated with a brain network that includes
structures encoding the motor-sensory features of
body parts. A link between lexical terms and
brain structures devoted to motor-sensory representation is also advocated by Berlingeri et al.
(2008 this issue) in the context of action verbs.
These researchers used fMRI to record brain
activity during tasks requiring naming verbs or
nouns. Preferential activation for verbs was
observed in premotor and superior parietal areas,
structures known to support motor and visual representations of actions. The issue of the embodiment of semantic and lexical information has

recently received increasing attention (for a

review, see Pulvermuller, Hauk, Nikulin, &
Ilmoniemi, 2005), and the results obtained by
Berlingeri et al. with verbs and by Kemmerer
and Tranel with body part terms will provide
additional evidence to the debate on this topic.
Each of the investigations included in this
special issue adopted methodologies that have
severe limitations. Cognitive neuropsychologists
are at the mercy of structural features that determine the nature and extension of brain lesions.
ERP and fMRI depend critically on the detectability of neural signals and ultimately on brain
physiology. In light of these strict constraints, it
is even more remarkable that investigators could
use these methodologies to draw conclusions
about the functional organization of lexical mechanisms and their implementation in the brain. All
the papers in this issue end with more questions
than answers. Hopefully, these questions will
foster future studies on lexical accesshopefully,
using more powerful methodologies.

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