CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF LEXICAL ACTIVATION

语言理解是人类最基本的认知活动之一 能力.它在正常发育中起着重要作用，是一种 在许多领域获取信息的主要手段。心理语言学家 在澄清结构和程序方面取得了重大进展 语言理解的基础。近年来，人们已经清楚地看到， 这一领域的核心问题是词汇通达。理论必须明确 一个口语单词的呈现如何导致一个特定的词汇 表征被激活，这种激活的效果是什么？ 是：一个积极的词汇表征对其他词汇表征有什么影响， 以及其他代表级别的单位？ 目前的建议包括一套理论驱动的 词汇激活基础的实证检验，尤其是 词汇激活的后果。实验使用了一系列 不同的方法，以确保正确的理论推论 通过集中行动。测试包括对上涨的分析， 高峰，和词汇激活的下降，和调查的 积极的词汇表征对其他人的知觉影响 词汇表征和次词汇编码。实验测试 对于这些其他的兴奋性和抑制性影响， 表示。这项研究的成果将是一个非常重要的 更好地理解系统的架构， 语言理解这种理解对我们的 理解语言处理。反过来，因为语言是一种 基本认知能力，描述语言处理的进展 将增强我们对人类认知的理解。

Understanding language is one of the most fundamental human cognitive abilities. It plays an important role in normal development, and is a major means for acquiring information in many domains. Psycholinguists have made significant progress in clarifying the structures and processes that underlie language comprehension. In recent years, it has become clear that a central issue in this area is lexical access. Theories must specify how the presentation of a spoken word leads to a particular lexical representation becoming activated, and what the effects of such activation are: What effect does one active lexical representation have on others, and on units at other levels of representation? The current proposal includes a large set of theoretically-driven empirical tests of the basis of lexical activation, and especially, of the consequences of lexical activation. The experiments use a range of different methodologies, in order to assure correct theoretical inferences through converging operations. The tests include analyses of the rise, peak, and fall of lexical activations, and investigations of the perceptual effect that active lexical representations can have on other lexical representations, and on sublexical encoding. The experiments test for both excitatory and inhibitory influences on these other representations. The product of the proposed research will be a much better understanding of the architecture of the system that accomplishes language comprehension. Such an understanding is critical to our understanding language processing. In turn, because language is such a fundamental cognitive ability, progress in describing language processing will enhance our understanding of human cognition.