The dynamics of semantic processing

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Much of human cognition depends on stored knowledge; that is, the meanings we have learned to ascribe to words, objects, and other aspects of our experience. The focus of the proposed research is the mental process by which such meanings are retrieved. In particular, in the proposed research I will explore how it is that we generate meanings from words. Our perception or intuition about this process is that it is effortless---as we read, letters on a page are translated into concepts and meaning is derived. While this translation process usually feels effortless, the reality of the situation is quite different. Letter patterns are translated into meanings but, in many languages there is little correspondence between words' spellings and words' meanings. Additional complexity is created by the fact that the meaning we derive for a given word will depend heavily on the context in which that word is encountered. Most words have multiple senses or meanings and we use a number of cues in context to decide which sense or meaning is intended. Given these complexities, the challenge for the proposed research is to describe how word meanings are retrieved. The overall strategy I will use to achieve this goal is to capitalize on the variability that exists in the amount of information associated with different words. That is, words vary in the richness of their meanings, and my previous research shows that this variability in semantic richness has consequences for word recognition. Furthermore, one can define semantic richness in many different ways, and as a function of many different conceptualizations of semantics. By examining the extent to which different richness effects are observed, in word recognition behavior and in neural activity and as a function of context, it is possible to test the viability of different frameworks for semantic processing.