An Experimental and Computational Exploration of Developmental Patterns in Lexical Access and Representation

Understanding spoken language requires the listener to map a continuous and variable acoustic signal onto representations of the phonological form of words stored in the mental lexicon. The nature of this process, lexical access, and its associated representations have been explored extensively both experimentally and theoretically in adult listeners (Tyler & Frauenfelder, 1987; Marslen-Wilson, 1990, 1993; Lively, Pisoni, & Goldinger, 1994). But how the final state of the system emerges in the course of development is much less well understood. A number of questions can be posed that have yet to receive satisfactory answers: (i) How does the structure of representations of lexical form change during development? (ii) How does processing in lexical access change during development? (iii) What properties of learning explain developmental patterns?

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