Language Comprehension and Production¶
Scope: Mapping sound or text to meaning and meaning to articulation: lexical access, word recognition, reading, phonological processes, syntactic parsing, sentence comprehension, discourse processing, semantic processing, semantic knowledge, naming, verbal fluency, speech perception, speech production, language comprehension, language production.
Out of scope: “Language” as a faculty; linguistic representations themselves; motor aspects of articulation (those live in Motor Preparation, Timing, and Execution as vocal-motor control, with a pointer from here).
Note
Open issues: Reading as a process versus reading as a behavior is still somewhat conflated in hed_reading - an open question.
This category contains 16 processes.
Discourse processing¶
Process ID: hed_discourse_processing
Integration of sentences into coherent representations of extended text or conversation.
Tasks that engage this process: Self-Paced Reading Task
Fundamental references
Kintsch (1988) Psychological Review 95:163–182 (DOI)
Further references
Language comprehension¶
Process ID: hed_language_comprehension
Extraction of meaning from linguistic input (spoken, written, or signed).
Tasks that engage this process: False Belief Task, Sentence Comprehension Task
Fundamental references
Kintsch (1988) Psychological Review 95:163–182 (DOI)
Further references
Language production¶
Process ID: hed_language_production
Generation of spoken, written, or signed linguistic output, from message to articulation.
Tasks that engage this process: Picture Naming Task, Verb Generation Task
Further references
Lexical access¶
Process ID: hed_lexical_access
Also known as: lexical retrieval
Retrieval of word-level representations (form and meaning) from memory.
Tasks that engage this process: Lexical Decision Task, Picture Naming Task, Remote Associates Task, Self-Paced Reading Task, Semantic Priming Task, Verb Generation Task, Verbal Fluency Task
Fundamental references
Morton (1969) Psychological Review 76:165–178 (DOI)
Naming¶
Process ID: hed_naming
Production of a word label for a presented stimulus (e.g., picture naming).
Tasks that engage this process: Picture Naming Task
Fundamental references
Oldfield & Wingfield (1965) Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 17:273–281 (DOI)
Further references
Phonological awareness¶
Process ID: hed_phonological_awareness
Explicit awareness of the sound structure of spoken words (onsets, rimes, phonemes).
Tasks that engage this process: Phonological Awareness Task
Fundamental references
Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer & Carter (1974) Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 18:201–212 (DOI)
Further references
Melby-Lervåg, Lyster & Hulme (2012) Psychological Bulletin 138:322–352 (DOI)
Phonological encoding¶
Process ID: hed_phonological_encoding
Assembly of phonological representations during language production.
Tasks that engage this process: Phonological Awareness Task
Fundamental references
Levelt, Roelofs & Meyer (1999) Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22:1–75 (DOI)
Further references
Reading¶
Process ID: hed_reading
Visual processing of written text, integrating orthography, phonology, and meaning.
Tasks that engage this process: Lexical Decision Task, Sentence Comprehension Task, Stroop Color-Word Task
Fundamental references
Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon & Ziegler (2001) Psychological Review 108:204–256 (DOI)
Further references
Semantic knowledge¶
Process ID: hed_semantic_knowledge
Long-term store of facts, concepts, and word meanings.
Tasks that engage this process: Remote Associates Task, Semantic Priming Task, Verbal Fluency Task
Fundamental references
Tulving (1972) in Organization of Memory
Further references
Ralph, Jefferies, Patterson & Rogers (2017) Nature Reviews Neuroscience 18:42–55
Semantic processing¶
Process ID: hed_semantic_processing
Access and integration of word and phrase meaning, indexed by the N400.
Tasks that engage this process: Affective Priming Task, Free Recall Task, Lexical Decision Task, Picture Naming Task, Remote Associates Task, Self-Paced Reading Task, Semantic Priming Task, Verb Generation Task
Fundamental references
Kutas & Hillyard (1980) Science 207:203–205 (DOI)
Further references
Kutas & Federmeier (2011) Annual Review of Psychology 62:621–647 (DOI)
Sentence comprehension¶
Process ID: hed_sentence_comprehension
Also known as: sentence processing
Integration of lexical, syntactic, and semantic information to derive sentence meaning.
Tasks that engage this process: Sentence Comprehension Task
Fundamental references
Garrett, Bever & Fodor (1966) Perception & Psychophysics 1:30–32 (DOI)
Further references
Hagoort & Indefrey (2014) Annual Review of Neuroscience 37:347–362 (DOI)
Speech perception¶
Process ID: hed_speech_perception
Extraction of linguistic content from the acoustic speech signal, including phoneme categorization, word segmentation, and prosodic processing.
Tasks that engage this process: Phonological Awareness Task
Fundamental references
Liberman, Cooper, Shankweiler & Studdert-Kennedy (1967) Psychological Review 74:431–461 (DOI)
Further references
Diehl, Lotto & Holt (2004) Annual Review of Psychology 55:149–179 (DOI)
Speech production¶
Process ID: hed_speech_production
Planning and articulation of spoken output; the motor component of articulation is covered under vocal-motor control in Motor Preparation, Timing, and Execution.
Tasks that engage this process: Picture Naming Task, Verb Generation Task
Fundamental references
Levelt, Roelofs & Meyer (1999) Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22:1–75 (DOI)
Further references
Syntactic parsing¶
Process ID: hed_syntactic_parsing
Also known as: syntactic processing
Assignment of hierarchical grammatical structure to a linguistic input.
Tasks that engage this process: Sentence Comprehension Task
Fundamental references
Frazier & Rayner (1982) Cognitive Psychology 14:178–210 (DOI)
Verbal fluency¶
Process ID: hed_verbal_fluency
Rapid generation of words under a semantic or phonemic constraint.
Tasks that engage this process: Verbal Fluency Task
Fundamental references
Benton (1968) Neuropsychologia 6:53–60 (DOI)
Further references
Word recognition¶
Process ID: hed_word_recognition
Also known as: Visual word recognition - Visual is the default modality in cognitive psychology; auditory word recognition has its own name (spoken-word recognition).
Identification of a word as a lexical item from its perceptual input.
Tasks that engage this process: Lexical Decision Task, Self-Paced Reading Task, Semantic Priming Task
Fundamental references
Morton (1969) Psychological Review 76:165–178 (DOI)