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).
This category contains 16 processes.
Discourse processing
Process ID: hed_discourse_processing
Integration of sentences into coherent representations of extended text or conversation.
Tasks
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Kintsch (1988) Psychological Review 95:163–182
Recent references
Ferstl, Neumann, Bogler & von Cramon (2008) Human Brain Mapping 29:581–593
Language comprehension
Process ID: hed_language_comprehension
Extraction of meaning from linguistic input (spoken, written, or signed).
Tasks
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Kintsch (1988) Psychological Review 95:163–182
Recent references
Hagoort (2013) Frontiers in Psychology 4:416
Language production
Process ID: hed_language_production
Generation of spoken, written, or signed linguistic output, from message to articulation.
Tasks
The following tasks engage this process:
Recent references
Indefrey (2011) Frontiers in Psychology 2:255
Lexical access
Process ID: hed_lexical_access
Retrieval of word-level representations (form and meaning) from memory.
Tasks
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Morton (1969) Psychological Review 76:165–178
Naming
Process ID: hed_naming
Production of a word label for a presented stimulus (e.g., picture naming).
Tasks
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Oldfield & Wingfield (1965) Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 17:273–281
Recent references
Indefrey & Levelt (2004) Cognition 92:101–144
Phonological awareness
Process ID: hed_phonological_awareness
Explicit awareness of the sound structure of spoken words (onsets, rimes, phonemes).
Tasks
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer & Carter (1974) Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 18:201–212
Recent references
Melby-Lervåg, Lyster & Hulme (2012) Psychological Bulletin 138:322–352
Phonological encoding
Process ID: hed_phonological_encoding
Assembly of phonological representations during language production.
Tasks
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Levelt, Roelofs & Meyer (1999) Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22:1–75
Recent references
Indefrey (2011) Frontiers in Psychology 2:255
Reading
Process ID: hed_reading
Visual processing of written text, integrating orthography, phonology, and meaning.
Tasks
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon & Ziegler (2001) Psychological Review 108:204–256
Recent references
Dehaene, Cohen, Morais & Kolinsky (2015) Nature Reviews Neuroscience 16:234–244
Semantic knowledge
Process ID: hed_semantic_knowledge
Long-term store of facts, concepts, and word meanings.
Tasks
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Tulving (1972) in Organization of Memory
Recent 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
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Kutas & Hillyard (1980) Science 207:203–205
Recent references
Kutas & Federmeier (2011) Annual Review of Psychology 62:621–647
Sentence comprehension
Process ID: hed_sentence_comprehension
Integration of lexical, syntactic, and semantic information to derive sentence meaning.
Tasks
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Garrett, Bever & Fodor (1966) Perception & Psychophysics 1:30–32
Recent references
Hagoort & Indefrey (2014) Annual Review of Neuroscience 37:347–362
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
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Liberman, Cooper, Shankweiler & Studdert-Kennedy (1967) Psychological Review 74:431–461
Recent references
Diehl, Lotto & Holt (2004) Annual Review of Psychology 55:149–179
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
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Levelt, Roelofs & Meyer (1999) Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22:1–75
Recent references
Indefrey (2011) Frontiers in Psychology 2:255
Syntactic parsing
Process ID: hed_syntactic_parsing
Assignment of hierarchical grammatical structure to a linguistic input.
Tasks
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Frazier & Rayner (1982) Cognitive Psychology 14:178–210
Verbal fluency
Process ID: hed_verbal_fluency
Rapid generation of words under a semantic or phonemic constraint.
Tasks
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Benton (1968) Neuropsychologia 6:53–60
Recent references
Shao, Janse, Visser & Meyer (2014) Frontiers in Psychology 5:772
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
The following tasks engage this process:
Fundamental references
Morton (1969) Psychological Review 76:165–178