Talk:Psycholinguistics/The Mental Lexicon

This page provides a detailed review and suggested recommendations for the mental lexicon page. This review is of the page as a whole, however I make specific mention to areas that may still require further revisions. I have not edited the actual page but have provided feedback and personal suggestions to this author in the form of examples

The introduction provides a good starting point for readers like myself who are newly familiarized to the mental lexicon. In this paragraph, the author uses a number of adjectives, (i.e. systematic, easily accessible; long and labourious; perfectly ordered, robotic). Although the purpose of using multiple adjectives is to provide readers with a detailed description, I would recommend that the author choose the best-suited adjective to reduce wordiness (i.e. the linguistic production would be labourious). Secondly, I’m left feeling a bit uncertain of what the precise definition of the mental lexicon is. I would recommend a sentence which explicitly states what “the mental lexicon is…”, similar to the first sentence of this paragraph. (i.e. “the mental lexicon is commonly referred to as the mental dictionary and is the system of vocabulary which is stored in the mind in the form of lexical entries for each item…”). Lastly, some words are used several times in this paragraph. For example the word “however” is mentioned three times in this paragraph and “some” is used twice in the last sentence. This becomes repetitive and impedes sentence flow. A few recommendations to remedy this concern are to either use an alternative word to however (i.e. but, in contrast, although) or reposition the word at the beginning of the sentence so there isn’t a sudden break when reading (i.e. An analogy that is often used to illustrate this mental organization is that of a printed dictionary. However, this analogy breaks down very quickly since the use of language in humans does not occur in an ordered robotic fashion). In the last sentence, the second “some” can be removed (i.e. we will discuss some of these models and the issues associated with them below).

The section entitled “developing a model of the mental lexicon” includes a variety of information from various sources other than the Jay text. Overall, the section provides readers with a good degree of knowledge regarding the mental lexicon. My suggestions for the author is to focus on punctuation as some sentence have unnecessary commas and others are in need of one. I would also recommend that they condense the wordiness in their sentences – rather than referring to the participants as “he or she”, simply use “they”. Lastly, I would suggest that author is mindful of using the same word repeatedly in a single sentence (i.e. rather than saying “a “yes or no” decision in terms of the similarity of their meanings”…this could be summed up into …“in terms of semantic similarities”. Thoroughly proofreading this page will remedy these concerns.

In the section entitled “The Hierarchical Network Model”, I suggest the author cuts down unnecessary words as they reduce sentence clarity. (i.e. “one such” can be remove – “the foundational example is Collin’s and Quillian’s….”). The detailed explanation of how the hierarchical model breaks down provides readers with a good visualization.

In the section entitled “The ACT and WordNet Models”, the author provides a well written explanation of what the ACT Model is and how it differs from the previously mentioned models. There are a number of key terms in this paragraph such as declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, etc. In the attempt to ensure readers understand the definitions of these words, the author commonly includes the definition within the sentence through the use of a comma break. Although this works for some sentences in the paragraph, including the definition here can make the sentences excessively long. I would suggest that the author remove the definitions from within the sentence, bold the key words, and include a glossary at the bottom of the page.

The section entitled “neuroimaging and the mental lexicon” provides readers with detailed information regarding which areas of the brain are affected by the mental lexicon. To further enhance this section, I would recommend that the author include visual examples of the brain activity results mentioned from fMRI studies.

The first sentence of the conclusion section had some punctuation concerns and does not flow smoothly. It is recommended to reduce the number of commas in that sentence. The last sentence was also quite long – it is recommended to either separate it into two thoughts or condense the thought into a more cohesive sentence.

I thought the external links of this page provided readers with a good segue to more information on research relating to the mental lexicon. Both links are supported by reputable institutions (Princeton University and the Canadian government) therefore the information provided appears to derive from evidence-based research. In relationship to the detailed information on the WordNet project provided, the Words in the Mind project could be further explained. I would recommend that the author provide a brief 1-2 sentence explanation under this section or above where the project is mention of the types of tasks used for developing models. (i.e. “The Words in the Mind project will provide more information of tasks such as word and picture naming, list recall, and segmentation.”

Overall, this page provides readers with a well-organized abundance of information regarding the mental lexicon. The references provided were from a variety of academic sources other than the Jay text and this page was able to adhere to the 4000-word count limit. Upon reviewing the rubric provided, this page may need continued work relating to the structure and writing style sections (i.e. the improper use of commas throughout this page and clarity issues at certain points). My largest recommendation would be to proofread this page multiple times to help reduce grammatical/structural concerns and improve clarity. By doing so, easily overlooked mistakes as seen in the section of “morphological (rule-based) approach” will be eliminated (i.e. “then, in in a series”).

(Renee Boudakian 02:37, 27 February 2011 (UTC)).