Lexical Access: BBS Call for Commentators

Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article on: A THEORY OF LEXICAL ACCESS IN SPEECH PRODUCTION by Willem J.M. Levelt, Ardi Roelofs, and Antje S. Meyer This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please send EMAIL to: bbs(a)cogsci.soton.ac.uk or write to: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/ http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/ ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/ ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/ gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection with a WWW browser, anonymous ftp or gopher according to the instructions that follow after the abstract. ____________________________________________________________________ A THEORY OF LEXICAL ACCESS IN SPEECH PRODUCTION Willem J.M. Levelt Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics P.O. Box 310 6500 AH Nijmegen The Netherlands pim(a)mpi.nl Ardi Roelofs Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics P.O. Box 310 6500 AH Nijmegen The Netherlands Antje S. Meyer Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics P.O. Box 310 6500 AH Nijmegen The Netherlands KEYWORDS: speaking, lexical access, conceptual preparation, lexical selection, morphological encoding, phonological encoding, syllabification, articulation, self-monitoring, lemma, morpheme, phoneme, speech error, magnetic encephalography, readiness potential, brain imaging ABSTRACT: Preparing words in speech production is normally a fast and accurate process. We generate them two or three per second in fluent conversation, and overtly naming a clear picture of an object can easily be initiated within 600 ms after picture onset. The underlying process, however, is exceedingly complex. The theory reviewed in this target article analyzes this process as staged and feedforward. After a first stage of conceptual preparation, word generation proceeds through lexical selection, morphological and phonological encoding, phonetic encoding and articulation itself. In addition, the speaker exerts some degree of output control by monitoring self-produced internal and overt speech. The core of the theory, ranging from lexical selection to the initiation of phonetic encoding, is captured in a computational model, called WEAVER++. Both the theory and the computational model have been developed in conjunction with reaction time experiments, particularly in picture naming or related word production paradigms with the aim of accounting for the real-time processing in normal word production. A comprehensive review of theory, model and experiments are presented. The model can handle some of the main observations in the domain of speech errors (the major empirical domain for most other theories of lexical access), and the theory also opens new ways of approaching the cerebral organization of speech production by way of high-resolution temporal imaging. -------------------------------------------------------------- To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide Web or by anonymous ftp or gopher from the US or UK BBS Archive. Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/ http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.levelt.html ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.levelt ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.levelt gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either: ftp ftp.princeton.edu or ftp 128.112.128.1 When you are asked for your login, type: anonymous Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid: yourlogin(a)yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@") cd /pub/harnad/BBS To show the available files, type: ls Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example): get bbs.howe When you have the file(s) you want, type: quit