The structure of the lexical network influences lexical processing

Network science is an emerging field that uses computational tools from physics, mathematics, computer science, and other fields to examine the structure of complex systems, and explore how that structure might influence processing. In this approach, words in the mental lexicon can be represented as nodes in a network with links connecting words that are phonologically related to each other. Analyses using the mathematical tools of network science suggest that phonological networks from a variety of languages exhibit the characteristics of small-world networks, and share several other structural features. Studies of small-world networks in other domains have demonstrated that such networks are robust to damage, and can be searched very efficiently. Using conventional psycholinguistic tasks, we examined how certain structural characteristics influence the process of spoken word recognition. The findings from these experiments suggest that the lexicon is structured in a non-arbitrary manner, and that this structure influences lexical processing.