The Mental Lexicon - Volume 20, Issue 1, 2025

This study investigates whether the recognition advantage of proper names (PN) over common nouns (CN) — reported in several languages — is also observed in Spanish, and whether different types of PN (e.g., personal vs. geographical) are affected to the same extent. Drawing on semantic theories that assign different presuppositional meanings to subcategories of PN, we designed four experiments to examine PN processing patterns: a lexical decision task, two categorization tasks, and a semantic priming task. To explore which semantic factors account for variability within each subcategory, we also conducted a series of regression analyses. The results confirm a cross-linguistic recognition advantage for PN in categorization tasks; however, this effect is limited to personal PN — even after controlling for affective factors and familiarity — while the advantage for geographical PN appears to be language-specific. Participants’ behavioral responses to geographical PN resembled those elicited by CN. These findings suggest that PN is a semantically heterogeneous category, and that their recognition lies on a continuum with that of CN.

This study explores gender assignment strategies in Russian-Hebrew code-mixed adjective-noun phrases. Russian features a three-gender system (masculine, feminine, neuter), while Hebrew uses a two-gender system (masculine, feminine). Despite these differences, both languages share transparent gender assignment cues: nouns ending in -a are typically feminine, while those ending in consonants are generally masculine. Both languages also feature opaque nouns. Eighty Russian-Hebrew speakers participated, divided into heritage language (HL) speakers (age of bilingualism onset [AoB]: 0–6 years, dominant in Hebrew) and immigrant (IMM) speakers (AoB: 9+ years, dominant in Russian). Participants rated the acceptability of code-mixed sentences featuring Russian nouns within Hebrew matrix sentences. Results showed a preference for strategies combining shape-based and insertion approaches with transparent nouns, reflecting overlapping linguistic cues in both languages. The same strategies were preferred for opaque congruent nouns, where no gender conflict existed. For opaque gender-incongruent nouns, strategy use was shaped by the degree of overlap between the languages’ gender systems. Although differences between HL and IMM speakers were expected, no group variation in strategy use was found. These findings advance our understanding of gender assignment in code-switching contexts and shed light on how bilinguals represent and process gender when two linguistic gender systems are involved.

Cortical memory circuits that represent words in the brain form the foundation of our mental lexicon; yet, their architecture remains poorly understood. A valuable approach to probing these representations is measuring the Mismatch Negativity (MMN), an electrophysiological brain response sensitive to various psycholinguistic variables; however, its specificity to lexical processing remains debated. To scrutinise its properties as a neural index of word-specific memory trace activity, we adapted the classical passive auditory oddball design to fMRI and recorded the BOLD (blood oxygenation level-dependent) correlate of the MMN elicited by words of different lexical frequencies and by phonologically matched control pseudowords. The results showed significant BOLD-MMN responses in bilateral superior-temporal and middle-temporal cortices. Crucially, these activations were more expressed for meaningful words than meaningless pseudowords, indicating BOLD-MMN sensitivity to the stimulus’ lexicality. We also found the left temporal activity to be more pronounced for high- than low-frequency words, the effect not found for their pseudoword analogues, further confirming the lexical nature of these responses. This pattern of results is best explained by the automatic activation of long-term memory traces for real words formed in the process of previous linguistic experience whose intensity determines the strength of connectivity within these circuits and thus the magnitude of their activation, which thereby reflects the respective stimuli’s status in the brain's mental lexicon.

Walking has been the focus of much of the existing work on multitasking given its complexity as a cognitive process and importance in daily life. This complexity is evidenced by gait variation observed in dual-task contexts. However, an open question concerns how walking effects concurrently performed cognitive tasks. Thus, we use virtual reality to investigate how walking and visual distraction modulate language processing in an ecologically valid, yet controlled manner. In this novel experimental paradigm, we gradually increase the cognitive burden on participants’ lexical decision responses by adding visual distractors and concurrent walking demands. Accordingly, healthy, young participants performed a lexical decision task as either (1) a single-task+, while seated and with randomly appearing visual distractors, or as (2) a multitask, while walking on a self-paced treadmill through a VR city scape including visual distractors. Participants generally made faster lexical decisions while walking. However, in the single-task+ condition, participants made more errors when a distractor was present. These effects were somewhat modulated by individual differences in visual processing. Crucially, no clear dual-task cost was observed; rather, behavior adapted to increased demands within a specific domain. Overall, these findings suggest an interplay of both task-related and individual characteristics determining multitask performance.