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10.3: Psycholinguistics of Word Meanings

  • Page ID
    9698
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    Behavioural psycholinguistic experiments can give us some insights into how word meanings are represented in the mind. The results of these experiments suggest that prototypes and fuzzy categories do play a part in our mental representations of word meanings, and that related word meanings are connected to each other in our minds.
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    Check Yourself

    1. Which of the following words would we expect to prime a target word carrot?

    • Power.
    • Broccoli.
    • Cattle.
    • Car.

    2. Which of the following words would we expect to prime a target word happy?

    • Rabbit.
    • Umbrella.
    • Sad.
    • Zoo.

    3. Which of the following words would we expect to prime a target word week?

    • Month.
    • Actor.
    • Goal.
    • Unit.
    Answers

    This page titled 10.3: Psycholinguistics of Word Meanings is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Catherine Anderson (eCampusOntario) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.