Vocabulary Activation

This is to briefly elaborate how mental lexicon or vocabularies stored in our mind become active either quick or late. I am going to start to explain the idea under discussion from a simple story. I had a thesis exam session yesterday with one of my students working with linguistics. They are mainly focused on the issue of locals' perceptions towards the tourism developmental plan in Pamekasan, Madura. The key word from that topic is the word 'perception'. Based on my evaluation, they frequently used related words to PERCEPTION such as RUMORS, OPINION, PERSPECTIVE, POINT OF VIEW, JUDGEMENT, and ABILITY. 

In different situation, I also asked my students to say one word. In this context, I employed the interactive activation and competition (IAC) model proposed by McClellad and Rumelhart. It is claimed to be old but is still relevant in my context especially. What I did was that I wrote the word "BEACH" as a central word and asked the students what words quickly come to their mind when they firstly heard that word. Two tiers of vocabularies identified. Most related words include SAND, WAVE, WIND, and SUNSET (first tier). The following words cover MEMORY, BOY (GIRL) FRIEND, CALM, RELAXATION, and PEACE (second tier). 

If you paid attention to the structure of the first and the second word tiers, that actually indicates how actually words become active when they heard a particular word. Some words quickly come, and some do later to their mind when first heard the word BEACH. They may have still stored related-vocabularies such as TRANSPORTATION, COMPETITION, FILM, and COLLEGE. Let's say that those vocabularies occupy the third or fourth or fifth tier in word activation. It should, however, be kept in mind that those third tier of vocabularies have nothing to do with BEACH. They are still indeed associated with word BEACH. The problem here is that those activation comes later THAN the first and the second tiers of vocabularies.

It means that the process of initial contact and the selection of the mental lexicons in our brain is actually taking place. The competition of each vocabulary is determined how closed each word to the dot in the brain. The closer the words to the central one, the activation process requires shorter time compared to the more distant ones. 

What are the contributing factors to those activation? That is the fundamental question dealing word recognition. It is generally accepted that frequency, and length effects, AoA (age of acquisition) impact to word recognition or activation. The notion of frequency refers to situation in which the students (people in general) experience (see, hear, and use) the designated vocabulary. In addition, the number of syllables of the given words also influence how the related words would be active quicker or later. People tend to recognize longer syllables longer than shorter syllables. Finally, the age of acquisition also influences to what extent the words can be recognized easier or harder. Young learners, commonly held beliefs, tend to recognize words easier than adults. 

In brief, the central words influence what words follow. If we heard a word, our brain subsequently processes the related words in our brain, depending on the factors causing, that can come either quicker or later.