ABSTRACT
In 1991, I authored a monograph entitled Reading and the Mental Lexicon, which surveyed the evidence on what was known at that time about the storage and retrieval of words in lexical memory within the reading context. In the course of doing this, my conceptualization of the lexical processing system evolved considerably from the search framework that had guided my earlier work (e.g. Taft & Forster, 1975, 1976). Like most others in the field, I found the most fruitful approach to be an activation-based model, and my theorizing since that time has centred upon an evolution and expansion of that framework. In this chapter, I will present my most recent conceptualization along with a few examples of how it has helped to provide a concrete way of thinking about a range of specific issues. The primary focus will be on the relationship between orthography and phonology, since this has been the most prominent issue in the literature on visual lexical processing, but the way in which the proposed model incorporates the important issues of syllabic and morphemic processing will also be outlined. The purpose of the model is to provide a useful framework for organizing one’s thoughts about all aspects of lexical processing, with particular emphasis on the recognition of visually presented words.
