ABSTRACT
The topic of the types of representations that comprise our knowledge of words, and how these representations are accessed and interact, has been the most investigated topic in all of cognitive neuropsychology. In this chapter I will make no attempt to review all of the excellent papers that have enhanced our understanding of the lexical system. Rather, I will focus on selective studies that have helped to answer basic questions about the architecture of the system and the internal structure of each processing component. More detailed questions about the nature of the representations and how they are processed are addressed in other chapters. The evidence I will present that bears on each question will come from neurologically-impaired patients. Although investigations of normal subjects have clearly had an important impact in understanding the lexical system, the focus here will be on how data from braindamaged patients have led to specific proposals about how lexical representations and processes are organized.
