Mental Lexicon: How are words stored in memory? 

Participants sought for the citizen science project Small World of Words 

Imagine the word "ice." Does it conjure images of your nearest ice cream shop, hot summer days, or perhaps the slick surfaces of winter roads? These varied associations highlight the complex ways words are woven into the fabric of our memories. A team spearheaded by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development is mapping out the organization of words within the mental lexicon across different age groups, employing an association game.

An average adult's vocabulary, or mental lexicon, encompasses approximately 40,000 words. This lexicon is the cornerstone of our ability to communicate swiftly and efficiently, it is rooted in a shared understanding of word meanings and applications. But the underlying question remains: How are these words structured and linked within our minds? 

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development want to learn more about this through an online-based word association game and capture the mental lexicon of people of all ages in the German-speaking population. In the game, participants are asked to provide the first three associations that come to mind for a total of 18 terms, such as "ice," "swift," or "freedom." By analyzing these associations, the researchers aim to determine how close or distant these words are stored in our memory and how our mental lexicon is structured. 

"Free associations play an important role in psychology and linguistics, offering a window into the organization of thought and language. Their use is based on the idea that words in memory are not isolated but stored in a network – our mental lexicon. When a person hears or reads a word, related words or concepts are instantly activated," says Samuel Aeschbach. The cognitive scientist and doctoral student at the Center for Adaptive Rationality of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development deals with semantic networks and language models and is a key member of the project team. 

Since its inception over a decade ago, the project has aggregated a large database, enriched by the contributions of over 24,000 participants. New functionalities have been introduced, enabling participants to compare their associations with those of others and to visualize the interconnected networks. These advancements allow for a deeper understanding of the nuances in word associations and their structure in the brain. "Our goal is to gather data from a diverse set of individuals from different regions, to reflect the variety of word meaning," Aeschbach adds. 

The association game is a component of the global Small World of Words project, orchestrated by the Catholic University of Leuven and now available in 19 languages, including Dutch, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Turkish. The German-speaking segment is being implemented by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, alongside colleagues from the University of Basel, the University of Tartu, the University of Tübingen, and the University of Melbourne. 

The collected data will empower researchers in psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to explore new theories on language storage and processing. The findings promise a broad spectrum of applications, from uncovering regional linguistic variations to enhancing artificial intelligence and developing personalized language learning tools. 

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