Public Release: 

Keywords hold vocabulary together in memory

University of Kansas


IMAGE: A subset of a network of 20,000 English words that sound similar, created by University of Kansas Professor of Psychology Michael Vitevitch. The keyword that holds together the other words... view more

Credit: U. of Kansas, M. Vitevitch



"If words are indeed stored like a network in memory, said Vitevitch, "we should be able to see how characteristics of the network affect language-related processes. Our findings clearly show that there are words that hold key positions on the word network and that we process them more quickly and accurately than similar words that they hold together in our memory."




But there is a potential dark side to keywords--if they are "removed" from our memory, they could fracture part of our word network, said Vitevitch.


"Fracturing the network in this way could actually disrupt language processing," said Vitevitch. "Even though we could remove keywords from research participants' memories through psycholinguistic tasks, we dared not because of concern that there would be long-term or even wide-spread effects."

Applying the techniques of network science to language opens up many new questions for scientists who study various aspects of language, said Vitevitch. "Similarly, the domain of language provides network scientists with a novel opportunity to test various hypotheses that they may not be able to do in other real-world systems because we can manipulate things in the laboratory that we can't ethically or practically manipulate in real life."

