Department of
Psychological and Brain Sciences

Classic accounts of lexical organization posit that humans are sensitive to environmental frequency, suggesting a mechanism for word learning based on repetition. However, a recent spate of evidence has revealed that it is not simply frequency but the diversity and distinctiveness of contexts in which a word occursthat drives lexical organization. This chapter provides an in-depth evaluation of new research on contextual diversity, integrating evidence from word recognition, semantic memory, episodic memory, and information retrieval.