The goal of our project is to achieve a comprehensive understanding of how words are represented and accessed in the mind and brain. This understanding is fundamental to advances in the study of human cognition, language education, and the diagnosis and treatment of language pathology.

The mental lexicon, the dynamic organization of words in the mind, is the backbone of language ability, comprising a vast and complex network of mental representations, associations, and processes. Yet, like many complex cognitive systems, its functioning is largely shielded from the conscious mind. We never notice that the words that we read are interpreted in well under half a second. We rarely reflect on the fact that it is virtually impossible to stop ourselves from understanding a word that we see or hear in a language we know. Finally, although we might notice that hearing a word makes other words spring to mind, we do not have conscious access to the mechanisms that make this happen. All this is exactly as it should be. In order for the primary communicative purpose of language to be achieved, the complex system of word representation and processing must function with great speed and automaticity.

Understanding the nature of this complex and automatic system offers a privileged window into how cognitive operations are carried out in general, how knowledge is organized in the mind, and how that knowledge is instantiated in the brain. Over the past quarter century, we have uncovered many of the processes in word recognition, documented lexical processing differences across several languages, and discovered the subtle ways in which lexical knowledge can be disrupted by damage to the brain. However, because most of these findings have emerged from individual research centres, often using different research methodologies and populations, it has been very difficult to bring them into an integrated body of knowledge that targets the fundamental mystery of the mental lexicon: What cognitive representations and processes are involved and how are they instantiated in the brain?
This question is at the heart of the field and our project. It can only be answered by a coordinated interdisciplinary investigation of how this fundamental aspect of cognition converges and diverges across languages and individuals-this is exactly the investigation we are carrying out.

We have assembled a collaborative team of 36 experts from around the world, led by six co-investigators at the University of Alberta, the Université de Montréal, McGill University, Concordia University, and the University of Windsor. The team includes specialists in the linguistics of word structure, the psycholinguistics of lexical processing, and the neurolinguistics of lexical instantiation in the brain. Together we examine how lexical processing across typologically diverse languages is affected by levels of education, multilingualism, aging, and language pathology. The research is conducted through a broad range of experimental investigations that provide a fine-grained picture of lexical processing during speaking, listening, reading, and writing. A key feature of our research is the integration of these psycholinguistic techniques with measures of the location and time-course of neural activity in the brain.
Our goal is to achieve breakthroughs in experimental research and in the application of that research to the benefit of those people we study. Our research will result in extensive journal publications within and across disciplines, as well as the following special publications, designed to maximize the accessibility and impact of our research.

1. A standard reference for students, researchers, and clinicians that will characterize new and existing methods in the psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic investigation of lexical processing.

2. A clinical tool for the diagnosis of lexical processing deficits that arise from damage to the brain. This tool will be available globally in at least five languages through web-based technology.

3. A monograph that integrates research on lexical representation and processing across languages.

4. A monograph on how language processing is affected by bilingualism, aging, and language pathology. Both this and the preceding monograph will be aimed at a readership of educated non-specialists, including policy makers, educators, and clinicians.