Modeling lexical effects on phonetic categorization and semantic effects on word recognition

I respond to Norris et al.'s criticism of Gaskell and Marslen-Wilson (1997) . When the latter's network is tested in circumstances comparable to the Me rge simulations in the target article, it produces the desired pattern of r esults. In another area of potential feedback in spoken word processing, as pects of lexical content influence word recognition and our network provide s a simple explanation of why such effects emerge. It is unclear how such e ffects would be accommodated by Merge.